2 Easy Ways To Build Rapport With Your Students

by Michael Linsin on January 14, 2012 17

Building rapport with students can be a remarkably effective way to improve classroom management. But there is some confusion over what rapport is and how one goes about building it.

Rapport is nothing more than a connection you make with your students based on their positive feelings for you. When they like you and trust you, and when you in turn like and believe in them, you’ll form a bond that makes classroom management a lot easier.

It’s as simple as that.

But rapport isn’t something you can force upon your students. Teachers who try to engage individual students directly… “Hey, what’s your favorite video game?” …often find the interaction brief and awkward and the results less than influential.

To build genuine rapport, you have to draw students to you. You have to use your personality, your humor, and your charisma to get students to want to be around you and take an interest in who you are.

It’s this natural appeal that allows you to effortlessly make personal connections with students and influence their behavior choices—often without ever having to say a word.

The idea of using one’s everyday personality to draw students in and build rapport makes sense to most teachers, but many struggle with how to put it into practice. What exactly does it look like?

I’ve gotten this question a lot over the years, and the truth is we all have different personalities. We all have our own unique talents, traits, sense of humor, and joie de vivre.

The simple answer is to just be likeable and rapport building will take care of itself. However, I know how helpful it can be to hear specific examples. So in that spirit, here are two easy-peasy ways you can build rapport today—and see results almost immediately.

1. Smile until they smile.

I love this strategy and find it works even when I’ve never met the students before. You can use it anytime you’re passing out materials, checking student work, taking attendance, or anytime you have occasion to make eye contact with individual students.

Let’s say for example you’re taking attendance. As you say each student’s name, you would take a moment to look up and smile at the student. You would then continue making eye contact and smiling until the student smiles back at you. And that’s it.

What it does is allow you to make an instant positive and personal connection with each student. It communicates a thousand wonderful things in just a couple of seconds. And when you’re finished, each student will see you in a different light.

You may notice other students begin to giggle as you do this. That’s okay. It’s all good. Sometimes I make funny faces instead of smiling or I’ll exaggerate a frown until they do the same. It’s really fun. And lest you think your students are too old or too cool, I’ve used this strategy with sixth-graders to great effect and wouldn’t hesitate to use it with older students.

2. Tell a story about your childhood.

If you’re a regular reader of this website, or if you’ve read the book Dream Class, then you know the power of storytelling. Nothing… nothing, nothing, nothing is more effective. Done a certain way, it can put your students in the palm of your hand. It does, however, take some practice.

Telling a story about your childhood is a good place to start. It places you in an environment they’re unfamiliar picturing you in, but one in which they can closely identify with. You become, then, not so different than them—making connections easier.

I’ve found stories about adventures or comedic hard luck to be most effective. But really anything with a twist or a surprise works. Acting out the story is also especially effective. But it’s important you have fun with it; stories about your dog Snowflake dying are verboten.

Why storytelling works so well is in some ways still a mystery to me. There is no doubt that your students will love it and love you because of it. If you become a good storyteller, it will completely change your teaching and will dramatically affect the influence you have with your students.

Tearing Down Walls

It’s important to note that one of the keys to building rapport is what you don’t do. Many teachers have a hard time building rapport because they respond emotionally to misbehavior. They show frustration, they scold, they lecture, and in so doing they erect a giant wall between themselves and their students.

Building rapport is about tearing down walls, some of which are put up by your students before you even meet them.

There is a lot to this topic, and we’ll touch on more in the weeks to come, but one thing is for certain: Building rapport has the potential to impact every important area of your teaching—classroom management, difficult students, motivation, independence, academic progress—and then some.

Why Before School Is The Perfect Time To Build Rapport

by Michael Linsin on June 9, 2012 7

Five minutes.

That’s all it takes to improve your relationship with your students. And why is that important?

Because having rapport with students translates to powerful and behavior-influencing leverage—the kind of leverage that compels them to want to behave, to want to do well, and to want to please you.

And those few minutes before the morning bell are perfect for improving relationships, perfect for building a natural, trusting bond between you.

But you have to get up from your desk to do it.

You have to set aside your lesson plans, walk away from your last minute preparations, and give up your most treasured final moments of morning solitude.

For wherever your students congregate before school—in the hallway, on the playground, lined up outside your classroom—that’s where you should be.

Chatting, listening, smiling . . . just visiting.

Here’s why:

It’s an easy way to build rapport.

Simply being with your students outside the limits of the classroom is an easy, organic way to build rapport. But it’s important that you bring with you no agenda, no expectations, and no strings attached. Just bring your non-judgmental self and a modest goal of getting to know your students better. And they’ll take care of the rest.

It’s an opportunity to talk with those who talk less.

As your students grow accustomed to your presence every morning, they’ll begin drawing closer—sharing personal stories, becoming more familiar, smiling and laughing more and making eye contact. This is especially important for shy, quieter students. You see, the more comfortable they are with you in these casual moments, the more they’ll open up, participate, and contribute in class.

It allows you to prove that every day is a new day.

The idea that yesterday’s mistakes and misbehaviors are forgotten is an important part of an overall strategy to turn around your most difficult students. But it doesn’t work if they don’t believe you or if your actions say otherwise. Thus, spending some quality, no-strings-attached time with them every morning is an especially impactful way to prove this truth to a skeptical bunch.

It brings less popular students into the fold.

No, you’re not going to have a particular agenda or awkward strategy to force friendships with less popular students. But what you are going to do is let everyone see who these students really are. You’re going to let their personalities blossom and shine. And as you build rapport with them, and bring others into the conversation, friendships will develop naturally. You’re just a gardener planting seeds.

It’s a reminder of what a blessing it is to be a teacher.

The love of teaching can be found in your relationships with students. It’s the deep connections, the laughter, the thank yous, the smiles, and the poignant moments you’ll always remember—and that can never be taken away. The more time you spend with your students “just because,” the more influence you’ll have, the better teacher you’ll be, and more you’ll love your job.

Just Be You

The biggest mistake teachers make when attempting to build rapport is that they try too hard. They dominate the conversation—talking at, rather than with, students. They shower them with praise. They talk too loud and too aggressively.

In other words, they force the relationship—and come across as inauthentic.

The truth is, having a healthy, trusting, and influential rapport with students, the kind that gives your classroom management plan relevance and meaning, is primarily a function of your likeability.

So take it easy.

Listen more than talk. Don’t try so hard. Let the conversation come to you—and then let it go where it goes.

Just be there. Be open. Be available. And most of all . . .

Be yourself.

What Building Relationships With Students Really Means

by Michael Linsin on May 31, 2014 11

It’s common for teachers to misunderstand the term “building relationships.”

They hear of the importance of creating connections with students—particularly difficult students—and assume it means they need to spend more time with them individually.

They assume it means they need to try and get to know them on a more personal level.

But for a real-world teacher, finding the time to build relationships in this manner is not only unrealistic, but it’s also ineffective. In fact, seeking out individual students in an attempt to earn their trust and rapport can do more harm than good.

You see, for most students, being cornered into a non-academic conversation with their teacher is uncomfortable—exceedingly so. It can make them feel clumsy and self-conscious and at a loss of anything to say.

Even the most socially confident students will feel unnerved and wary of your motives. And yet, there are teachers who day after day insist on pressing the issue.

They beckon students out of line, into hallways, and away from the social safety of fellow classmates. They barge into personal space. They query likes and dislikes and commonalities. They become forward and overbearing.

Although their heart is in the right place, what develops is a relationship of awkwardness and embarrassment. What develops is defensiveness and detachment. What develops builds walls instead of tearing them down.

But the goal of building relationships with students isn’t familiarity. It’s influence. And influence comes about not by one-on-one interactions, not by getting to know a student’s favorite ice cream or video game, and not by being hip to current pop-cultural trends.

No, influential relationships come about through your trust and likability.

If your students trust you because you always do what you say will, and they like you because you’re consistently pleasant, then powerful, behavior-influencing rapport will happen naturally and without you having to work at it.

Your students will seek you out and want to be around you and get to know you better. They’ll be drawn to you and pulled effortlessly into your circle of influence.

Your conversations and interactions then become open and easy. When you sit down to lunch with groups of students or meet them in their line before school, the give-and-take flows smoothly, organically. Nothing is forced. Nothing is inauthentic.

Even quiet and shy students—especially quiet and shy students—will come out of the woodwork to laugh and joke with you and exchange goofy smiles. This in turn gives you remarkable leverage to influence behavior, work habits, and enthusiasm for being part of your classroom.

So stop buying into the notion that you have to build relationships one student at a time. Stop thinking that you have to add yet another time-consuming strategy to your overflowing plate. Stop spending more time with some students and not others.

The fact is, the most effective way to build relationships with students also happens to be the most effective approach to classroom management.

Be true to your word. Follow through with your classroom management plan. Refrain from any and all harmful, scolding, bribing, manipulative, or friction-creating methods of managing behavior.

Smile. Love your students. Bring humor and joy to your classroom. And you’ll never, ever have to try to build influential relationships.

How A Party Can Improve Classroom Management

by Michael Linsin on April 30, 2011 11

If you could schedule one classroom party a week and improve classroom management, would you do it? Before you answer yes, you should know that the kind of party I’m referring to is not of the celebratory variety.

You’re not going to order pizza or have a piñata. No animated videos are involved. And you don’t need parent volunteers.

But done a certain way, this party can improve your students’…

• Cooperation

• Work habits

• Respect

• Maturity

Together, these traits add up to a better, happier classroom, a stronger community, and easier classroom management.

So what kind of party is it?

It’s a clean-the-room party. And the way it works is simple: one day a week you will supervise a thorough cleaning of your classroom.

But if you’re not careful in your approach, you’re likely to get a lot of complaining and a halfhearted effort.

To avoid that drama and to ensure that the lessons learned from the experience resonate with your students, follow the guidelines below.

Show them how.

Whenever you introduce something new, it’s important to model what you want. To that end, show your students exactly how to perform each job successfully. While demonstrating, be clear about what you expect and about what is and isn’t acceptable.

Make it fun.

Put music on. Let your students work in teams. Let them talk and laugh and have a good time together. The room should be noisy. As long as they’re getting their work done, encourage them to have fun.

Make it work.

If it isn’t challenging, if your students don’t need to put a little elbow grease into the occasion, then you’re wasting your time–the lessons will be lost on them. Assign jobs that take time and effort to complete.

Focus on cleaning.

You should have several buckets and a couple dozen sponges. Use soap and water to clean hard surfaces. You can also have them sweep, dust, organize, throw away, empty, remove, pick-up, and vacuum (if they’re old enough).

Participate.

I think it’s important for your students to see you helping. Yes, you’ll want to move around and supervise, but while you’re at it, grab a sponge and show them how it’s done.

Note: It’s also a good time to pair up with your most difficult student. Working together is a great way to build trust and rapport.

Expect good work.

Ask them to call you over when they finish so you can check their work. If you like what you see, release them to begin their reading or math work or whatever you have planned for them. If they didn’t do a good job, gently suggest ways they can make it better.

Make it a privilege.

If you have a student who resists participation, or who doesn’t try, then don’t let him or her participate. Done correctly, with all students having fun and working together, being part of a clean-the-room party is irresistible to even the most apathetic students.

Other Benefits

There is something about doing physical work that clicks with students. A weekly cleaning party can impart the virtues of cooperation and hard work better than anything we can say to them.

When students can actually do it, when they can participate in something so simple and yet authentic, when they can work toward a common goal and see the immediate results of their efforts, then the lessons become real.

Students are often bored, disaffected, and have poor work habits because they’re indulged. In this day and age, it seems as though adults do everything for them.

But when they’re allowed to do for themselves, their sense of their own capabilities–along with their self-worth–improves. Their work habits grow stronger. They become more confident, more proficient, and more mature.

And they come to revel in a job well done–which will then translate to everything they do.

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Why Gentleness Is A Strong Classroom Management Strategy

by Michael Linsin on January 16, 2016 50

There is a common misconception that you must have a big presence to be an effective leader.

You must psych yourself up, throw your shoulders back, and move boldly among your students.

Your voice must boom.

Your walk must swagger.

Your eyes must squint and narrow in on your charges.

And while classroom presence is important, it isn’t born of overconfidence, forcefulness, or aggression.

It’s born of gentleness.

Here’s why:

Gentleness is respected.

21st-century students respond best to a calm, even-handed approach to classroom management. They appreciate honesty and kindness. They respect it, and thus, are quick to listen and please their teacher.

The older the students are, the more this is true.

Gentleness lowers stress.

Without saying a word, a gentle presence removes classroom stress, tension, and anxiety. It soothes and alleviates excitability and distraction—which are two major causes of misbehavior.

It equals a happier, more productive classroom.

Gentleness curtails pushback.

Enforcing consequences calmly and consistently diminishes the possibility that your students will argue, complain, or lie to you about their misbehavior.

Instead, they’ll quietly take responsibility.

Gentleness builds rapport.

When you carry yourself with a gentle demeanor, you become more likable to your students. In fact, it’s an easy and predictable way to build powerful leverage, influence, and rapport.

Which makes everything easier.

Gentleness feels good.

Beginning each morning with a poised, easygoing manner will make you a lot happier. Inconveniences won’t get on your nerves. Difficult students won’t get under your skin.

You’ll be refreshed at the end of every day.

Gentleness Isn’t Weakness

Weakness is when you lose emotional control.

It’s when you lecture, berate, and admonish students instead of following your classroom management plan.

It’s when you take misbehavior personally.

Gentleness, on the other hand, is strong. It’s capable and confident. It says that you’re in control and that your students can relax and focus on their responsibilities.

This doesn’t mean your lessons won’t be dynamic and passionate. It doesn’t mean you won’t be enthusiastic or you won’t demand excellence from your students.

Gentleness isn’t sleepiness. Nor is it afraid and cowering in a corner.

It’s a calm, reassuring approach to managing your classroom that communicates to every student that you’re a leader worth following.

Martin Luther King Jr. was gentle. So were Rosa Parks and Abraham Lincoln.

And so are the happiest and most effective teachers on earth.

How To Ask Your Students For The Moon . . . And Get It

by Michael Linsin on January 2, 2016 22

Recently, a former student contacted me through the SCM Facebook page.

He was in my sixth-grade class almost 20 years ago.

I remembered him well.

In fact, although I didn’t use his real name, I mentioned him in Dream Class.

He was the tough but highly respected boy who escorted a blind student to the playground.

It was a special moment, one I’ll never forget.

While alluding to his sometimes difficult past, he talked about how happy he is and how his wife and young family mean everything to him.

I’m thrilled, of course, and proud of how well he’s doing.

After catching up with our current lives, it wasn’t long before he began telling stories of his year in my class.

He talked about how when each sixth-grade class was tasked with creating a presentation on ancient Greece, we did a musical spoof of the movie Grease (with leather-jacketed Danny Zuko as Socrates).

He talked about vanquishing other classrooms in capture-the-flag and math-game battles, and then celebrating back in the classroom like we’d won the World Cup.

He talked about the silly things I did in class—spilling water down my shirt, tripping over chairs, using this or that funny accent for a day.

He recalled that when the class was working independently on their math, I’d whistle the opening bars from the movie, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and they would answer back in unison with a sing-songy “Dooooo youuuuur maaaaath.”

My recollections were that we worked extremely hard.

It was a large class in a difficult school, and I pushed them and pushed them. I challenged them on their behavior, their work habits, and their responsibilities—to their family, their classmates, and their future selves.

At the time, I remember thinking that I was asking too much of them. I remember thinking that if I wasn’t careful, I would lose them and their deep connection to the class.

I’ve since learned that as long as you create a classroom your students look forward to, you can’t ask for too much. You can’t have expectations that are too high.

Your students will rise to meet your high bar as long as they know you care enough to make it worth their while.

As long as you make your classroom an experience they enjoy being part of—better yet, love being part of—they will follow you to the ends of the earth.

And teaching will be the way you always imagined it could be.

My former student told story after story. He reminisced about friends and laughter and the closeness of that particular group in that moment in time. As if it were yesterday.

He never mentioned the lengthy independent work periods, the demand for flawless routines, or my neverending calls for excellence.

Because when a spirit of fun and humor are part of the fabric of your classroom, you can ask for more and for better every day of the week.

You can ask for the moon.

And they’ll give it to you.

Sir Andy Roberts Community Spirit Day 2016