Rapport with students

How important is rapport with students, or better yet, how can this be measured? What exactly does it mean? There is a situation at my school where one of the teachers is “accused” of not having good rapport with students. This teacher, whom I will refer to as MT (for math teacher, not empty!), is knowledgable in math, has sound pedagogical ideas for what they are doing, and generally is a conscientious teacher. But MT is getting grief for not establishing rapport with their students. I do not want to go too much into the specific case, but instead the issue in general, as well as my own experiences.

When I started teaching about 17 years ago I was fresh out of college – a private and insulated university – with a B.A. degree in mathematics education (you could do that in New York at the time, I’m not sure if you still can). My student teaching had been in a suburban/rural school, and I had attended a private all boys high school. To say I was naive is probably being kind. My first job was in an inner city middle school in the Los Angeles area. I was terrified in the beginning, and I really did not in any way ‘know’ my students. I religiously guarded my first name and my age as if, had the students found either of them out, they could have cast a spell on me and made me disappear. In retrospect I find it amusing, but at the time these are the things that occupied my mind. Needless to say, establishing rapport was a challenge. By my third year at the school I had settled in, although my name and age remained a jealously guarded secret, and I know I connected with some of the students, but in general probably not.

I think we sometimes feel that we are teachers first, and that students should, by the virtue of that fact, respect us. When a student my first year said to my face, “F**k you!” I could do nothing more than splutter, “but you can’t say that, I’m a teacher.” To prove his point, he said it again. It was then I started to learn that respect is, at least in part, earned. A very different lesson than the one my parents taught me – that respect is something you give someone from the get-go.

I moved through several more schools, learning to interact with my students more and more, but always seeing an invisible wall there. I am not suggesting that we be their friends all the time, but we can at least be friendly. It was not until I returned to teach at my current school (I had taught here for several years before leaving and then coming back) that I did several things that changed the rapport I had with my classes.

The first is I joined the improv group that had started on campus. I was the only faculty participant, although the faculty moderator also ‘played’ with the students. It was one of the most terrifying things I did as a teacher, especially when I participated in my first public performance. I realized that showing vulnerability helped the students realize that I did not somehow think I was better then them.

The second thing I did is change how I conducted my classes. Instead of standing in front of them, I joined them by sitting with them and letting my Tablet PC help me continue to direct the learning. Instead of me presenting the material to learn, I challenged them to try problems with me. Instead of pretending I always had the answer to their questions, we figured them out together when I did not.

I think that rapport will look different for each teacher, but some of the common elements are that students find the teacher approachable and that the teacher cares about the students and their learning. Both of these concepts need to be unpacked further because there are a lot of pieces in both.