Teachers and their students have a special relationship; what they do affects each other. Teachers and students can't survive without one another since there would be no teacher without any student. Based on this special relationship, a certain expectation has been developed in the classroom environment. Gradually, some spoken or unspoken rules and systems have been established between these two individuals which exist till now. On the surface, the main aspect of this relationship has been founded, typically on responsibility and obligation that these individuals feel about each other, yet, in-depth there are other elements into teacher and student's relationship which work more than obligation. A positive teacher-student relationship could be developed by encouraging a learning environment where the student feels free to ask whatever he wants to and the teacher responds in a manner which is understandable by the student.
Therefore it would not be wrong to say that the building block of a strong teacher-student relationship is effective communication. The level of respect that exists between the two also has a vital role to play in developing a positive teacher-student relationship. A major hindrance to the strengthening of their relationship is the different categories of students in a class. Some of the students are hard-working and come to the class to learn but there are others who are aggressive in nature and find it difficult to concentrate on what is going on in the class.
They continuously distract others and also spoil the learning environment of the class. In order to overcome this hindrance, the teachers need to be extremely patient. They should maintain a balance between leniency and strictness as an excess of any of the two could cause total chaos. It is the teacher’s responsibility to monitor every student individually so that their progress could be monitored and attention can be divided between students accordingly.
A teacher-student relationship evolves with time. When in primary school the teacher usually acts as a mother for students and guides them about every little thing. In secondary and post-secondary schools, the approach of teachers becomes more professional. They are more concerned about completing the course rather than teaching students the true value of life. This is where most teacher-student relationships suffer. A teacher transforms from being a teacher to an instructor who has the sole responsibility of teaching students what’s there in the course books and nothing beyond that. For strong student-teacher relationships, it is essential that teachers understand that students in a class come from different cultural and social backgrounds.
This increases the need for teachers to modify their behavior according to each student's needs. In this way, the teacher would be able to develop a level of understanding with every student and the students would feel they are important which would boost their self-esteem. This would also reflect in their grades and overall behavior. The overall size of the class is also vital in determining how effective a student-teacher relationship could be. The larger the class size the more difficult it would be for teachers to provide individual attention to students so school administrations should make sure that the class size is kept small which would allow a much better learning environment for the teacher-student relationship to flourish.
With the growing competition in society it is essential that people improve their relationships with each other. Amongst these relationships, a student-teacher relationship is of utmost importance which needs to be looked after properly so that young children could grow up to become educated and responsible citizens of the society.
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