Right after the New Year, the store shelves are stocked with items for Valentine’s Day forcing love to fill the air. In a classroom, love translates into growing friendships among peers and relationships with students. I have grown to love my students throughout the years and treasure the memories and relationships that we’ve made. Building relationships and a community of learners is the most important thing a teacher could do in their classroom because, in my opinion, and experience, it is the one and only way you will get your students to learn. No, you may not get every student to love you or to love one another, but if you can build relationships with students, and show them that they are loved and wanted in the classroom, it makes a world of difference in creating an environment that is conducive for teaching and learning. You’ll see that students WANT to come to school to learn and LOVE to be with you and their friends, especially when they may not feel loved or wanted at home.

Building student relationships is not always easy and it doesn’t happen overnight. Some students click better with each other in some years than others. Some years I notice that no matter how hard I try to build relationships, they don’t seem to bloom like I would have liked them to, and some years the relationships tend to build later on in the school year. No matter the case, I never stop trying to build those relationships with my students. I’ve learned that it’s the things I say and how I say them that help build relationships. What’s even better is when I hear how my students speak to one another to build their friendships with each other.

Get to Know Your Students

Students love when you try to get to know them beyond school and their grades. So be a human and take the time to get to know the humans you teach. It’s as simple as saying:

“Wow, that’s an awesome drawing, do you draw a lot in your free time?”

“I missed you yesterday when you were absent. Are you feeling ok?”

“I caught you singing with your friends. What kind of music do you like?”

Build Confidence

“You are better than you know at math. I noticed that you solved that problem in a variety of ways.”

“You are a really great writer. I can’t wait to read all that you write this year.”

“What a great way of thinking. I never thought about it like that before. Thank you for sharing.”

Notice The Little Things

“I saw you helped Lisa with carrying her books, I bet she appreciated your help.”

“Good Morning! I’m so glad you are here today!”

“What a great pass in soccer today. You played hard.”

We all want our students to LOVE school and to WANT to come to school so when that warm and fuzzy time of year comes around in February, we focus on what we LOVE about school. After months of building relationships and our classroom community, the kids have many reasons why they love school and that makes me happy.

This activity is perfect for Valentine’s Day, the 100th Day of school, both, or just at any time of the year. I begin with a mini-lesson about how much I love coming to school every day and all the things that I love about school, from the programs, school events, classroom activities, enrichment, extracurricular activities, support from teachers, classmates, and the special friends, students, and teachers that are at school each and every day. This gets kids thinking about what they love about school.

Some example reasons:

I love school because learning is fun.

I love school because we do fun STEM activities.

I love school because I get to see my teachers and friends every day.

I love school because I play with my friends at recess.

I love school because we go on awesome field trips.

I give students one sheet of hearts and have them write one reason why they love school in one sentence. You could give students more or fewer hearts depending on your class size to make a collage of 100 hearts (20 kids x 5 hearts = 100 hearts–adjust as needed).

And we create an oversized 100 heart collage using the heart templates with 100 reasons why we love school. If you’d like to do this activity with your students you could get it here.  It’s so much fun, makes a “love”ly display in your classroom or hallway; the kids LOVE it, and I do too.

So let love fill the air in your classroom by building student relationships and friendships. Investing the time in building these relationships sure has its benefits.

How do you build relationships with students?