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Building Positive Relationships

Safety and Security

Most students need a strong sense of comfort and safety from both physical and emotional abuse and
criticism in their classrooms. Teachers need to have enough order that students do not intimidate, bully,
insult, or overly criticize each other. You achieve this sense of positive order by teaching and
developing positive social skills. Students do well when they believe that they can depend on the
teacher and their classmates. This comfort is achieved by rules and regulations in the classroom that
are sensible and consistently enforced. Teachers build a trusting relationship by helping and
encouraging students and by stopping inappropriate behavior, such as racial and gender harassment.
At all ages, students are very sensitive to what they perceive as unequal treatment. When students
believe that their teacher favors some students over others, conflict grows in the classroom, and their
trust in the teacher declines.
In secondary schools, teachers have more students and therefore often know them less well.
Secondary teachers place more emphasis on teaching subject matter, and some tend to place less
emphasis on serving as coach, mentor, counselor, or cultural mediator. The lack of opportunity to
develop personal relationships and the variety of teacher and student personalities create alienation.
Students want to be listened to and respected as human beings with wants, desires, fears, and
emotions (Valenzuela, 1999).
Over the years, students need to develop a strong sense of security, and they should have the
opportunity to develop a trusting personal relationship with some teachers and students. For some
students, the schools teams, clubs, and student government projects contribute to this important sense
of belonging. Each student should encounter at least one teacher or counselor who is interesting and
motivating each day. If this does not occur, the school will lose the student. Without positive personal
relationships, schools become warehouses for students rather than learning centers.
Teachers and students without a sense of security develop symptoms of stress, anxiety, and alienation.
They resist change to a multicultural paradigm. When schools are full of interethnic conflict, bullying, or
sexual harassment, the violent environment prevents many students from learning. Human relations
lessons and strategies, such as those found in the curriculum The Wonderful World of Difference (Bnai
Brith Antidefamation League, 1996), help to build classrooms where students feel safe and
comfortable.

Self-Worth
When schools serve students well, students develop a sense of self-worth and competence and come
to expect to succeed at classroom and social projects. The curriculum should be planned and
presented so that all students succeed each day.

In the primary years, students should learn to read. If they are not successful readers, additional
support in the form of increased teacher time, tutors, and special instruction along with a rich variety of
reading strategies must be provided so that students learn to love reading and so that they do not fall
behind (Slavin, 1998). Learning successful reading skills and acquiring joy and interest in reading
contribute to a positive sense of self-worth in school.
A strong relationship exists between poverty (social class) and reading scores (Finn, 1999). Teachers of
grades 4 through 8 need to help students to improve their reading. Lessons in history, science, and
literature should systematically include high-interest literature, allow students choice, and emphasize
skill development.
Upper elementary school students (grades 46) and middle school students (grades 68) also improve
their sense of self-worth by learning to set immediate, accomplishable goals and establishing clear
criteria for achieving them. With clear goals and lessons, students can recognize and improve their
study and interpersonal skills. Quality literature and guest speakers can regularly present positive
lifestyle choices to students.
Students who believe themselves competent become more willing to take risks. They generally feel
successful at important tasks and school subjects. Such students are willing to share their ideas and
opinions and to recognize the accomplishments of other students. Too often teachers use theories of
motivation based on the competitive tendencies in the macroculture and poorly informed teacher folk
knowledge about testing, measurement, and grading (Nichols & Berliner, 2007).
Students in supportive environments develop a positive sense of self. Violence, drug use, and
alienation among teenagers indicate a struggle for a clear identity. Students bridging two or more
cultures and identities may suffer increased stress and conflict as they develop their own identities
(Foley, 2001). Literature and lessons about teen conflicts, challenges, and successes offer
opportunities for support. Students need to find themselves and recognize their conflicts in the
curriculum, and the literature used must include teens from the cultures represented in the classroom.
As a consequence of political power, state content standards often are ethnocentric and impede
inclusion of diverse literature and authors.
A process of supporting students through asset development has been devised developed by the
Search Institute and others (Scales & Leffert, 1999). This approach focuses on building on the students
strengths, such as energy and creativity. Focusing on strengths can help students develop resiliency to
deal with serious problems, such as teen pregnancy, violence, and dropping out of school.

Sense of Belonging
Students at all ages have a strong need to belong to groups. The desire to fit in provides a major
source of motivation andat timeschallenges to school rules. Students may feel conflicting desires to
belong to an ethnic or cultural group, girls or boys athletic teams, or any one of a number of other
groups. Learning to work positively within a social group is important to maturity.
Students strengthen their sense of self-worth when they receive recognition, approval, appreciation,
and respect from their peers. Lessons should promote inclusion and acceptance of all students. You
can promote these important feelings in the classroom by using cooperative and collaborative learning
and classroom projects. Lessons should draw on the diversity of languages and skills students bring to
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school. Make every attempt to recognize leaders, authors, scientists, filmmakers, and teachers from all
cultural groups.
Deliberately developing peer support groups and recognizing the diversity of talentsfor language,
music, math, social leadership, and so onhelp students to develop a sense of belonging to one or
more of the groups in school.
By adolescence, group affiliation can at times challenge school rules and norms. Teen culture, like
African American, Latino, or teacher culture, must be respected. If schools set themselves against teen
culture, the conflict will destroy many students. Only negative aspects of teen culture, such as drugs,
violence, and theft, should be opposed (Garcia, 2001; Reveles, 2000). In the many classrooms and
schools that seek to impose a Eurocentered culture and to defeat teen culture, student conflict and
opposition can reach destructive levels. Defeated students withdraw from school and peers; they
become isolated, alienated, lonely, and, at times, dangerous to themselves and to others.
Principals have turned to peer conflict resolution and gang and narcotics units of police departments to
augment inadequate resources for gang intervention. Students need to be recruited and encouraged to
support the positive aspects of school through clubs, team building, conflict resolution, and leadership
development programs. The school must become a student-friendly, safe environment.

Self-Esteem
The theories of promotion of positive self-esteem derive primarily from a humanistic psychology that
has taken too-limited notice of cultural differences. Behavior that would illustrate a positive self-concept
in one culture, such as assertiveness, might be interpreted as a sign of poor education in another
(Bruner, 1996). Separate from this debate, teachers have developed a series of classroom strategies to
encourage students to conduct themselves appropriately.

A Sense of Direction
Although young students often accept the direction of their parents and the school, by adolescence
many students are redefining their roles and their choices. Some students need repeated lessons on
setting goals and establishing their own sense of responsibility and direction. Students can learn to
make decisions and identify consequences. Experiential education programs and outdoor programs
help students with goal setting and motivation. Through coaching and counseling, teachers can help
students make preliminary career and college choices. Teachers serving as advisors to clubssuch as
MECHA, MAYA, African American clubs, ski clubs, teams, and journalism clubsoften play important
roles in helping students to define and to select their future.

A Sense of Purpose
Students succeed more when they have a sense of purpose to their school life. Essentially, success at
school is their job. School needs to prove its worth to them. Students benefit from lessons on and
experiences with decision making and cooperative problem solving.

Teachers encourage positive self-esteem when they recognize, validate, and respect students own
cultures. Cooperative learning and other human relations strategies teach students how to achieve
positive interdependence and how to create and maintain a cooperative working environment .
Students learn the rewards of shared responsibility and cooperation.
Teachers make decisions to structure their classrooms in ways that encourage learning and
cooperation or in ways that produce anxiety, frustration, competition, failure, and disruption. In
particular, a highly competitive classroom environment discourages trust and cooperation. Some
students always lose, and these students legitimately feel alienated and angry. Students must come to
trust that the teacher has their own best interests at heart, even in difficult times. Teachers achieve this
goal by demonstrating their respect for the fundamental dignity and worth of each student (Valenzuela,
1999).

Stopping Demeaning Comments

Too often, particularly in grades 4 through 10, classrooms are the scene of bullying, intolerance, and
demeaning comments among students. All students deserve a safe environment in which to learn.
Teachers should prohibit demeaning and derogatory comments, particularly those that invite racial and
gender conflict (see Chapter 8). Teachers need to work against this intolerance by presenting lessons
and activities that promote tolerance and respect and lessons that oppose scapegoating.
You improve your classroom climate by modeling positive, supportive communications skills and by
teaching these skills to students. The great majority of interactions in classrooms are among students.
You can influence and encourage respect in these interactions by teaching positive skills. Lessons in
listening actively, using I messages, and negotiating conflicts show students how to treat each other
with respect.
Teaching democratic participation and decision making encourages positive self-esteem.
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