Intentional Relationship Building

Description
Personal Reflection | 15 minutes

It takes real commitment and intentionality to carve out time and effort to build relationships amid all the many demands of being a math tutor/educator. Intentional relationship building requires attention to all levels of interaction, including contextual influences. Students do not come into a math program as a blank slate. They each have unique strengths, hardships, lived experiences, and assets. This resource is designed to prompt reflection on the contextual factors facing students, how these contexts influence relationships, and ways to proactively respond.

The primary relationship explored throughout this Toolkit is the tutor/educator-youth relationship (1). However, intentional relationship building requires attention to all levels of interaction. Taking a broader view of the social contexts of learning is critical to the success of math learning overall, as each context impacts the other. Click here to download this page as a PDF.

Instructions

1. Educator-educator (e.g., Tutor-tutor) Relational Context

Curating friendly, supportive, and collaborative relationships between educators/tutors are important as role models for the youth. Youth learn to work collaboratively when they see educators/tutors helping each other out. For group tutoring programs, devoting time during orientation and training to intentionally build relationships amongst tutors can go a long way.

How are you intentionally building educator-to-educator (e.g., tutor-to-tutor) relationships?

2. Youth-youth Relational Context

Fostering inclusive youth-youth peer dynamics is foundational to learning and fosters a healthy sense of belonging. For example, youth learn math more effectively and challenge themselves to increasingly harder problems when they know the peers around them would not make fun of them. For some classrooms and programs, youth join already knowing other youth. It is important for educators in those cases to be mindful of existing relationships.

How are you intentionally building youth-to-youth relationships? How do students’ relationships with one another enhance learning? How might they distract?

3. Program-youth Relational Context

Program or classroom level structures, policies, and features can directly and indirectly influence youth’s relational experience in the program. For example: designated times for youth and educators to get to know each other, the educator-to-youth ratio, how welcoming the learning space might be, and program/classroom rules and policies.

How are you intentionally building lines of communication for youth to voice their feedback about the learning context? How are you being intentional about program/classroom structure in order to foster youth’s math learning?

4. Macro Context

Educators/tutors and youth interact with each other, as well as with the space (e.g., classroom, tutoring program) that houses those interactions. Taking it to the next broader level, the youth, educators, and learning space are all also embedded in larger contexts and influenced by broader social/cultural norms. Both you and your youth/students carry unique assets and challenges as a product of your unique lived experiences. For example, different societies vary on how they value math, there are systemic forces beyond the control of individuals still nonetheless have implications on what resources.

How are you intentionally addressing macro-contextual factors?

5. Other Learning Contexts

Classroom math or math tutoring are not the only spaces that youth and educators interact with math. The experiences youth have with math at home and in other learning spaces influence how they show up in your math learning classroom/program. For example, some youth might feel anxious joining math tutoring because they always get judged and made fun of for their math score in school.

How are you intentionally building off youth’s math experience from other learning spaces?

Tips and Tricks

Guest speakers. Use this worksheet to reflect how the youth you serve are influenced by the various levels of relationships, then, brainstorm practices that you could do to intentionally strive for those relationships to be positive.

Going Deeper. For a holistic view of learning contexts, pair this reflection with Action Planning, Rooted in Relationships, and Culturally Responsive Relationships.

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