The student-teacher relationship

It is said that the student-teacher relationship is a crucial component of a learning environment with benefits for both parties. Everyone must learn from one another for the learning environment to be effective. The teachers will impart knowledge to the students while also honing their instructional techniques. This will foster a good working connection and make the lessons more interesting and enjoyable. Academic performance and behavior will improve if a student and teacher have a positive relationship. Consistent communication between the two parties is key to developing a good, high-quality student-teacher relationship. In this type of relationship, the learning space should be emotionally safe to enable an open environment for learning. Mutual respect, trust, and constant feedback are the foundation to a lasting positive student-teacher relationship (T. Tan, 2013). Equity should be evident in this relationship for it to become stable and sustainable.

A high-quality student-teacher relationship will differ with the class grade and age. For instance grade one relationship has more emotional attachment and needs more interactions. In class 2-3 the emotional attachment will lessen though students enjoy the support they get from the teachers as they discover what drives them. Grade 4-5 students will develop a sense of independence and are keener when developing relationships. The relationship in year 6-8 becomes a bit complicated to establish between the teacher and the student as this is a stage of puberty where they have a need of having freedom (Wang, N. 2013). For grade 9-12 the relationship becomes more mature as students start to think like adults and can voice out emotions both negative and positive and have a tendency to resist being helped making it even harder to have a connection to aid in the relationship.

References

Tan, T., & Wang, N. (2013). The Influence of Student Personality and Teacher-student Interactions on Teacher-student Relationship Quality. Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Applied Social Science Research (ICASSR-2013). doi:10.2991/icassr.2013.47