Teacher-Student Relationship

Teacher-student relationships are crucial for the success of both teachers and students. As part of classroom management, such relationships are the most significant factor in determining a teacher's work as successful.

It is vital that students respect the teacher as a professional. At the beginning of their career, teachers often face difficulties in establishing a strong and healthy relationship, as they are very close to the students' age and lack experience. Sometimes inexperienced teachers establish too close relationship with students, which can later generate various problems in classroom discipline and education. Such relationships can make both students and the other teachers lose their respect.

Effective teaching does not require that all students like the teacher; however it is crucial that they all respect him or her. Teachers also do not need to like all of their students; they just need to be professionals and leaders. Students do not need to be friends with teachers, they need to respect teachers and learn.

Students tend to lose their respect for teachers in a mixed relationship where the roles are not clearly defined. Students are too young and inexperienced to know how far a friendship with a teacher can go.

A strong and positive relationship with students is also very important for classroom success. Teachers can learn and use various techniques and approaches to strengthen and improve the quality of the relationship with his or her students. Such techniques can help boost the students' commitment and participation.

Strategies for the establishment of a quality teacher-student relationship include:

- Teacher-student relationship should be based on the general principles teachers follow at work, such as fairness and honesty. If teachers do not stick to these principles, students will hardly respect them.

- Teachers should play a proactive role in the construction of the relationship with students. Although students also take part in the interaction, it is the teacher's role to lead. Teachers should boast a degree of confidence required to build and keep a strong classroom relationship.

- Teachers should know the students and understand their needs. Teachers should get to know each student and his or her individual skills and necessities; get familiar with their interests and intellectual potential. Understanding the cultural background and personality of each student is a key step to building a successful teacher-student relationship.

- Classroom interaction should be based on respect and self-esteem. Students should learn to both give and receive respect.

- Teachers should use effective discipline models.

- Classroom work should be interesting and fun. Students should have certain control over their work in order to feel commitment and engagement with learning.

- Teachers can strengthen their relationship with students if they actually enjoy the time spent in the classroom. Creating a pleasant environment is not in conflict with keeping a professional distance.

- A "win-win" situation in classroom can be achieved through a synergy between teacher and students using the balance of power. Power is held by both parties in the relationship. When teachers try to take over the entire control in the classroom, students try to react and even argue their authority. On the other hand, if students share the power with the teacher, the interaction is much more constructive as they feel commitment.

- Both verbal and nonverbal communication should be very clear. Teachers should make sure they understand students and that students understand them. A good communication is essential for any relationship.

- Teachers should find a way to motivate students. A relationship will hardly work if one of the parties is not willing to participate. The same works for teaching and learning.

Discipline also plays a key role in teacher-student relationship. However, discipline should merely serve as a means of maintaining a healthy classroom environment in order to support learning. Discipline should not be a goal for its own sake. Skilled teachers keep the classroom discipline by making the students invest their interest in nothing but the subject.

Following is a list of possible techniques to keep a sound discipline:

- Teachers should treat students equally and set the same rules and requirements for all, regardless of their grades and results.

- All discipline problems should be tackled as they arise rather than left to become more complicate.

- Threats and angry outbursts will not help maintain discipline, especially when threats are not supported by action.

- Punishments should be proportional to misbehaviors and should comply with school policy and rules.

- Classroom rules should be reasonable and clear to students.

Trusted online research,July, 2016

UNIT X

Gary D. Schmidt

The Wednesday Wars

September

(Continued)

At lunchtime, I was afraid to go out for recess, since I figured that Mrs. Baker had probably recruited an eighth grader to do something awful to me. There was Doug Swieteck's brother, for one, who was already shaving and had been to three police stations in two states and who once spent a night in jail. No one knew what for, but I thought it might be for something in the Number 390 or maybe even Number 410 itself! Doug Swieteck said that if his father hadn't bribed the judge, his brother would have been on Death Row.

We all believed him.

"Why don't you go out for lunch recess?" said Mrs. Baker to me. "Everyone else is gone."

I held up English for You and Me. "I thought I'd read in here," I said.

"Go out for recess," she said, criminal intent gleaming in her eyes.

"I'm comfortable here."

"Mr. Hoodhood," she said. She stood up and crossed her arms, and I realized I was alone in the room with no witnesses and no mast to climb to get away.

I went out for recess.

I kept a perimeter of about ten feet or so around me, and stayed in Mrs. Sidman's line of sight. I almost asked for her rain hat. You never know what might come in handy when something awful is about to happen to you.

Then, as if the Dread Day of Doom and Disaster had come to Camillo Junior High, I heard, "Hey, Hoodhood!"

It was Doug Swieteck's brother. He entered my perimeter.I took three steps closer to Mrs. Sidman. She moved away and held her rain hat firmly.

"Hoodhood you play soccer? We need another guy." Doug Swieteck's brother was moving toward me. The hair on his chest leaped over the neck of his T-shirt.

"Go ahead," called the helpful Mrs. Sidman from a distance. "If you don't play, someone will have to sit out."

If I don't play, I'll live another day, I thought.

"Hoodhood," said Doug Swieteck's brother, "you coming or not?" What could I do? It was like walking into my own destiny. "You're on that side." He pointed.

I already knew that. "You're a back," he said. I knew that, too. Destiny has a way of letting you know these things. "I'm a forward." I could have said it for him. "That means you have to try to stop me." I nodded. "Think you can?"

I suppose I could stop you, I thought. I suppose I could stop you with a Bradley tank, armor two inches thick, three mounted machine guns, and a grenade launcher. Then I suppose I could stop you.

"I can try," I said.

"You can try." Doug Swieteck's brother laughed, and I bet that if I had looked over my shoulder, I would have seen Mrs. Baker peering out her third-floor classroom window, and she would have been laughing, too.

But the thing about soccer is that you can run around a whole lot and never, ever touch the ball. And if you do have to touch the ball, you can kick it away before anyone comes near you. That's what I figured on doing. Doug Swieteck's brother wouldn't even come near me, and I would foil Mrs. Baker's nefarious plan.

But Doug Swieteck's brother had clearly received instructions. The first time he got the ball, he looked around and then came right at me. He wasn't like a normal forward, who everyone knows is supposed to avoid the defense. He just came right at me, and there was a growl that rose out of him like he was some great clod of living earth that hadn't evolved out of the Mesozoic Era, howling and roaring and slobbering and coming to crush me.

I expect that the watching Mrs. Baker was almost giddy at the thought.

"Get in front of him!" screamed Danny Hupfer, who was our goalie. "In front of him!" His voice was cracking, probably because he was imagining the propulsion of a soccer ball as it left Doug Swieteck's brother's foot and hurtled toward the goal, and wondering what it might do to his chest.

I didn't move.

Danny screamed again. I think he screamed "In front!" But I'm not sure. I don't think he was using language at all. Imagine a sound with a whole lot of high vowels, and I think you'd have it.

But it didn't make any difference what he screamed, because of course I wasn't going to get in front. There was no way in the world I was going to get in front. If Doug Swieteck's brother scored, he scored. It was just a game, after all.

I stepped toward the sideline, away from the goal. And Doug Swieteck's brother veered toward me. I ran back a bit and stepped even closer to the sideline. And he veered toward me again.

So as Danny Hupfer screamed vowels and Doug Swieteck's brother growled mesozoically, I felt my life come down to this one hard point, like it had been a funnel channeling everything I had ever done to this one moment, when it would all end.

So I glanced up at Mrs. Baker's window she wasn't there, probably so she wouldn't be accused of being an accomplice and then I ran toward the goal, turned, and stood. I waited for Doug Swieteck's brother to come.

I stood my ground, and I stood my ground, and I stood my ground, until the howling and the roaring and the slobbering were about on top of me.

Then I closed my eyes nothing says you have to look at your destiny and stepped out of the way.

Almost. I left my right foot behind. And Doug Swieteck's hairy brother tripped over it.

Everything suddenly increased in volume the howling and the roaring and the slobbering, the whistling of Doug Swieteck's brother's airborne body hurtling toward the goal, the screams of Danny Hupfer, my own hollering as I clutched my crushed foot. Then there came an iron thunk against the goal post, which bent at a sudden angle around Doug Swieteck's brother's head.

And everything was quiet. I opened my eyes again.

Doug Swieteck's brother was standing and sort of wobbling. Mrs. Sidman was running over though, properly speaking, what she did wasn't really running. It was more a panicky shuffle. She probably saw "Negligent Playground Monitor" headlines in her future. When she got to him, Doug Swieteck's brother was still wobbling, and he looked at her with his eyes kind of crossed.        

"Are you all right?" Mrs. Sidman asked, and held on to his arm.

He nodded once, then threw up on her.

He had eaten a liverwurst-and-egg sandwich for lunch. No one ever wants to see a liverwurst-and-egg sandwich twice.

And Mrs. Sidman's rain hat did not help at all.

That was the end of the soccer game.

"I didn't mean to take him out."

"Sure. Did you see him fly? Like a missile."

"I didn't mean to take him out," I hollered.

"I never saw anyone get taken out like that before."

Doug Swieteck ran over. "You took out my brother?"

"I didn't mean to take out your brother."

"Everyone says you took out my brother. I've been wanting to do that since I was out of the womb."

"It was like a missile," said Danny.

I limped back into school, trying not to look at an unhappy Mrs. Sidman, who was holding the wobbling Doug Swieteck's brother at the same time that she was using her rain hat to do not very much. Liverwurst is like that.

Meryl Lee was waiting for me at the door. "You took out Doug Swieteck's brother?" she asked.

"I didn't mean to take him out."

"Then how did he end up flying through the air?"

"I tripped him."

"You tripped him?"

"Yes, I tripped him."

"On purpose?"

"Sort of."

"Isn't that cheating?"

"He's three times bigger than I am."

"So that means you can cheat and make him look like an idiot."

"I didn't try to make him look like an idiot."

"Oh. And you didn't try to make me look like an idiot, opening your desk for some dumb surprise that wasn't even there."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Everything," said Meryl Lee, and stomped away.

 There are times when she makes me feel as stupid as asphalt. "Everything." What's that supposed to mean?

Mrs. Baker's face was pinched when we came back into the class the disappointment of a failed assassination plot. Her face stayed pinched most of the afternoon, and got even pinchier when the P.A. announced that Doug Swieteck's brother was fine, that he would be back in school after ten days of observation, and that there was a need for a playground monitor for the rest of the week.

Mrs. Baker looked at me. She hated my guts.

We spent the afternoon with English for You and Me, learning how to diagram sentences as if there was some reason why anyone in the Western Hemisphere needed to know how to do this. One by one, Mrs. Baker called us to the blackboard to try our hand at it.

The P.A. crackled and screeched like a parrot. It called my name.

It said I was to come to the principal's office.

Escape! I put the chalk down and turned to Mrs. Baker with a song of victory on my lips. But I saw that there was a song of victory on her lips already. "Immediately," said the P.A.

I suddenly knew: It was the police. Mrs. Baker had reported me. It had to be the police. They had come to drag me to the station for taking out Doug Swieteck's brother. And I knew that my father would never bribe the judge. He'd just look at me and say, "What did you do?" as I headed off to Death Row.

"Immediately," Mrs. Baker said.

It was a long walk down to the principal's office. It is always a long walk down to the principal's office. And in those first days of school, your sneakers squeak on the waxed floors like you're torturing them, and everyone looks up as you walk by their classroom, and they all know you're going to see Mr. Guareschi in the principal's office, and they're all glad it's you and not them.

Which it was. I had to wait outside his door. That was to make me nervous.

Mr. Guareschi's long ambition had been to become dictator of a small country. Danny Hupfer said that he had been waiting for the CIA to get rid of Fidel Castro and then send him down to Cuba, which Mr. Guareschi would then rename Guareschiland. Meryl Lee said that he was probably holding out for something in Eastern Europe. Maybe he was. But while he waited for his promotion, he kept the job of principal at Camillo Junior High and tested out his dictator-of-a-small-country techniques on us.

He stayed sitting behind his desk in a chair a lot higher than mine when I was finally called in.

"Holling Hood," he said. His voice was high-pitched and a little bit shrill, like he had spent a lot of time standing on balconies screaming speeches through bad P.A. systems at the multitudes down below who feared him.

"Hoodhood," I said.

"It says 'Holling Hood' on this form I'm holding."

"It says 'Holling Hoodhood' on my birth certificate."

Mr. Guareschi smiled his principal smile. "Let's not get off on the wrong foot here, Holling. Forms are how we organize this school, and forms are never wrong, are they?"

That's one of those dictator-of-a-small-country techniques at work, in case you missed it.

"Holling Hood," I said.

"Thank you," said Mr. Guareschi.

He looked down at his form again.

"But Holling," said Mr. Guareschi, "we do have a problem here. This form says that you passed sixth-grade mathematics though with a decidedly below-average grade."

"Yes," I said. Of course I passed sixth-grade mathematics. Even   Swieteck had passed sixth-grade mathematics, and he had grades that were really decidedly below average. Mr. Guareschi picked up a piece of paper from his desk.

"But I have received a memo from Mrs. Baker wondering whether you would profit by retaking that course."

"Retake sixth-grade math?"

"Perhaps she is not convinced that your skills are sufficiently developed to begin seventh-grade mathematics."

"But?"

"Do not interrupt, Holling Hood. Mrs. Baker suggests that on Wednesday afternoons, starting at one forty-five, you might sit in on Mrs. Harknett's class for their math lesson."

But Mr. Guareschi returned to his form and read it over again. He shook his head. "According to this record," he said, still reading, "you did pass sixth-grade mathematics."

I nodded. I held my breath. Maybe I could dare to believe that even a dictator of a small country might have a moment of unintended kindness.

"Mrs. Baker does have a legitimate concern, it would seem, but a passing grade is a passing grade."

I didn't say anything. I didn't want to jinx it.

"You'd better stay where you are for now," he said.

I nodded again.

"But" Mr. Guareschi leaned toward me “I'll double-check your permanent record, Holling Hood. Be prepared for a change, should one be necessary."

In case you missed it again, that's another one of the dictator-of-a-small-country techniques: Keep you always off balance.

Mr. Guareschi scribbled over Mrs. Baker's memo. He folded it, then took out an envelope from his desk. Looking at me the whole time, he placed the memo in the envelope, licked the flap, and sealed it. He wrote Mrs. Baker on the outside. Then he handed it to me.

"Return this to her," he said. "The envelope had better be sealed when she receives it. I will make a point of inquiring about it."

So I took the envelope sealed and carried it back to Mrs. Baker sealed. She unsealed it as I sat back down in my seat. She read what Mr. Guareschi had written and slowly placed the letter in the top drawer of her desk. Then she looked up at me.

"Regrettable." She said all four syllables very slowly.

I watched her carefully for the rest of the day, but nothing ever gave away her murderous intentions. She kept her face as still as Mount Rushmore, even when Doug Swieteck's new pen broke and spread bright blue ink all over his desk, or when the Rand McNally Map of the World fell off its hangers as she pulled it down, or when Mr. Guareschi reported during Afternoon Announcements that Lieutenant Tybalt Baker would soon be deployed to Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division and we should all wish him, together with Mrs. Baker, well. Her face never changed once.

That's how it is with people who are plotting something awful.

Notes.

1.M2 Bradley – an American infantry fighting vehicle.

2.Mount Rushmore National Memorial – a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore (Black Hills in Keystone USA). It features 18 m sculptures of the heads of 4 US presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln.

3.Rand McNally – an American publishing company of maps, atlases, textbooks, globes.

4.Death Row – condemned cell.

5.Day of Doom – the last day.

6.Liverwurst - liver sausage.

7.CIA –Central Intelligence Agency – a civilian foreign intelligence service of the US Government, tasked with gathering and analyzing security information.

8.Fidel Castro (1926-2016) – a Cuban politician and Revolutionary who governed the Republic of Cuba as the Prime Minister, then the President.

9.Mesozoic Era – an interval of geological time from about 252 to 66 million years ago. It’s also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers.

10. Vietnam War (1957 – 1975). Direct US military involvement in the War began in 1965, and ended in 1973. 58220 US service members died in the conflict, about 303 thousand were captured.

Ø Translation Tips

A). Translate the emphatic constructions.

1. He did live in our own little provincial town – and now I come to think of it, I never knew where he did live – but at irregular intervals he used to descend upon us, perhaps during his travels. 2. It is possible Fitzgerald did say something like this: he was always inclined to play the role he thought his listener expected of him. 3. “What are you thinking?” I asked her. “I don’t quite like the look of you.” “I’m sorry; I

C).Translate into Russian paying attention to the

polysemy of the word GUESS.

1. You have three guesses! 2. We may only guess when it all began. 3. Guess where the money is. 4.Your guess is as good as mine. 5. I'd guess she is thirty-something. 6. I don't know. 7. I'm only hazarding a guess. I guess that he'll be late. 8. You can guess what happened next. 9. What star sign are you? 10. No, let me guess. 11. We can only guess at the cause of the crash. I guess you are right. 12. The weather is going to change I guess. I guess you are not leaving to-night.

JMEDIA LOG