As a school psychologist or school counselor, to effectively support struggling students, you need strong relationships with teachers in your building. You are asking for their:
- patience with getting behavior plans implemented.
- confidence that the plans will work.
- mindfulness to carryover strategies into the classroom.
- grace with difficult parents.
- knowing nods when days did not go according to the plan.
That's a lot.
To get all this, you have to develop solid relationships. To do that, focus on being transparent, responsive, communicative, and respectful.
Check out 5 more ways to build relationships with teachers.
Ideas to Build Relationships with Teachers
Sit in on Tense Meetings
Everyone dreads tense meetings with parents.
- An evaluation is being suggested.
- Two students are not getting along.
- An incident happened with a substitute.
- There was bullying on the bus.
- A student got a poor grade on a long-term project.
You take in other people's children five days a week and try your best to help them grow. It's hard work and disagreements are inevitable.
When a parent is upset with a teacher, that meeting can color how the rest of the year will go. Go to the meeting if you work with the student, know the student well, or are in the classroom often.
It's okay to dread going, but go.
The times I chose not to go to a meeting, almost always resulted in a parent in my office or on the phone anyway. The times I went, the teacher felt supported, the meeting was more productive, and I now had a closer relationship with a teacher and a parent.
Data, Data, Data
"He never does his independent work."
"Every time I call on her, she is playing at her desk."
"The plan isn't working. Let's try something else."
Collecting data and making decisions based on that is challenging in schools, especially related to student behavior.
As a school psychologist, I was the data nerd and often felt like the cheese standing alone with my graphs and ABC data. But that love of data helped me connect with teachers because they knew I was invested.
Never, always, can't, and won't were only allowed into conversations with me if you had the data. I'd make a joke out of it, and teachers responded and rephrased.
Some Things to Try:
- Send teachers behavior plan data summaries in a quick visual format twice a month.
- Bring the data to those dreaded parent meetings.
- Do observations and collect data for the teachers so we can talk about what behaviors are happening and some reasons why.
- Most of all, be steadfast in making sure people make statements they can back up with data.
No one loves this at first, so start by doing the heavy lifting.
- Observe
- Make a graph
- Regularly ask, "How do we know that?"
- Teach simple ways to collect the data. For example, we need to count how often a student calls out. Put paperclips in your pocket or hair ties on your wrist. Move a paperclip to the other pocket when they call out. You now have a frequency count and didn't touch a clipboard.
Editable Behavior Data Collection Sheets
Classroom Support
Classroom support is an excellent way to build relationships with teachers. You get to see the students in the classroom environment, work with them to use strategies, and see things from the teacher's perspective. I often scheduled classroom support one to two times per week for 30 minutes for students I had on behavior plans or saw for individual counseling.
During my first few years, my co-counselor and I realized that we should start by flooding support and then pull back support as things improved.
In the classroom, you can cue strategy use, provide more reinforcement on a new plan, or provide the student with time to calm down.
- Model the strategies that are working for the student.
- De-escalate a situation.
- Work with other students while the teacher supports the struggling student.
How have you developed and improved relationships with teachers in your building?