A while back I had an interesting conversation with two colleagues and we were talking about student behaviour in their classrooms. Both of these teachers do a phenomenal job with classroom management and building a learning culture. Both took the time at the beginning of the year to work on setting expectations and building relationships rather than plunging straight into the curriculum which is a practice that I would highly encourage for any teacher. They also continue to build those expectations and relationships through the learning as the year progresses. As we spoke though about how students respond to them, the piece I think that they were missing was that they assumed it was because they were the teacher. 

Here’s the thing though. Many students really don’t care that you are the teacher. They care that you are an invested adult in their lives. Your title of teacher is completely irrelevant when students are bombarded by media representation of bad teachers, ineffective teachers, or TV shows where students manipulate their teachers and hijinx and hilarity ensues. There are countless stories of ‘successful’ people who decry public education and how they did well despite their teachers and not because of them (I should note that reverse is also true but there are students who tend to gravitate towards the impressions that reinforces their own beliefs). So ultimately, the title of ‘teacher’ does not carry the weight that some think it should with our learners.

Nicole Lipkin talks about 7 kinds of Power.* Without going into these in any real detail, teachers would have what is referred to as Legitimate Power (power invested into a person by virtue of their position), perhaps Expert Power (as they are an expert in their craft) and Informational Power (they have information the student does not possess yet i.e. curriculum). However, the most important type of Power for any Leader (and Teacher!) is Referent Power. 

Referent Power is power related to who you are as a person. It is your honesty, integrity, your character. In short, it is the power that makes others want to follow you across any activity or setting and in the absence of any formal structure. This is the type of power that teachers should aspire to have. It is the most effective, the most powerful and both simultaneously the easiest and hardest to achieve and maintain. 

This is what my two teachers had achieved and mistakenly attributed to the fact that their classes ran smoothly simply because they were the Teacher in the room. This is why another teacher could observe their class, take copious notes and then go to their own class and copy their technique perfectly...and watch it fail miserably. It isn’t so much the actual strategies, it is the relationship forged between teacher and student that makes the difference. To be clear, these relationships need to be accompanied by expectations and routines that are necessary for a classroom to be an optimal learning environment for students.

One of these teachers mentioned that this couldn’t be the case since she related a story involving a student not in her class. She mentioned how she stopped him in the hallway to address a behavioural issue and he complied. She felt that because of a time when she was filling in the office there had been an incident involving this student that she had dealt with that ended up involving the student's parent. The parent had disagreed and sided with the student but this teacher had stood by her decision regardless (I should also note that this is an extremely kind teacher who was genuinely trying to help this student see the error of their ways and show them a better path). For her, she felt that it was because the student understood that she would see the issue all the way through rather than them having a relationship. I explained that it is in these interactions that relationships and expectations are forged. It was less that she was the 'administrator for the day' and more about how she conducted herself in that situation that created that level of respect and reputation for her as a person rather than in title.

Relationships between students and teachers aren’t always deep and long lasting. Our relationship with some students is incredibly brief and is deeply rooted in their shared experiences. This student had a shared experience with this teacher that she did have his best interests at heart but that when he had reached the line, there was no crossing it. Fast forward to the next incident in her story, and is it any wonder the student complied with direction? Again, not because she was a teacher, it was because of who she was in his eyes, someone who cared enough to be invested but was also willing to go the distance with that student. I am very willing to bet that if a different teacher had said the same thing the outcome would have been different.

After all, if all that mattered was your title, why would substitute teachers ever have any grief from students? For anyone who has substituted a day in their life, they know that the reception from kids is not always the most positive. However, when you talk to substitute teachers who spend a lot of time in the same building and build connections with the students, their experiences are much different.

Similarly as adults, do we always follow and believe in our own leaders because of their titles, or because of how they act and the character they show?

Ultimately, titles don’t matter. What matters is that you are a caring adult who will invest in students. Relationships don’t have to be incredibly deep or having spanned a long time. They just have to be authentic and have a student’s best interests at heart. They have to know that you care and that you are in their corner. 

* The concept of a teacher’s Power can be a hot topic of debate. Here I am using it to talk about the ability to influence students. This is not a 'power over' or 'power with' discussion.