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DOING THE INVISIBLE WORK
DOING THE INVISIBLE WORK
Satisfactory personal relationships are a prerequisite for learning. —DANIEL CHAMBLISS
Take a moment and picture yourself teaching. What comes to mind? Is it a favorite instructional activity, a student’s inspiring speech, or a moment when a student shared something insightful about their learning? Whatever it is, let those images and thoughts linger for a moment.
Now, I want you to visualize your teaching again; but this time, visualize the invisible teaching you do—the actions that no one can directly see, yet are as valuable to student learning as any observable practice. These invisible teaching practices might include your sincere curiosity about students’ lives, the sense of support you feel when you see a student struggling, an empathetic mindset you use to plan a lesson, or a facial expression you give to a student to show that they matter.
While those images surface, I will say this—much of our value as educators comes from invisible actions, the actions that no one can necessarily see but students can feel. These actions can sometimes be the difference between whether a student sees school as a rewarding place that respects their individuality or a place that dismisses their identity—denying the full expression of their culture, values, and personality.
In her book The Poet X, author Elizabeth Acevedo (2018) writes about her school experience as a young girl. She reflects on the beginning of a school year when she meets her new teacher for the first time and says, “I have a feeling Ms. Galiano actually wants to know my answer” (p. 38). I believe this statement represents a feeling for many students—they want to be heard and respected for who they are, not for who their school wants them to be (Turner, 2012).
There seems to be a mindset in education that there is simply not enough time to get to know students. Perhaps this mindset is the result of a collective consciousness of the educational system that creates a type of pedagogical inertia, reminding teachers year after year that content and testing matter more than students. For example, teachers must get through the required curriculum so students can do well on the district or state (or province) exams.
It is time to undo this mindset and create schooling that prioritizes humanity, a system in which educators nurture student well-being more than the unit plan and develop compassion alongside the curriculum. We need to augment the relational aspects of our policies and practices in schools—practices that help students learn how to accept themselves, maintain relationships, and selfsustain in the larger world.
Schools Can Do Better for Society
Since 2012, I have had the opportunity to work in school districts across the United States on pedagogy reform. On each trip, I meet talented and passionate educators who care about their students and move mountains to help them to succeed. This fills my heart. However, at the same time, I hear frustrations from these same teachers like the following.
• “I can’t do [that student-focused practice] because my district has us giving assessments every two weeks, and I need to get students ready for them. Those scores go into my evaluation.” • “[This practice] would be meaningful, but it takes too much time, and I have to get through all these state standards.” • “The state says we have to teach all these standards, but there are too many to possibly get through in a year. So my school leadership has us pick the essential ones, but how do I know which are essential?” • “Students are kids, and kids don’t have the expertise that I do, so even though I want to get to know them better as people, they first
must learn the content. If we have time, then I’ll ask them what they think about [the learning]. Otherwise, the tests will have to tell me everything I need to know.”
When I hear these kinds of comments, I feel frustrated because it signals that students “never genuinely engage in the development of self” (Bandura, 1977, p. 146).
Herein lies the problem. Students may find themselves in a school that knowingly, or unknowingly, communicates that achievement and knowledge are more important than them; almost as though they’re saying to their students, “We’ll care about you after we finish getting ready for the SAT.” Students can feel this, which can cause them to be confused about their teachers’ intentions and their school’s sincerity (Coyle, 2018). They can feel devalued and isolated, with perhaps a distorted sense of self-worth (Emdin, 2016). So, how can schools, and society, do better?
A Relational Approach to Teaching and Learning
At its core, education is a human experience—an experience with infinite combinations of emotions, thoughts, abilities, and knowledge. However, the education system does not seem to be built around the idea of human experience. It seems to be built around the idea of human utility—developing students’ capacities to contribute to the gross domestic product (Deresiewicz, 2015). If educators are not aware, they might continue to build lessons in which utility is the goal and a more passive style of learning is the norm.
One way is for schools to consider a more relational approach to teaching and learning. We are conscious beings with an inherent drive not only for information and meaning, but also for connection (Cole, 2018). Vivek H. Murthy (2020), the twenty-first surgeon general of the United States, states, “It is in our relationships that we find emotional substance and power we need in order to thrive” (p. 51). Yet I continue to visit schools across the United States that sacrifice authentic and sincere relationships with their students for the rote development of skills and short-term application of knowledge.
To emphasize my point, the late Paulo Freire (2000), renowned educator and philosopher, states in his book Pedagogy of Freedom, “To transform the experience of educating into a matter of technique impoverishes a fundamentally human experience, namely, [its] capacity to form a human person” (p. 39). Such a reductive transformation might look like this: “Here is how you solve this mathematics problem. [Shows steps]. Now you try it.”
To minimize the negative effects of such a reduction, teachers can incorporate relational practices that value each student’s identity. Relational teaching methods not only focus on the how of learning, but also the who. For example, a relational teacher might say, “These problems can be tricky, and it’s OK to be stuck here. Can you tell me what you think the next step is?” This keeps their focus on the learner, not just the learning.
We must protect students’ right to be human before protecting a curriculum, assessment, or grading policy. To help you achieve this goal, I present the following seven actions you can take to implement more relational policies and practices.
1. Make teaching more than a mechanical-transactional experience. 2. Shift the responsibility for learning to students. 3. Respect students’ life experiences. 4. Have better metrics for learning. 5. Pay attention to unspoken school-culture messages. 6. Make student agency and efficacy a goal of education. 7. Teach with students.
The scope of each action is broader and more nuanced than I have time to cover in this chapter. However, in the following sections, I attempt to briefly introduce the more salient aspects of each action.
I invite you to ask yourself, “Do I want to deliver lessons in which the primary goal is to know content and develop rote technical skills?” or “Do I want to provide lessons that help students gain the confidence and habits they need to sustain themselves throughout their lives?”
As you wrestle with these questions, it is important to remember that teaching is not just about teachers making a difference in students’ lives; rather, it is primarily about teachers helping students learn how to make a difference in their own lives. In other words, teachers can be more influential in students’ lives by helping them become independent thinkers and learners. Therefore, I challenge all teachers to see themselves not as, for example, a mathematics teacher, art teacher, or English teacher, but as a teacher who uses mathematics, art, or
English content and context to create confident, self-defining, self-governing human beings.
To help you think about how you might achieve such a paradigm shift, I propose the following three general instructional tenets. Help students learn how to:
1. Create their competency 2. Verify the validity of their competency 3. Believe in their ability to maintain their competency
I will discuss these tenets, along with a relational lesson structure, in more detail later in the book, specifically chapter 5 (page 99).
Shift the Responsibility for Learning to Students
Making a change toward a relational teaching approach means shifting the responsibility of learning to the student (Bandura, 1997; Schimmer, Hillman, & Stalets, 2018). Learning is the student’s responsibility, while teachers are responsible for the conditions of learning. Think of a gardener. A gardener prunes, waters, and tends to the plant, providing all the conditions for growth. If the conditions are right, the plant is primed to grow and thrive. Similar are teachers, who nurture and provide the conditions for student growth.
Research about student responsibility in learning is vast, with some research citing that lack of responsibility can impede student growth and arrest socialemotional development (Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel, 2014; Lang, 2021). Other studies show that a lack of agency in children’s development could have compounding effects contributing to many social issues, such as poverty (Bandura, 1997; Zimmerman, Schunk, & DiBenedetto, 2015) or violent crime (Hill, 2020). The point is, when we shift responsibility for learning to students, we allow them to claim the authorship of their learning and ultimately, their lives (Giroux, 2020).
Respect Students’ Life Experiences
If we connect the learning in the classroom and the living students are doing outside the classroom, students may find more meaning in their time at school and potentially be willing to take more ownership of their growth (Darder, 2014). This means that if a teacher pays attention to the lives students are leading outside of school and attempts to connect to those lives during their instruction, their lessons might be more relevant to students. Emdin (2016)
argues a similar point: “I came to realize [that] . . . I could go directly to the students’ [lives] and simply work to make connections between [their lives] and the content I was charged to [teach]” (p. 143).
Have Better Metrics for Learning
If we are serious about the pursuit of relational pedagogy, then it is important to consider better measurements of student success. Many schools still use grade point averages (GPA), letter grades, and state (or province) scores as barometers of student success and overlook more humanistic measurements, such as relationship quality, grit, and self-reliant behaviors because they are difficult to calculate and analyze.
David M. Levy, technologist and professor in the Information School at the University of Washington, states that as teachers, “we are being measured and evaluated all the time on things that don’t have to deal with what I think is central to human values, like our ability to be human beings with one another” (as cited in Felten & Lambert, 2020, p. 80). The absence of these hard-to-measure metrics can leave many schools ignoring basic humanism when creating lessons, evaluating progress, and building school culture. If we can focus on measuring more humanistic measures, like strength of relationships and levels of support in students’ social networks, perhaps we would be more likely to help students learn how to transform their learning and life trajectories (Espinoza, 2011).
Pay Attention to Unspoken School-Culture Messages
Using the conventional measures of GPA, state (or province) rankings, or AP scores could leave the advertised school culture in conflict with the actual culture (Muhammad & Cruz, 2019). For example, a high school district may publicize a balanced education for all its students but at the same time, celebrate achievement by overfocusing on high SAT and AP scores in their community newsletter. Or its staff may use these metrics as they review student learning. Both of these practices can implicitly signal to students that achievement matters above anything else and press students to take on more and be someone they may not want to be, which can weigh on students’ psyche and even drain them physically (Emdin, 2021). For example, students may think they have to “shoulder a heavy load of Advanced Placement (AP) courses” because it’s expected (Hibbs & Rostain, 2019, p. 15).
It is documented that the higher one’s efficacy and agency, the more robust the motivation, confidence, and drive to learn (Bandura, 2011; Dunlop, Beatty, & Beauchamp, 2011). Same with the converse—the lower one’s agency, the more apathy and indifference one might have toward learning (Anderson et al., 2019). Both agency and efficacy have been shown to correlate to many health and wellness benefits such as healthy actions and choices, increased effort, perseverance, ability to handle adversity, healthy thought patterns, and lower stress or depression (Bandura, 1997; Hattie, 2015; Zimmerman et al., 2015). Efficacy and agency have many causal connections to successful learning, such as increased feedback acceptance, more meaningful self-reflection, and more accurate self-assessment (Hattie, 2012). Even with the corpus of research, efficacy and agency are often seen as traits students will develop after primary and secondary education.
Teach With Students
Although teachers have more experience and expertise than their students, it doesn’t mean students don’t have any of their own. When we teach with students, we create meaning and knowledge from their minds and lives. Learning is an emergent concept, resulting from the interdependent collaboration and productive discourse between teachers and students—not from transactional exchanges of knowledge (Brown et al., 2014). Students know when their teacher is not respecting their inherent wisdom; when this happens, they may become disinterested or disengaged (Emdin, 2021).
Outcomes of a Relational Approach
In my school district, you can find a commitment to these seven relational teaching actions in our Portrait of a Graduate (see figure I.1, page 8). This portrait reminds us that our purpose is to nurture strong relationships so students can develop a sense of community and become self-defining adults who lead meaningful lives.
Further, this portrait guides us in the development of our policies and practices and reminds us that we are all human beings who long to connect, learn, and self-actualize.
Portrait of a Stevenson Graduate
Our students will commit to the following.
Self:
• Pursue a balanced high school experience • Foster responsible, healthy, and ethical decision-making skills • Develop a sense of resilience and self-awareness • Demonstrate self-empowered and life-ready skills
Others:
• Celebrate, honor, and respect diverse people and perspectives • Develop a sense of empathy for those around them • Serve local, national, and global communities • Engage in civic duties and responsibilities
Learning:
• Strive for continuous improvement • Foster a curious, creative, and innovative mind • Sustain a growth mindset when facing new challenges • Develop problem-solving and reflective skills • Collaborate with and learn from others
Source: Adlai E. Stevenson High School, n.d. Used with permission. FIGURE I.1: Sample portrait of a graduate.
About This Book
This book is my attempt to help educators make relationships a priority in their schools. In each chapter, I outline practices that prioritize relational pedagogy and reflect the seven actions that promote relational policies and practices, so students might have a better chance to develop into self-sufficient learners who respect community, self, and learning (Bandura, 1977).
The late renowned social scientist, Albert Bandura, often studied his social learning theory in schools. His work is seminal in the areas of student agency, social learning, and human connection, so I have cited much of his research
throughout these pages (Bandura, 1977, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1997, 2011). Contemporary studies continue to cite his work (see Horsburgh & Ippolito, 2018; Rumjaun & Narod, 2020).
This book is divided into two parts, with each chapter covering a distinct area of relational pedagogy and offering tools to make your teaching more relational and interpersonal.
Part 1, Foundational Principles of Relational Teaching, is about redefining the concept of teaching. Chapter 1 explores the definition of relational pedagogy and discusses its value in the classroom. Chapter 2 explores the attributes of the relational teacher.
Part 2, Relational Practices, is about transforming existing practices to focus on teacher-student relationships. Chapter 3 discusses how teachers can organize curricula to increase relevancy in students’ lives. Chapters 4 and 5 cover instructional and assessment practices that are more conversational and relational. Chapters 6 and 7 extend the principles of relational pedagogy into feedback and rubrics. Finally, chapter 8 reviews evidence-based, relational grading practices that include student voice. Throughout the book, I also include templates to help you unlock the potential of relational pedagogy and get to know your students better.
Conclusion
While this book is for educators of all grade levels, administrators and leaders may find it helpful in leading conversations about a relationship-focused culture and use the information in each chapter to inform their current policies. I hope you will discover ways to create more connectedness and stronger relationships in your classroom through the purposeful use of relational pedagogy.
