Building a good relationship - 5 tips for teachers and parents
Adolescents are in a phase in which they often consciously distance themselves from adults. How is it possible to build a good relationship despite this? The answers from teacher Beat Schelbert.
- Crucial tools are a never-ending curiosity and an honest interest in the other person. If you succeed in approaching the young person in this way, it also has an effect on the way the pupils interact with each other and the classroom climate.
- There are two feelings that young people struggle with. On the one hand, the urgent need to be part of the group and belong. On the other hand, everyone realises for themselves: I am somehow different from you. We should celebrate this otherness. Everyone is allowed to discover themselves and their abilities, while at the same time belonging to the group.
- At our school, we teachers work with talent portfolios and coaching sessions that go far beyond the subject matter. We are not only interested in how they are progressing in maths and whether they are putting the commas correctly in their essays, but we also ask: Where is your journey going?
- I have internalised a thought that Günter Schmid, the founding director of the Sir Karl Popper School in Vienna, once expressed: When we have a coaching conversation, we should realise that there is a whole universe sitting opposite us that needs to be discovered.
- I am pleased that our students seem to have coped well with the psychological strain of the pandemic itself and the lockdown in particular so far. We have also always tried to stay in contact individually and see how everyone is doing - we will continue to do this in possible quarantine situations in the future.
Beat Schelbert has been working at the Riedmatt secondary school in Wollerau SZ for 20 years.
