Student-Centered Pedagogical Relationships

When all teachers commit to being all in with holding kids accountable without shame and harm, we create a place where every human is deserving of dignity and kindness. When we must enact strategies that enable us to cope with the “emotional labor” of managing one’s own feelings in order to manage others’ emotions. Staff are encouraged to build a student-centered pedagogical method that involves the following: 

• Emotional enough to communicate warmth

• Safe enough for students to trust they can fail without rejection

• Friendly enough to show happiness for the student’s presence

• Persistent enough to engage relational repair in response to challenging student behaviors

• Sustainable enough to be practiced in the countless daily educator-student interactions all year long.  

- from ASCD, "It s Not Either Or"