Relationships That Work

Four Ways to Connect (and Set Boundaries) with Colleagues, Students, and Parents

Adam Saenz, Jeremy Dew

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317551218
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Educational Psychology

Teaching is an extremely gratifying profession, but it can also be draining if you don't have fulfilling relationships and the ability to avoid toxic, negative people. This unique book, written by bestselling author and psychologist Adam Sáenz and child/adolescent therapist Jeremy Dew, shows you how to increase job satisfaction and personal fulfilment by connecting with others. You'll learn about the relationships you can forge with students, colleagues, and parents to foster a healthy and life-changing learning environment, while also avoiding social and personal stress. In particular, you'll uncover how to:

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• Build bridges to connect with students in a positive manner, making a difference in their lives.

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• Interact with colleagues and parents in productive ways.

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• Examine and evaluate your professional relationships.

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• Build fences to protect yourself from harm or frustration and remain relationally engaged.

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• Manage your emotions effectively, and learn how to express and direct them appropriately in the classroom.

Throughout each chapter, you'll find strategies, reflection questions, and assessment tools to help you apply the book's concepts. Relationships That Work is an essential read for teachers at all grade levels who want not only to educate but also to guide, nurture, encourage, and form deep, long-lasting bonds.

1
The Case for Relationships

“Most of us end up with no more than five or six people who remember us. Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives.”

Andy Rooney

My youngest son Andrew is a Lego fiend. Absolutely loves them. For months last year, he routinely stopped at the refrigerator door and stared at what lay pinned to it by the calendar magnet: two tickets to paradise—admission to the Lego Kidfest at the Hutchinson Convention Center in Dallas. Finally, the big day arrived, and we made the pilgrimage from College Station. The Lego Kidfest did not disappoint. It was all things Lego: robots, superheroes, car races, building contests, you name it. After a twenty-minute self-initiated orientation tour of the Convention Center floor, Andrew chose his first activity: a free build in which kids and their parents were encouraged to build a structure that would be incorporated into something of a group project. The result was spectacular—a Lego city built with thousands of Lego bricks of varying shapes, sizes and colors, built by hundreds of Lego builders of varying shapes, sizes and colors. It covered over four hundred square feet of the Convention Center floor. Structure was created from the chaos of buckets and buckets of random Lego bricks, and we had played a part. It was very satisfying.

We—humanity—are like a massive collection of Legos. Our individual pieces of human experience vary in size, shape and color, but all were designed and evolved specifically to connect one with another. When we connect with the right people the right way, we become a part of a narrative or unfolding story that gives us deeper meaning and purpose, both individually and collectively. That holds true universally—across cultures, across sexes, across generations, and across ideologies.

When we connect with the right people the right way, we become a part of a narrative or unfolding story that gives us deeper meaning and purpose, both individually and collectively.

Sometimes our innate need and purpose to connect does not become obvious until we see the problematic behavior patterns and dysfunction that arise in a child that did not receive necessary physical and emotional attention throughout critical stages of early development. When a child is deprived of those ingredients critical to healthy human development, his or her relational pattern will tend to be skewed, characterized by being either inappropriately detached from or dependent on others. In more extreme cases, children with deeply impaired relational capacity are diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder. They have become, in essence, Legos that have lost the basic form and shape necessary to maintain the bond.

Why are we concerned when a child lacks the capacity to initiate and sustain age-appropriate, inter-independent relationships? It is because relationships are resources. Many would go so far as to argue that relationships are our most important resource—in the end, far more valuable to us than money, education, or physical ability. Children who lack the capacity to appropriately access relationships as resources (and do not receive appropriate intervention), then, will grow up to be adults that are even more deeply isolated and impaired—damaging, even—as they relate with other human beings, children and adults alike.

Therein lies the root of our sense of urgency. Think about it: each student with whom we interact today represents some sphere of relational influence in the future—a future boss, a future employee, a future father, or a future mother. Maybe even a future teacher. Will their future influence be helpful or hurtful to those depending on them? As you probably already know, teachers have the power to play a critical role in the answer to that question.

Douglas Fiore, Ph.D., is a former teacher and principal who has served on faculty at the State University of West Georgia. According to Dr. Fiore,

Teachers who create distance between themselves and their students make it exceedingly difficult for students to develop relationships with them … the relationships that teachers develop with students have a direct impact on the teacher’s ability to teach and the [students’] ability to learn. For this reason, these relationships must be deemed vitally important.

(2001)

Great Programming Skills: But Can You Interact With Other Humans?

Relational skills—and not just knowledge of specific academic content—are relevant to our students’ capacity to make a meaningful and favorable difference in their future world. The phrase “soft skills” is often used to describe aspects of individual emotional IQ—the degree to which individuals manifest skills in knowing themselves and relating with others.

Relational skills—and not just knowledge of specific academic content—are relevant to our students’ capacity to make a meaningful and favorable difference in their future world.

Peggy Klaus, professional trainer and recruiter, is all about soft skills. In her book The Truth About Soft Skills: Workplace Lessons Smart People Wish They’d Learned Sooner, Klaus notes that shortcomings in social, communication, and self-management skills, not deficits in technical knowledge, are usually what limit or kill a person’s career. A recruiter I met at the Association of Career and Technical Education conference I recently presented at echoed the sentiment.

“We get tons of applications from young men and women who look great on paper,” he told me.

We bring them in, we interview them, and then we realize pretty quickly that they have very little clue how to interact appropriately with other people. If it comes down to choosing between a candidate who has good interpersonal skills but lacks experience versus a candidate with all the technical knowledge but is interpersonally clueless, we’ll hire the first candidate every time.

The importance of soft skills is not just about preparing students for future opportunity, though. There are here-and-now implications. By modeling effective soft skills, a teacher creates the kind of effective and safe relational environment necessary to facilitate learning of any academic content.

By modeling effective soft skills, a teacher creates the kind of effective and safe relational environment necessary to facilitate learning of any academic content.

What Is Normal Versus What Is Healthy

We see that research has confirmed what we’ve already known: healthy relationships are an essential element of the learning process, and effective interpersonal skills go a long way in paving the way for future professional success. That’s great and all, but for those of us who were raised in chaotic, unpredictable family-of-origin environments, healthy interpersonal interaction may not feel natural or intuitive. In fact, what we may assume is quite normal actually may be unhealthy. Never trust anyone. Never depend on anyone. Always keep your guard up. Always strike first. Those were beliefs I held that did not begin to become undone in me until I was well into my late twenties and many sessions into my own therapy.

My developing the capacity to initiate and sustain healthy relationships was not just about identifying errors in my thinking, but also about actually practicing new skills: I am choosing to let you help me. I am choosing to be honest with you about what I am thinking and feeling. It felt awkward at first, but I am grateful that I persevered. Imagine where we would all be today if we gave up on trying to drive a car after the first try because it felt awkward or unnatural. Your self-awareness, your ability to explore your own internal relational landscape is paramount to your ability to initiate and sustain healthy relationships with those around you. Ask yourself: is my normal also healthy?

Generally speaking, most would agree that a healthy relationship is characterized by the following:

• Trust: We can rely and depend on each other.
• Respect: We will give each other our absolute best work.
• Harmony: We will change to accommodate each other when necessary.
• Awareness: We will pay adequate attention to each other.
• Communication: We will openly exchange thoughts and feelings.
• Resilience: We will increase our capacity to recover quickly from setbacks.
• Curiosity: We will seek to know more about each other and the world we share.
• Authenticity: We will be truthful and transparent with each other.
• Boundaries: I am me, you are you, and this is what is and is not acceptable between us.

Many believe that a distinguishing characteristic of a healthy relationship is the absence of conflict. Not true. The healthy relationship begins with the premise that the other person is a good person who makes mistakes.

Many believe that a distinguishing characteristic of a healthy relationship is the absence of conflict. Not true. The healthy relationship begins with the premise that the other person is a good person who makes mistakes. In conflict, then, the starting point is curiosity—not judgment or fear—about why the other made a particular decision. We are being formed continually as we connect with others, and a healthy relationship acknowledges that process of being formed, with a stability and openness to be changed. Further, we extend patience for ourselves and for the other throughout that process. For example, there may be moments when a co-teacher, student, or parent says something incredibly offensive to me; in a healthy relationship, I see this as a place for dialogue of how I have been impacted, rather than an impediment to any further relationship of authenticity or justification to lash out in vengeance.

Even as you read through these descriptors, you’re probably already thinking of people in your professional life who feel healthy this way. This is the colleague that is authentically invested in your wellbeing and success as an educator. This is the student who confides in you with her deepest struggles. This is the parent who makes a point of thanking you, regularly, for your investment in their child.

Characteristics of Unhealthy Relationships

We might characterize unhealthy relationships by corollary: unhealthy relationships lack trust, respect, harmony, awareness, communication, resilience, curiosity, authenticity and boundaries. While healthy relationships vitalize (and revitalize) us, unhealthy relationships steal physical and emotional life from us.

Generally speaking, healthy relationships fail to develop or eventually stall or sour for one of two reasons. The first reason is a lack of skills. We cannot implement what we have not been taught; the more time we spend with another person, the more our relational skillset will be tapped. So, interacting with most people for brief periods does not require an extensive relational skill set. But think about how much time you spend on your campus and all the different personality types you encounter on a daily basis among your colleagues, your students and parents.

The second reason healthy relationships fail to develop or eventually sour is a lack of desire. Even when we know what to do, we are faced each day with the question of whether we want healthy relationships enough to invest the resources— the time and the physical and emotional energy—to earn the desired outcome. The investment is particularly difficult if we’ve attempted to make the investment before in our lives, only to be hurt or otherwise mistreated by the other.

Again, my bet is that you are thinking of people in your life who feel unhealthy this way. “Life-suckers,” I call them. This is the colleague who is utterly committed to his bitterness and is known for his habit of slandering other faculty, both privately and publicly. This is the student who violates your physical space and reverts to verbal abuse to manipulate and intimidate others. This is the absentee parent who insists that her child’s academic and behavioral difficulties are a direct result and entirely the product of your incompetence as an educator.

We Are Here to Help You

After having conducted staff development and presented at conferences to educators across the country, Jeremy and I began to talk. How do we take this idea of building effective relationships from theory to practice? We knew up front that we did not want to write a book on behavior management or classroom interventions. Those books already exist in abundance.

Could we, as mental health care providers, create a practical guide for educators to position themselves to be most poised to create and sustain the kinds of relationships that would make a difference? We believed we could, but we also knew very well that building and maintaining healthy relationships can be an incredibly complex process—a dance between the interaction of our personalities, histories, fears, skills, and personal development and the same interaction of the other person involved. How could we begin to address the issue for a classroom teacher in a book that wasn’t six inches thick?

Jeremy’s wife, Jenny, has been an educator for over a decade, and as she overheard us beginning the conversation of this book and how we might step into this question, her input stuck with us:

I am sure that all the research on why effective relationships are important is really great, but I am a teacher with a lot on my plate. I think for most of us as educators, we don’t want someone to come in and waste our time. Back up what you write, but get to brass tacks quickly and just tell us what we need to be doing.

She said that in her teacher voice, and it put the fear of God in us, so we worked out a straightforward text. We identified four key themes that have emerged in our work with educators in schools and clients in our private practice. It is important for us to note on the outset that a primary philosophical underpinning in our approach to relationships is a focus on the internal. What that means is that we believe we reach a place of greater personal power when we focus on those internal variables that we can control versus those ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: A Tale of Two Campuses
• 1 The Case for Relationships
• 2 Reflecting: why am i Here?
• 3 Directing: Can i Manage my Emotions?
• 4 Connecting: Can i Builda Bridge?
• 5 Protecting: Can i Builda Fence?
• 6 Towards Integration
• Bibliography