Working with At-Risk Youth: Respect and Relationships

Respect is number one on my list of moves because everything you do in the classroom begins and ends with respect. Unless mutual respect has been established, acceptance of you as the teacher will not happen, and without respect, the student may not choose to learn, which means all of your subsequent efforts will be in vain. This may be the very thing that makes working with at-risk youth one of the most difficult jobs out there—to be effective with these guys, you have to be able to build and establish respect very quickly in places where it may be entirely absent, and do so in a way that is perceived as being legitimate (“legit”) by the students. Respect is (and should be) as basic to teaching as liking kids, but we all have seen plenty of examples when that was not the case. Respect is something students talk a lot about, and a few may have very advanced ideas about respect, but as the teacher, you still have to be better be better at it than anyone else in the room. As much as students talk about “respect”, they need you to be the expert at it, and model it, so they can get better at it too. I can’t tell you how to go about it—but I will say that in this case, it’s very important to be “real”, whatever that means for you. Any amount of effort you have to put into to laying the groundwork for respect is completely worth it, and will pay enormous dividends later.

Once the basics of respect are established in the classroom environment, building healthy relationships and a sense of belonging are the next things to work on. These are important because people have an innate need to belong to groups, and feel good about themselves. Having a positive classroom pays dividends because it eliminates a lot of potential sources of distraction (drama and conflict), creates an environment where people feel safe to take risks and try new things (promotes receptiveness to learning), and have a sense of pride in themselves as learners (students see themselves as people who can learn). This is especially critical when you are teaching something that is stigmatized (such as Special Education, a remedial class, the ESL class, or something perceived of as having less prestige). No matter what you call it, the kids know the labels, and are aware of their status in the overall school and community. Creating an environment that’s an antidote to all of that—a safe space to come together and do the business of learning, is a highly effective way of boosting some of the statistics that schools track (and in turn get measured by): attendance, disciplinary rates, and of course, the biggie academic achievement (test scores). Positive classroom relationships promote better attendance rates (class is an enjoyable place to be, and sometimes is one of the only safe-havens in a kid’s life), decrease the amount of time spent on discipline (people prefer to do what everyone else around them is doing—and if that happens to be learning, so much the better), and if you have students showing up regularly, and working diligently while they’re there, the test scores DO tend to go up by default without having to do anything fancy.