When you’re not intentional in building relationships with your students within the first week of school, your classroom environment can suffer and so can student learning. Students will eventually begin acting out due to a lack of “buy-in” and trust in their teacher. In this case, by the term “buy in,” I mean getting the students to accept the vision and expectations you put in place and be willing to participate and engage. For you to gain their trust, they must know that you genuinely mean them well. Once students recognize that you are interested not only in their academic success but also in their overall well-being, there is no limit to how far they will go to put in their maximum academic and behavioral effort within your classroom. For me, being transparent with what my expectations were was key to building relationships.
My students appreciate when I am truthful and authentic and therefore, understand what my expectations are, academically and behaviorally. As educators, it is important to reflect on your own philosophies and personal beliefs. Once that is established, you can begin being intentional about the expectations you want to set in the classroom—expectations that reflect the kind of class community you want to see. Implement community-building activities during the first week of school that will establish your expectations and class procedures, but make sure these instructions are balanced with enjoyable activities to get the students to “buy-in.” This reminds me of customer service.
Students don’t take long to realize whether they approve of or like your “customer service.” The goal is to have 100% of the students buy into what you are “selling.” The goal of customer service is to attract and retain customers so that they will keep coming back for more. Likewise, we want our students to be attracted to our class environment, and we want them to keep an interest in coming back to learn. So, let me ask, what are you selling? Do your students approve? How do you know?
