CHAPTER 8 TEACHING AND LEADERSHIP
5.6 RELATING
5.6.2. Reaching out – building relationships
157 Senge (1996, p. 1) has argued that “Being a leader has to do with the relationship between the leader and the led.” The importance of good relationships within the classroom was widely and readily recognised by the respondents of this study:
Relating to the pupils is absolutely a leadership role. (Topaz 1) It is all about relationships, relationships at every level from top to bottom. (Ruby 2)
What is the right word, a ‘relator’, someone who can relate? (Garnet 4)
Someone who gets on with people. (Garnet 1)
Building relationships and trust … that is a biggie. (Topaz 5)
Opal 3 thinks that the majority of teachers set out to create good classroom relationships; she connects this to the teacher’s leadership role:
I think teachers do go out of their way to create good relationships and trust – that is one aspect that teachers do. I think it is only rarely that teachers don’t try to build a relationship with their children – and trust. And I think it goes back to that whether you are a standout leader, a community leader or a school leader, as an educator you are always a classroom leader. That is one aspect, that of building relationships, that teachers do particularly well. (Opal 3)
A young teacher, previously the head prefect at the school at which she now teaches, said the following about her own experiences in leading:
It all starts with relationships; relationship – that would be the first thing I would see to… The most important thing in leading, in my opinion at least, is relationships. There has to be relationships at every level. If you get people on your side, then people are working with you – then that is it, it is all you really need. (Garnet 4)
158 Two other respondents in the focus group pursued this same idea with the view that good relationships can contribute to positive control:
Interestingly, those who battle with discipline are not the leaders in the classroom, because they are teaching their subject and not leading ninety percent of the time. Ninety percent of the time when you have a major discipline problem it is where the kids don’t relate to the person in the classroom – other people can walk in and there is no problem and the learners follow. They accept the leader, they accept the challenges, they accept what the person is doing – [for]
others one plus one is more important than who I am. (Garnet 3)
If there is not a relationship in the class, it shows. (Garnet 1)
Ruby 3 endorsed this view, having the following to say about the outcome when there is a lack of leadership and good relationships:
The teachers who have no leadership [are the ones who] have no relationship with the children… There are some teachers here, who make comments, and they don’t have that relationship – the children don’t tolerate them. (Ruby 3)
This same teacher linked relationships with knowing the children:
It’s your whole relationship with the class that is so incredibly important. It’s the whole thing of getting to know your class. (Ruby 3)
Yet other respondents saw relationships in terms of connecting with the children:
I think that is what happens with many of our good teachers – there is a connectedness between teacher and child … there is that connectedness in teaching – it is a relationship thing not an overt thing; it is not done deliberately. It’s a natural sort of thing.
(Diamond 2)
159 [Leadership involves] being able to really connect with whom you lead. (Emerald 2)
A respondent commented on Lou Johnson (the teacher in Dangerous Minds):
She built personal relationships with the pupils. (Ruby 7)
The responses from two teachers reflect their own sensitivities with regard to the importance of good relationships within the classroom:
It is also the way he spoke with them, the way he bantered with them, using humour, talking about people. I mean the second lesson he arrived there with his apples and his little chef’s hat and his cleaver. They all sat there, and after the shot with the cleaver …
“Okay, is he going to murder us?” … He was probably establishing himself in the class. (Amethyst 4)
[He was] establishing a rapport. (Amethyst 3)
The same focus group respondents discussed Escalante’s leadership further, illustrating as they did that their own understanding of ‘relating’ goes further than just having a teacher-and-pupil relationship; they believe that the teacher-leader ought to be ‘allied’
with his/her pupi ls by engaging with them on their level (i.e. understanding where the pupils are at, what is important to them, and what they enjoy and like):
He was often in their space. He didn’t just stand in front of the room;
he called on them for responses. (Amethyst 1)
He did that right from the word go, when he walked in. He got into their space straight away… He was in their space and he interacted with them, right from the word go, right to the end. (Amethyst 2) And I also liked the examples that he used from their experiences to teach maths. They could relate, think and engage at a better level.
(Amethyst 1)
160 Whilst the nature and quality of relationships could differ in as many ways as there are teachers, the teachers involved in this study noted the importance of sound relationships to good teaching and positive leadership.