How to Build Trust in the Classroom

Building trust in the classroom is an ongoing process with significant rewards.

Trust is a critical ingredient in the recipe for a successful classroom, but it's not always easy to achieve. One way to build trust is by developing individual relationships with your students and taking a personal interest in them. Although relationship-building is important, to earn your students' trust you must ultimately show that you're trustworthy through your ongoing behavior.

Instructions

1. Collaborate with your students to create expectations for the classroom. Ask students for suggestions of classroom rules, and create and post a list that includes both their ideas and yours. Not only does this show students that you value their input, but it engages them in setting and maintaining the tone for the classroom---which gives them greater incentive and reward for behaving appropriately.

2. Create routines. Kids, adults and even animals thrive on routines. When your students know what's coming, they're less likely to be caught off guard and more likely to be prepared for the next step. For younger kids, structure your day around patterns of behavior, such as language and art skills in the morning and math and science in the afternoon. For older students who change classrooms throughout the day, start and end each class the same way and organize your week around specific activities, such as teacher instruction on Mondays and Wednesdays, group work on Tuesdays and Thursdays and quizzes on Fridays.

3. Cultivate opportunities for your students to succeed, both academically and behaviorally. Children and teens are very sensitive to being embarrassed in front of their peers, and they know the difference between success-oriented teachers and those who take a "Gotcha!" approach of setting kids up to get things wrong or break rules. Ask direct questions and give clear and specific instructions to avoid confusion and misunderstandings.

4. Catch your students engaging in good behavior. When you see a student doing something above and beyond---or even doing the bare minimum---commend him for his behavior. For example, say, "Thank you for sitting right in your seat so we can start on time," "This is the third time in a row you turned your homework in on time---great job!" and "I really appreciate how you wait until I'm done speaking to pack up your bag. Thank you for being so respectful."

5. Follow through with promises. If you say there will be no homework over the weekend, don't assign homework. If you threaten a pop quiz in the next week, you'd better give them one! If you consistently do what you say you will, you earn your students' trust and show them they can depend on you.

Tips & Warnings

• Particularly if trust is a problem in your classroom, rapid upheaval in the classroom environment can make it even harder for your students to trust you. Introduce changes one at a time, and only when you're willing to follow through with them.

References

• Beyond Intractability: Trust and Trust Building
• Edutopia: In Teachers We Trust: Can Kids Count on You?
• The Whole Child: Cultivating Students' Trust
• Scholastic: Nothing to Fear: How to Build a Classroom Based on Trust
• Carnegie Foundation Gallery of Teaching and Learning: Building Trust