How To Make Students "Like" You

By Divisha Patel

The title is deliberately written to be controversial, but certainly has no intention of being so. When you first start teaching, it is very easy to become hung up on the idea of students ‘liking’ you and thinking you are a [insert any positive word] teacher. Noone likes being disliked. It is important for our ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ (Maslow 1943) to feel secure, loved and respected. It is not necessarily the role of students to provide these feelings, but psychologically, it was natural for us to seek them too. Throughout this blog post, I use apostrophes around the word ‘like’ deliberately, to show that often the use of the word to describe relationships, especially teaching, is negatively loaded and can be seen as a microaggression to someone who may be having a more difficult time with certain students and/or entire classes, but what does ‘to like’ really mean? How do we know we’re ‘liked’? How did we become ‘liked’? Having being at WA for 6 years, and learning from many experienced teachers across those 6 years, I’ve realised, or at least I think I’ve realised how to make students ‘like’ me, and what makes a teacher ‘likeable’

Students like consistency When you are consistent with your routines, instructions and expectations, an engaging environment will develop very quickly. Students will learn the nuances of how you communicate, which will mean that you no longer have to repeatedly enforce the rules. Teachers do have bad days, but imagine being an 11-year old wondering whether if they’ve forgotten their book, are they going to get a slightly frustrated ‘do better’ verbal warning, or a 30-minute detention with a permanent log on their record for lack of equipment, entirely dependent on your mood that day. Students like discipline As mentioned earlier, every human being has the same fundamental need of feeling safe. Discipline doesn’t mean that you approach situations as Ms Trunchbull, but that you prevent situations that could make students feel like they are in danger. This might mean using prevention and de-escalation strategies to ensure that students are able to continue to learn and progress, because contrary to popular belief, students are excited to learn our subjects. It is frustrating to them when this gets disrupted. Some students may be the ‘disruptors’ but do think about why this may be. Do they need your help? Has something upset them? Students like routine Routines, over time, become habits and therefore second nature, so it is incredibly important that teachers constantly and consistently model positive routines. As they become habits, students will know what is expected of them when they enter a classroom, or even the school itself. Everything involves some form of routine, whether it is your entry routines, transition routines or how students leave Sky Dining after lunch. Routine leads to efficiency and order, which is a huge benefit for your workload too! Students like trust Westminster Academy has a challenging context, and as discussed in INSET, some of our students have experienced trauma that some of us are privileged to have never or will ever experience. When students arrive at the school gates, as teachers, we become in loco parentis, they trust us with their safety; happiness, and sense of security. The same expectations you have of the students, of being kind, respectful and considerate, are also the expectations they have of you. Students like fairness Understanding fairness is an important part of growing up and practising empathy. There is no room for favourites or resentment in how we manage behaviour. Students are smart people and want to see that any system of rewards and consequences is justified, and are quick to say when it’s not, so don’t give them any opportunity. If lots of students are talking, don’t just punish the student whose name you know. Similarly, students don’t like to feel like they have been singled out, therefore you should avoid using language that does this. For example, when noticing a couple of students messing around on their Chromebook, you might give the instruction ‘Year 7, nobody should be using their Chromebook for this task’ In conclusion, my message is simply that, to be ‘liked’ as a teacher, is to follow the behaviour policy. The behaviour policy allows for consistency, discipline, routine, trust and fairness- all of the attributes that students themselves seek in order to feel secure, loved and respected. Or, in keeping with the classic WA phrase ‘safe, secure and successful’, which are ironically the same attributes that you too seek as a teacher. Further Reading: Tom Bennett- Running the Room: The Teacher's Guide to Behaviour