I was sitting in the middle front of the classroom, but I could smell the scent of Sampaguita flowers that was coming from her white tunic and black veil.

She is Sister Gina, our Grade 2 Religion teacher.

“Why are we here on earth?”, she asked.

I was 8 years old, when I started thinking about my existence on earth.

I wanted to please her by trying to answer the questions she asked in our class. I even remember holding her hand while going inside their convent.

If my memory serves me right, the place was kind of cramped, but it felt like I belong there.

I vividly remember the feeling of wanting to live there, because I wanted to be like Sister Gina. Oh, how I loved listening to her voice.

I asked her too many questions, but she didn’t get irritated even once.

Now that I look back at my experience, I realized how it unleashed my voracious appetite for learning.

Who was your Sister Gina?

Who were the teachers that made a positive impact in your life as a student? How did they engage you?

As I reflect on the kind of teacher I aim to be, I realized that all my favorite teachers have one thing in common — they connected with me.

I felt like I was valued, and seen as a human being.

I was not treated as an “it”.

Because I felt cared for, I paid attention to every word they said and every action they did.

This paved the way for me to research on the importance of relationships on learning.

Several studies reveal that, “Academic achievement and student behavior are greatly influenced by the quality of teacher-and-student relationship.”

I took notes on how to establish positive relationships with my students (I shared the details on my previous blog posts), and applied them since I started teaching in a formal school.

For me, the most effective strategy is spending time with each kid during lunch time. It helped me know their learning style, interests, personality, and background and use the information to reach them.

There were some kids, though, who would try crossing the boundaries. They would test if it’d be okay not to follow some rules anymore, since they saw me as a playmate already.

Well, if this happens, make sure you stay consistent with the rules and the consequences of breaking them to help them understand the effects of their choices.

So far, I also noticed that the more time I spent with my students, the more they got engaged in our lessons.

It’s probably because, as social beings, having someone who values and cares for them makes them happy. And as we know, feeling good releases dopamine, the happy hormones in our body, which boosts the learning centers in our brain.

Moreover, student engagement is critical for retention of information.

John Medina, a biologist and bestselling author of Brain Rules, stated that, “The more attention the brain pays to a given stimulus, the more elaborately the information will be encoded and retained.”

Kids get engaged when the teacher in front of them is a person who likes and respects them as human beings.

Thus, connecting with students and establishing a positive relationship with them is vital to effective learning. I totally agree that relationships are the foundation of learning.

Another study stated,

“Teachers must never overlook the importance of cultivating student-teacher relationships in their classrooms. It is in the relationship between teacher and student where learning takes root and begins to grow; and the degree to which a teacher invests in those interactions not only affects learning outcomes and student behavior in the classroom, but also potentially impacts each student’s future achievements and success.”

More and more research shows how positive relationships can close the gap on learning and its outcomes.

Thus, fellow teachers, let’s keep making efforts to snatch time for short conversations with each kid in our class. It’s totally worth it.

Make sure not to overuse or misuse humor, though.

There are teachers who are good at using humor to connect with kids. However, sometimes it becomes sarcasm, cruel or inappropriate humor. This can damage relationships as well as learning.

As educators, we have to keep in mind that our most important role goes beyond creating lesson plans and finishing a curriculum. It’s about reaching each student, shaping their hearts and minds to achieve a masterpiece of potential. And this can only happen when we develop a positive and connected relationship with one kid at a time.