What are 4 characteristics of healthy relationships between students?

/ mkessenburg
I want students to flourish in terms of healthy relationships. My deep hope is that students are experiencing…
(1) Safe, caring, collaborative, respectful peer relationships.
(2) Caring, collaborative, respectful Christ-centered staff (see Construct: Christlike Teachers p. 15).
(3) Respectful appreciation of others’ cultural backgrounds.
(4) A living curriculum (staff) that has healthy relationships with other staff. 

This blog post focuses on #1 above.

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Get students consistently experiencing healthy peer relationships! Why?

(1) Because healthy peer relationships help students flourish.

(2) Because God designed humans to flourish in community. Created in the image of a 3-personed God, humans are strengthened by healthy relationships (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12).  

(3) Because students who experience healthy peer relationships are more likely to exhibit the courage and tenacity that support learning, and to develop the emotional maturity that will make them proactive members of their communities and families.

(4) Because students who experience unhealthy relations (aka disconnection, bullying, or dysfunction) are less likely to engage strongly in their learning, are at higher risk of depression and anxiety, and will be less equipped to be proactive members of their communities and families.

(5) Because students consistently experiencing healthy peer relationships is a best practice.

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What are some characteristics of healthy relationships between students? The characteristics that come to mind for me include safe, caring, collaborative, and respectful. Let me explain.

(1) Safe: By safe I mean physically, emotionally, mentally, and academically safe. And safety means not just freedom from but also freedom to. Freedom from physical, verbal, or emotional harm; freedom to share themselves, to explore questions, to take risks, to fail, and to grow. Imagine a classroom, a playground, where students actively protected each other from harm and cheered each other’s bravery! 

(2) Caring: The clear opposites of caring are unkindness and cruelty; however, unawareness, indifference, and apathy are also detrimental. When it comes to caring, I want students to experience peer relationships that are attentive, empathetic, and take responsibility for classmates’ well-being.  

(3) Collaborative: In healthy collaborative relationships, students appreciate their own and their classmates’ strengths. They communicate honestly and openly, ask good questions, and disagree respectfully in order to build deeper understandings and come up with better solutions. They appropriately offer, accept, and ask for help.

(4) Respectful: The foundation of respect is understanding individual differences. It is not just ascribing to the belief that all people are created in the image of God; it is also being truly curious about the feelings, wishes, and traditions of people who are different from us. Only then can we extend knowledgeable courtesy and consideration. 

Photo by Yan Berthemy on Unsplash

You might be wondering, “How can support for healthy peer relationships be woven into normal classroom practices?” Some of the things that come to mind for me are:

(1) Using Think-Pair-Share: It’s a protocol that takes little time for students to master, can be used in 3-5 minutes, applies to any class, deepens learning through rehearsal, elaboration, and application of academic content, and gives students focused practice on skills that foster healthy peer relationships.   

(2) Regularly giving students opportunities to collaborate productively. For example, use lab partners in science, book clubs in language arts, and teams in physical education.

(3) Training students in the value and skills of collaboration. Teach mini-lessons on those skills, and give students the opportunity to practice them and to reflect on how their debate, tennis match, or writing group helped them develop healthy peer relationships.

(4) Prioritizing content that exemplifies positive relationships. For example, in language arts you can use novels like Because of Winn-Dixie and Wonder. In PE, you can teach, praise, and critique teamwork and leadership skills as much as individual effort and achievement. And in science, you can note important discoveries that have been made possible by collaboration (like DNA by Watson, Crick, Franklin, and Wilkins).      

Here are some related resources:

What about you? What’s important about students experiencing healthy peer relationships? What are characteristics of healthy peer relationships for students? What classroom practices do you use that support healthy peer relationships? What classroom practice could you add?

Get flourishing!

Kim