Professional Development

Building Rapport Through Professional Openness

Overview of Event

This workshop was created by Dr. Laura Howard and ran by Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) Faculty Fellow Dr. Misty Grayer. Its focus was on building meaningful rapport, which the event defined as "a friendly, harmonious relationship, especially a relationship characterized by agreement, mutual understanding, or empathy that makes communication possible or easy" (Merriam-Webster). As a workshop, the event was highly interactive; its opening activity set the tone for the whole session: participants were asked to recall a time during their own college experiences that they felt valued "as a person (not just as a student)." My own answer came easily: I turned to one of my undergraduate professors when I was struggling with a chronic disease, and she was encouraging, kind, understanding--everything I want to be as an educator myself. Other's answers were just as heartwarming.

The rest of the workshop explained how elements of instructor presence and tone can pave the way for positive rapport. Being keenly aware of your own linguistic choices, for example can make for a more welcoming environment. Avoiding even subtly biased language (i.e. gender-biased terms like "good sportsmanship") makes a huge difference. Even making yourself more available to students by sending unrequired or unprompted communications (welcome emails, check-in announcements, etc.) can go a long way. Participants were asked to craft their own welcome emails to students as an exercise, and even the greeting for these emails required great thought about what kind of learning atmosphere we'd like to craft for students.

My Takeaway

The greeting I decided on for my class welcome email was "Welcome, Team." I chose this because the workshop made me realize I want to establish my classroom as a place of warmth and a, well, a welcoming nature, and I also want to emphasize collaborative relationships. Team felt appropriate and open. Another instructor used the word "Friends," which many agreed might not be suitable, and could even be confusing or uncomfortable for students. I resolved to build and display a sense of what I call professional openness with my students. In other words, I want to maintain a helpful boundary because students themselves even need that to encourage learning as the focus of the classroom space, but I also want to let them know that I openly care about them as individuals with lives, jobs, hobbies, interests, struggles, etc. Professional openness allows for balance, and it could lead the way to building rapport. Empathy for students as human beings is the key here, and finding a professional way to convey that empathy is crucial to promoting student learning processes.