My Relationships with Students

Problem: In a classroom where the teacher is the only source of knowledge (direct lecture from teacher to student), the prior knowledge of students from backgrounds unlike the teachers too often cannot act as a foundation on which the new information can connect.

This is only one of various problems in the traditional concept of the teacher-student relationship. Three major aspects of my relationship with students should transform it from a potentially oppressive relationship: Warmth, Demand, and Empowerment.

A warm teacher is one who shows students a genuine care for their lives, their learning, and their realities. It is obvious that all teachers should actually like kids (but many students will relate feeling like teachers are not there for them). A warm teacher at least knows students' names, takes the extra time to ask and learn from students about their lives, to learn about the communities from which his/her students come (the student's funds of knowledge), and uses that information to engage that student in real ways.
Parker Palmer relates his vision of himself as a sheepdog for his students with four main roles: maintain a space where sheep can graze and feed selves, keep sheep together in that space and go after strays, it protects the boundaries of that space to keep dangerous predators out, and finally the sheepdog moves sheep on to another space for more food when the grazing is depleted (p.148). Some of these roles relate to discipline, content, etc. but the overall sentiment of the sheepdog toward the sheep is to ensure their well being and growth.
There are two parts of the sheepdog analogy that relate to the second aspect of my relationship with my students: sheep feed themselves in a space created by the sheepdog and they need to move on to new breeding grounds before running out of grazing. A teacher can look out for the well being of a student all s/he wants, but without challenging the student to grow, by having high expectations and a demanding presence, they will not grow... Rather, they'll become bored.
Sometimes teachers are caring but not demanding with students who are 'at-risk' or less likely to succeed because, they reason, these students just need to stay in school. There is a social scientific theory that has been found in studies a number of times called self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, in short, students can read the level of expectations a teacher has of them and will live up/down to that expectation. Study after study related to what works in beating the 'odds' with students not expected to learn, find that teacher of successful students are 'warm demanders'. That is, they care for and go the extra mile for their students with confidence the students can and will live up to the high expectations they have for them (see Osborne #6, and Nieto p. 270).
The third aspect of the teacher-student dynamic that I intend to work on is that of empowerment. This relates to what Freire calls the teacher-student contradiction. The inherently hierarchical relationship between a teacher and a student. Within Freire's ideal, which is highly related to teacher respect for, care, and high expectations for students, there is no longer a teacher as conveyor of knowledge and student as receiver of it. Rather the teacher is a teacher-student and the students are students-teachers. All are engaged with a meaningful content to their lives, are willing to learn from one another, and know that they will not reach an endpoint in learning.
In slightly less theoretical language, I want my students to engage in learning, alone and in groups, that is not directed by me. I want to have the opportunity to learn from my students. My students should be immersed in the 'discipline' of history, becoming historians themselves, able to question historical interpretations made by other historians and assert why. They can challenge me, one another, the text, and even their own thinking when engaged in learning history.

Sources:
Nieto, "Affirming Diversity"
Lewis, "Race in the Schoolyard"
Freire, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"
Palmer, "The Courage to Teach"
Osborne, "Practice into Theory into Practice: Culturally Relevant Pedagogy for Students We Have Marginalized and Normalized"
Genzuk, "Tapping into Community Funds of Knowledge"

My self-assessment rubric: How do I relate with my students?
Problematic

• Students are just minds to be molded
• Some are ready to be challenged
• As long as they’re listening to me…

Working on it

• I know most of my students and the general cultural groups they represent
• I try to challenge all my students
• Sometimes my students can teach me something

Transformative

• I know my students’ names and openly value their diverse cultural groups, and identities
• I demand and work to support academic rigor of all my students.
• I engage students as historians and often learn from their perspectives on our topics of study.