5 Top Reasons Teachers Fail to Connect with Their Students
Teaching isn’t just about standards, objectives, and measuring progress.
In fact, connecting with your students and building healthy interpersonal relationships is one of the most important parts of your job, especially in the early grades.
But unlike backwards planning and classroom management – building connections is not really taught in school.
Some years it may be easy and natural to connect with your students, and some years it may be challenging.
Every classroom is dynamic and unique, so even tenured teachers can experience unexpected challenges when it comes to connecting to students some years!
Today we’re highlighting 5 of the top reasons teachers fail to connect with their students. This post is helpful if you are currently experiencing one of those challenges or if you want to proactively avoid these challenges in the future.
Why does connecting with students matter?
If your job is to teach your students grade-level material – why does it matter whether you connect with them or not?
Social-emotional development is a huge component of early learning and education. Your students depend on you for as much help learning to build relationships as they depend on you to teach them how to add, subtract, and blend C-V-C words.
Benefits of building connections with your students:
- Positive classroom culture
- Helping students feel like they belong to the group
- Better classroom management
- More enjoyable environment for you and your students
- Increased engagement and focus
It’s worth understanding the specific challenges that can get in the way of these important connections so you can make adjustments and improve relationships.
Heart-centered teaching prioritizes these relationships and connections, along with communication, compassion, and empathy to help your students feel seen, valued, and appreciated.
As heart-centered teachers, we care about our students as children. Yes, we want the best academic outcomes for them, but we also want to help them develop their social-emotional skills, confidence, and sense of purpose.
When we respect our students and care about their overall well-being, we recognize how crucial it is to build meaningful relationships with each and every child in our classroom.
No patience? It’s going to be hard to connect
There are some students you will form nearly effortless connections with. But there are others that will be more challenging.
Some behavior or tendencies that may test your patience:
- Taking a long time to complete their work
- Constantly talking out of turn
- Consistently exhibiting disruptive behavior
- Refusing to comply with basic instructions
Yes, these are incredibly frustrating behaviors, choices, or tendencies. But if you find yourself constantly correcting a student, it’s going to be hard to build any kind of meaningful connection.
With students who test your patience, try actively seeking out moments to connect when they are not doing the things that frustrate you. You can also be mindful of your patience levels with specific students and work on building empathy for their struggles or understanding their perspective.
All students want to feel seen, appreciated, and respected by their teacher. They just may have certain behaviors or habits that make it more challenging.
It’s your job as the teacher to manage your patience and give every student a chance to connect.
An engaging environment makes a huge difference
It’s hard to connect with students who don’t want to be in class. It’s also hard for you as a teacher to connect with students if you don’t want to be in class.
Building a warm, welcoming classroom environment is one of the best ways to improve connections between you and your students.
If your classroom doesn’t feel welcoming and relaxing, try these tips:
- Add lamps and turn off harsh overhead lights
- Play relaxing music throughout the day
- Bring in personal photos to make you feel more at home
- Display student work
- Create small classroom traditions that everyone can look forward to, like bringing in a stuffie on Fridays or special reading time after lunch
The more you and your students want to be in your classroom together, the easier it will be to connect.
Personal life can get in the way of building connections
When you find yourself in a particularly challenging season or moment in your personal life, it can be hard to connect with your students.
This can’t always be “solved,” but there are ways to still connect while dealing with stressful outside situations.
Welcoming your students to class is one of the easiest, best ways to start the day off feeling connected! Let them choose from a handshake, fist bump, hug, or smile – and welcome each student into the classroom. It takes very little emotional labor from you and will give everyone a great start to the day!
Giving yourself grace in this season is also really important. Don’t fall victim to an “all or nothing” mindset when it comes to connecting with your students. You may only have the capacity for small moments of connection, and that’s okay!
You may also find that taking the time to talk to your students, listen to their stories, and engage in their activities is a good distraction and healing exercise for you.
Communication challenges
Talking to young children is very different from talking to adults.
You may find it hard to connect with your students if you don’t take the time to learn how to communicate well with them.
A simple thing you can do is to get on their level when they’re speaking – either by bending down, sitting next to them, or popping on the carpet together.
Listening to their stories (yes, even when they’re long-winded and confusing!) and giving meaningful feedback that shows you heard what they said goes a long way.
Lack of empathy
What matters to a young child is often confusing to us as adults.
Who cares if you got a pink crayon when you wanted blue? Why does it matter where you stand in line?
These things may not matter to us as adults, but they are a big deal to children.
Taking time to understand what they care about and approaching their behavior with empathy and compassion (instead of judgment or criticism) will improve your connections.
Shift your perspective to see things the way your students do and watch your relationships open up and blossom!
Support for building strong connections
These common struggles can help you pinpoint where you’re struggling to connect with your students.
When you’re ready to build stronger relationships and prioritize the connections within your classroom, I’ve got a great FREE resource that will help start the conversation about feelings and emotions.
You can use this activity to jumpstart your own connections with your students and give them the skills they need to improve their own interpersonal relationships.
Have you tried the traditional classroom management techniques without success? You're not alone! They lack the heart-centered approach. I have a free Heart-Centered Student Listening Reboot that will walk you through how to lead your class with confidence, joy, and heart every day!
