How Would You Define a “Warm Relationship” with Students and How Is This Established?

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Author: Diamantino de Assis Location: Baucau, East Timor A warm relationship with students is integral to learning. Saint Marcellin Champagnat used to say: To educate young people, you must first love them, and love them all equally, and such a warm relationship is a continuing learning curve for both student and teacher. Warm relationship is a reference to the quality of interaction between the student and the teacher. The quality of the relationship acknowledges that “you have to reach the heart before you can teach the head” (Bayton as cited in Porter 2007, p. 108). The characteristic of such a relationship are mutual respect for one another, valuing the other as born in the image and likeness of our God, exercising an interdependence of trust in one another, articulating and living out together one’s social and emotional wellbeing, a mutual connectedness that enhances the teacher’s and student’s journey towards human wholeness. The creation of a warm relationship with the students is integral to the overall learning process because it will enable a shift from teaching content to teaching students; and each individual student because they each have “unique family circumstances, cultural background, individual learning needs, specific strengths and weakness” (Shimabukuro, 2000, p. 120). A warm relationship will provide the framework within which the teacher can have a positive influence on students (Porter, 2007, p. 35). It will create a secure and safe environment, both inside and outside of the classroom, which will support the creation of an overall positive learning environment, improved student behaviour and academic performance. I agree with Starratt when he asserts that “mutual presence to each other makes a relationship possible, a relationship bonded by telling and listening … and our presence implies a dialogical relationship between the learner
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