The Essential Role of Relationships and Emotional Life

What should matter most in schooling isn’t the narrow focus on standardized tests data

Schools have experienced a remarkable rise in teacher turnover rates this century. If I were an administrator today, I’d surely wonder how I could make my school a place where teachers want to teach and students want to learn.

Most schools I know of are devoted to the constant collection of data, typically numeric reductions of complex phenomena. Faith in the veracity of data is a major contributor to teacher turnover. Teachers invariably say they got into education because they care about children, suggesting that they treasure and embrace the relational parts of teaching. Data on standardized test performance don’t measure relationships so they never count in measures of school success.

In my view, anything that happens educationally follows from the quality of the relationships between teachers and their students. In order for teachers to cultivate relationships with confidence they are building the foundation for feeling an affiliation for school and for post-school success, they need administrators who share that value and who in turn believe the quality of their relationships with teachers and students contributes significantly to creating an environment that validates why people come to school to teach and learn.