A tremendous amount of discussion around quality teaching centers on pedagogy, or standards, or technology, etc. Certainly, all of these pieces are valuable in their own right, and certainly play a role in the quality of instruction in a classroom. What was not immediately clear to me when I started teaching, and what is certainly not clear to many education policy folks, is the importance of a solid relationship between teacher and student.
If you are a veteran teacher, this is certainly not news to you. You've probably had your most successful experiences with students with whom you were able to connect the most. You've also surely witnessed teachers that seemingly had all of the skills mentioned above, but whose classrooms still dissolved into chaos due to poor behavior on the part of the students. This happens even in classrooms where the teacher appears to have the requisite behavior management skills you would expect, and manages the behavior in a thoughtful, consistent way.
If you are in Elementary education, you see this phenomenon take place all the time when your students go off to their "specials", and students that act like angels in your room turn into terrors with the other teachers. It's a frustrating reality for everyone involved, and can lead to divides among staff members and behavior consequences for certain students. The reason this happens in these specials, and the reason it happens in certain homeroom classrooms, is the absence of a relationship between the teacher and the students.
This is not to assign blame to the teachers in question. At least not entirely. What has also become clear in my years in the field is that certain people have an innate ability to cultivate and maintain these relationships year after year, and certain people do not. A teacher that has this ability can take even the most difficult kids in a school, kids that have caused chaos in every room in which they've ever been, and turn them into reasonably focused, respectful students. To the untrained eye, this transformation looks like magic. But it's not magic, and it's a mistake to assume it's just luck of the draw.
As we recruit teachers into the classrooms, and as we evaluate the educators already here, we are too often overlooking this piece, and it is to everyone's detriment. Yes, let's look at the other core areas of teaching, but let's not turn a blind eye to this other, hugely important skill. Find the teachers that can connect on a meaningful level with kids, and the rest of that stuff can be taught as needed.
Cross posted at donatidaily.com