Student-Teacher Relationships and How They Impact Student Success

First Presenter's Institution

Learn4Life

First Presenter's Brief Biography

Shellie Hanes is the Area Superintendent within the Learn4Life network of charter schools. She served in the traditional school setting for 15 years before making the leap into the charter school system where she has served for almost a decade. She leads 11 successful school sites and 2 online programs. Ms. Hanes is currently a doctoral student focused on school improvement.

Document Type

Event

Primary Strand

Restorative Practices

Relevance to Primary Strand

Building relationships is the key to restorative practices. It's what our school believes in and set out to prove. We studied the practices, performance management and onboarding of our program to identify areas of strength and areas for improvement. Staff-student relationships are crucial to building trust and creating effective practices with students. We recognize that students sometimes need to unlearn before they can learn and we can provide practical solutions.

"When you have a good relationship with a teacher, you want to do good for yourself and make them proud of you."-Student Response

Alignment with School Improvement Plan Topics

Climate and Culture

Brief Program Description

Are you ready to think critically about your student-staff relationships and how they impact student success? Looking for methods to build positive relationships and identify the gaps in unsuccessful ones? Let our qualitative study fast track your success!

Summary

This session will provide an overview of the research done at our school, including:

Methodology: This portion of the presentation will include how we selected staff and students for interviews, interview questions, and how interviews were coded to identify findings and trends.

Findings and Key Trends: Findings include that "success" was widely defined between students and staff. Staff are especially gifted at identifying which students are under-resources and provide resources for the short-term. However, there is little support in place for systemic issues primarily including poverty. We found that many teachers were actually lowering the bar for students because they were struggling or "felt sorry" for them. Successful teachers provided resources while also holding students to high expectations. Trends include that teachers were able to set short term goals for students, but didn't connect them to long-term goals. Successful teachers were able to bridge the goals (credits-graduation, good school attendance-good job attendance, etc). An additional trend was that the professional development provided to staff was not in alignment with staff evaluations. I will provide a sample alignment of goals to pd strands.

Recommendations: Inclusive process for defining vision, identify "look-fors" in hiring practices, include identified successful practices in staff evaluation, develop a PD plan that aligns and supports vision, goals and expected practices.

Best Practices: Small caseloads/class sizes, individual instruction, flexible communication and scheduling, ample support staff (tutors, para, counselors, etc), communicate with students frequently and persistently to track progress and review goals, peer teacher mentors to model successful practices. Take aways: Best practices fact sheet by school and department, interview questions, next steps for consistent messaging, discussion questions for continued school development for upper management, human resources, professional development team, superintendents, school leadership, and teachers.

Evidence

This presentation will be based on field evidence based on, "A Qualitative Study Documenting the Student-Teacher Relationship and Its Impact on Student Success" published in January 2021. This study took place over 2019-2021 school years and practices have been put in place since its release. Examples of practices and school alignment will be shared with participants as well as works cited.

Learning Objective 1

Participants will be able to identify and implement successful strategies to engage students in meaningful student-staff relationships.

Learning Objective 2

Participants will be able to improve hiring practices, performance management, training and professional development.

Learning Objective 3

Participants will be able to share best practices with colleagues and engage in dialogue with prompts provided

Learning Objective 4

Participants will be able to observe and share a schools alignment and professional development plan in response to student and staff feedback.

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Student-Teacher Relationships and How They Impact Student Success

This session will provide an overview of the research done at our school, including:

Methodology: This portion of the presentation will include how we selected staff and students for interviews, interview questions, and how interviews were coded to identify findings and trends.

Findings and Key Trends: Findings include that "success" was widely defined between students and staff. Staff are especially gifted at identifying which students are under-resources and provide resources for the short-term. However, there is little support in place for systemic issues primarily including poverty. We found that many teachers were actually lowering the bar for students because they were struggling or "felt sorry" for them. Successful teachers provided resources while also holding students to high expectations. Trends include that teachers were able to set short term goals for students, but didn't connect them to long-term goals. Successful teachers were able to bridge the goals (credits-graduation, good school attendance-good job attendance, etc). An additional trend was that the professional development provided to staff was not in alignment with staff evaluations. I will provide a sample alignment of goals to pd strands.

Recommendations: Inclusive process for defining vision, identify "look-fors" in hiring practices, include identified successful practices in staff evaluation, develop a PD plan that aligns and supports vision, goals and expected practices.

Best Practices: Small caseloads/class sizes, individual instruction, flexible communication and scheduling, ample support staff (tutors, para, counselors, etc), communicate with students frequently and persistently to track progress and review goals, peer teacher mentors to model successful practices. Take aways: Best practices fact sheet by school and department, interview questions, next steps for consistent messaging, discussion questions for continued school development for upper management, human resources, professional development team, superintendents, school leadership, and teachers.