Do you remember the favorite teacher from back in kindergarten? Have you ever tried to figure out why they were your favorite teacher? It is definitely because they made an effort to reach out to you, trying to listen and understand making you feel involved in a classroom. It is very important for a teacher and a student to connect at all levels in an outsider classroom.
Instinctively, a teacher’s natural behavior towards their group of students is to make sure they are doing their work, understanding things in their class, and progressing every day. the question lies in how they will do it. Whether it is academically, socially, or mentally, students go through several phases in their life. They will always need help in one thing or the other, most of them try to resolve it within themselves or talk to a parent or even seek help from their classmates. You can even reach out to your student without making it awkward. there is a vast age difference but here are a few things that you can follow to improve your student-teacher relationship even through online teaching;
- Focus on one on one time
Especially for students who have behavioral issues, you would like to talk to them one on one, specifically in large classrooms. Online teaching might not allow that so you can end once your student isolates themselves for some time from their parent company they feel uncomfortable talking in front of their parents. No, you have their full attention, try to focus more on listening and absorbing what they have to say rather than interrupting them constantly with your advice.
Remember, students often feel lost because they haven’t experienced life enough to know immediately what they should do. Give them a real-life scenario, and try to make the conversation free-flowing and not extremely grim or serious.
- Try to comment on things
It encourages them and boosts them for doing even better in the future. The point lies in not making it comparative, this will only make them more competitive and stress over having to please you as a teacher. Try commenting on small things, because motivational quotes for students no longer work and only real-time motivation can encourage them!
- Have a likeness towards their interests
It simply gives them validation! You will know about the interests and likings of your students better. If you don’t come and try to arrange activities that might get their talents out, and approve of it. Students have a lot of different interests in things these days, especially with the emerging gadgets and variety on the Internet. You will find groups of children meeting up every day to play games on their devices right after your class ends. You might want to know about this not only because you would like to build a better student-teacher relationship, but also to assure whether they were asleep and couldn’t do their assignment or simply did not do it because they were playing games. It’s bittersweet really!
- Have a great sense of humor
It’s understandable if you suddenly cannot blend into the humor style of the present generation. The most you can do is understand why they find things funny, share your own funny stories and try to come to a midpoint where you can share warm as well as humorous tales is with them once in a while.
Commonly made mistakes
It is common to reach out to a student parent if the teacher thinks it is fruitful. Because a parent is the only immediate guardian to their students, teachers believe that when they take the matter home and give them special attention by informing apparent, whether it is about a misdoing or guidance, they tend to follow instructions with the same intention as that of a teacher. But this might not be the case in many circumstances.
Remember that as a teacher you were trained to be specifically involved with students of different ages. Some parents fail to practice the same, although exceptional. Try to make the matter we only a thing in the class. Students feel less confident when their parents are involved, being set aside because now they are no longer responsible for their behavior and their parents must be held so. Losing confidence constantly at a young age affects them negatively.