Is Student-Teacher Relationship Building a Skill to Be Learned, or Is It Just Natural Ability?

Connecting with students is often framed in education as something that teachers either have, or they don’t have.  We often perceive effective student-teacher relationships as rooted in a teacher’s natural ability: “She’s just got it.” 

Can teachers who struggle with connecting with students even change? Is relationship building a skill that can be learned?  Absolutely!  Teachers may have the best of intentions, but often fall short of building the classroom community they desire, especially with historically marginalized students. However, with the help of their coach, teachers can learn the skills, mindsets and practices behind building relationships with students, even across differences such as race, gender, ability or home language.

In other professions, as demonstrated in the career development industry, relationships building is seen as a skill set that can be developed.  Coaches and educators certainly should adopt this mindset towards relationship building, and not resign themselves when they find the work challenging. I lay out specific tips for engaging in the work of relationships building in a previous post. 

Why even focus on supporting teachers with relationship building when there are so many other things to prioritize, especially if relationship building is just not their “thing?”  Relationships with students are at the core of educational equity, ensuring that every student has what they need to be successful everyday. We can’t teach unless we know our students.  Christopher Emdin writes that the key to supporting student academic success is “not to teach directly to the assessment or to the curriculum, but to teach directly to the students.” Relationships are foundational for students’ success in school.  The purpose of building relationships with students is not about gathering just information to encourage compliance, but about affirming their authentic selves in the classroom and motivating them to think for themselves. 

We wouldn’t be okay with saying that a student just doesn’t have the skills to learn algebra; we would work with them until they formed the necessary foundational skills and achieved success. Neither can we let our teachers, nor ourselves as coaches, off the hook for building the skills necessary to create meaningful, joyful, and caring relationships with all of their students.