Building Rapport

If there is anything I have learned from my cooperating teacher over the past four weeks, it is that building rapport with students is unmistakeably important. It is imperative that we make connections with students so that they trust us with their work. One thing that worked for my cooperating teacher was telling students about her life. Obviously, she didn't give them very personal information but she talked about her kids and her husband and the things they do as a family. For example, everyday we did a warm-up activity using vocabulary. Either her or I would stand up and give them an example sentence with the vocabulary word absent from the sentence. Most of the sentences we gave them would be about things we did over the weekend or things in our life. For instance, I may say something like "At Thanksgiving dinner, my twin cousins made "blank" remarks at the dinner table, which landed them in a time out." The hands would shoot in the air so that they could say that the vocabulary word was flippant. My cooperating teacher would tell funny stories about her kids using the vocabulary words and it created a really open and comfortable environment in the classroom.

The best would be that after we offered some sentences, we would ask students if they had any sentences they wanted to share. Most students would tell about their own life and I learned so much about students during this exercise. The other thing my cooperating teacher allowed, which I loved, was she gave students the opportunity to talk about life in her classroom. We read a short story called "Zebra" which was about a Vietnam War Veteran. Before we read the story we took a long time to talk about our own family members and friends who are war vets. Students were so willing to share things about their family and life. I loved that students felt like they could share the things that were important to them. The classroom was truly a community- everyone shared and volunteered. The teacher was not the only person doing work in that classroom everyday. I think that the classroom environment worked so well because of the time she spent learning and knowing her students. I saw firsthand just how important these connections are.