Tips for School Administrators to Connect With Students
As school administrators, whether principals or vice principals, it's important to work with educators to form positive connections with students. Positive relationships in the school environment create a safe and inclusive space where everyone feels heard and respected. This guide explores valuable ways that school leaders can connect with students.
Why Is It Important to Connect With Students?
School administrators play an important role in the success of students and the educational institution. They are responsible for creating a safe and supportive environment in which students can learn and receive a quality education.
While implementing policies and allocating resources are crucial, it is equally important to communicate with students and build positive relationships with them. Creating a positive school culture builds a sense of community and belonging. It also encourages students to stay engaged and dedicated to learning and improving academically. Some key benefits of connecting with students as an administrator include:
- Enhancing inclusivity: Using the right verbal and nonverbal communication methods and helping students build good character creates a safe and inclusive environment that fosters personal and academic growth for everyone.
- Establishing trust: Listening to students' perspectives and opinions and taking action to address them can develop rapport and trust in the school administration.
- Improving student motivation: If you connect with students by encouraging them to take on leadership roles and participate in decision-making processes, they may feel more engaged and motivated at school.
7 Ways School Leaders Can Connect With Students
You can implement various practices to build better relationships with students and enhance their motivation and trust. Here's how principals can connect with students in the school environment.
1. Show Support at School Events
Attend all school functions to wish students luck and let them know that you are proud regardless of the outcome. Even if you don't get to speak to them directly, make sure to give them high-fives, share quick supportive comments and cheer for them backstage or in the crowd.
2. Talk to Students Daily
Create better relationships with students by getting to know their stories, knowing influential students from each grade, calling them by name and asking them questions. Students often appreciate when principals remember their names. You can practice this by taking a class composite binder or yearbook home to memorize names or by socializing with students regularly at school. It's important to get out of the office and talk with students and teachers daily to create trust.
3. Eat Lunch With Students
During unstructured times like lunch breaks, chat and eat lunch with students. This allows you to get to know students on a personal level. For example, you can see how they interact with each other in a social environment. This helps you understand what interests them, giving you unique opportunities to alter school events and assemblies to reflect their interests. It will also help them feel motivated to learn and excited to attend school.
4. Be Visible
Try to be more accessible and approachable to students throughout the school. The goal is to create more positive interactions and connections and learn about what is going on at school. This can involve ensuring students are protected and safe from harmful treatment and behavior.
You can do this through planned, purposeful interactions while watching students get on buses or standing in the halls. You may even join and observe a physical education (PE), music or art class to maintain visibility. The most important part is that you exercise positive instructional leadership to set an example.
5. Make Positive Phone Calls to Parents and Guardians
Form a goal to make one positive phone call home per day. Call parents and guardians to inform them how well a particular student is doing at school, whether academically or socially. For example, you might let a parent know that you're proud of a student who thrived in a certain subject or helped an injured peer during PE.
Doing so lets parents and guardians know that their child is doing well, and it helps you earn their respect and trust as a school leader. This deepens your connection with students and their families.
6. Guide Student Character Development
As a school administrator, it's important to understand the great responsibility you hold in helping students develop good character traits and crucial skills needed in the workplace. When students do something wrong or make a mistake, help them understand the impact of their actions, how to fix the issue and how to behave going forward.
Have a system or plan in place to help students learn good characteristics like respect, responsibility, empathy, gratitude and cooperation. For instance, everyday student planners that focus on these traits help students develop them passively as they advance academically through the school year.
7. Teach for a Day
Create breaks for individual staff members during a class period and teach their students in their place. This creates an excellent opportunity to watch students learn in real time and help them improve academically.
Spread these days out over the year to ensure you have enough time to focus on important day-to-day tasks and avoid disruptions. This experience also allows you to understand the latest realities of classrooms so that you can help educators come up with ways to navigate them.
How to Maintain Connections With Students
After implementing the above practices, you can go the extra mile with these tips to maintain connections with students:
- Care about their well-being: After you've gotten to know students considerably through talking with them daily and having lunch with them, you should be able to pinpoint changes in their behavior or personality. When this happens, talk to them and make them feel comfortable enough to share what they or their friends may be dealing with. This creates a safe environment where they can ask for help before a situation escalates.
- Create a student advisory committee: To ensure that student needs are continually heard and met, develop a student advisory group that meets regularly and has a set agenda. Allow these students to be a voice for student needs, informing you of the latest school environment and academic challenges. Encourage them to come up with suitable plans and solutions with you as the advisor.
- Cheer on alumni outside of the school setting: When you run into past students outside of school, start up a conversation when it is appropriate. Ask how they are doing, what they currently study or what field they're working in. Cheer them on so they know you still support them, and let them know that you'll be happy to help if the need ever arises. Having this type of open discussion even after they've graduated will show that you truly care about their well-being in the long run.
Help Students Build Character With Our Planners
Are you ready to build positive relationships with students to help them grow academically and personally? Success by Design develops character-building planners to help you take the first step. These planners help students stay organized with their academic subjects and focus on monthly character trait themes like responsibility, gratitude, empathy, respect and determination. To learn more, browse our numerous student planners or contact our friendly team today.
- SBD, Inc.