Strategies to Promote Healthy Relationships in Your Classroom
Friendship and Empathy
-Introduce children to the notion of friendship and encourage them to reflect upon their own social interactions with this link:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/assembly-about-friendship-for-ks1-and-ks2-primary-6051941
-Empathy is a core component for developing positive relationships. Introduce pupils to the link between facial expressions and emotions by showing students a series of people with various expressions then ask “How do you think they feel? How could you tell how the people were feeling? They didn’t use any words! What parts of their face did you look at? What could you do if you saw someone looking like any of the pictures you’ve just seen?"
https://www.edutopia.org/discussion/32-strategies-building-positive-learning-environment
Have your students create a monthly newsletter→ gives students a sense of community that inspires them to do their best.
Consider introducing some team building activities at the beginning of the year rather than jumping right into content. Please visit our "activities" page under "resources" for some fun ideas.
Use inclusive language to emphasize friendship and community→ use the word “friends” rather than “students” to set a positive tone that makes it feel as though everyone in the classroom is friends.
Students and teachers need to develop positive and trusting relationships in an effective classroom. It is also critical that all students develop trusting and enriching relationships with each other. There are many activities which can be used for both introductory purposes and throughout the year to build and maintain positive relationships in the classroom. Please visit our "activities" page under "resources" for some fun ideas.
For students and teachers to engage in dialogue, they must build and exercise specific skills:
- Listening. Deeply listening to what others say and to the feelings behind what they say.
- Humility. Recognizing that other people may hold pieces of the puzzle that we don’t.
- Respect. Believing that others have the right to their opinions (even when different from your own).
- Trust. Building a safe space to explore new ideas and work through conflicts.
- Voice. Speaking the truth as we see it and asking questions about things we don’t know or understand.
Creating a safe atmosphere takes time and work. These are some of the most important concepts to teach:
Active teaching of social-emotional skills
- Attention to creating positive relationships
- Bullying prevention and intervention
- Community building
- Explicit focus on understanding and appreciating differences
- Meaningful conflict resolution
- Teaching students to challenge bias and exclusion
- Upstander training
A contract of norms and behaviors can help define the classroom community as a socially and emotionally safe place. Students should participate in shaping the contract, identifying a list of agreements about how class members will treat one another, talk together and so on.