How far can the relationship between teacher-students go?

Are you friendly with your students? Do you usually talk to them about their issues in the house? Do you go out with your students shopping? Do your students ask you out every weekend? Have you ever hang out with your students? Do you chat with most of the students of your school? Have you ever had any problem with your colleagues about the way you relate with your students?

If you answer any of these questions with a “yes”, you are having problems drawing the line between the teacher-student relationship. The distinction between being a teacher and being a friend is always hard to see for some teachers, especially if they are new. Once I was in a private school, where there weren’t major problems with money. However, students lacked love that even I could notice it. In one particular situation I was asked by one of the students to give him my messenger account in order to talk to me every time he needed help. I was happy to help him, so I gave it to him. But, as a consequence the school wasn’t happy about it. They were trying to explain to me that I wasn’t allowed to have that kind of relation with the student. I was supposed to be the teacher not a friend.

A good teacher knows that in order to have a good class, there must be trust between the class and the teacher, but when the relation goes further, the teachers have to stop. Usually other teachers observe this behavior and tend to think that this teacher is having some kind of problem at home. Therefore, in order to fix it, the teacher is spending more time with his students. The reaction of other teachers to this kind of behavior is always diverse, but the idea will remain the same to most of them: “the teacher is doing something morally incorrect”.

Sometimes new teachers are full of new ideas and the enthusiasm to do new things, which is why is difficult for them to realize that they are trespassing the line. It is also understandable that some schools think that this behavior is not correct for a teacher. Moreover, there will be always a student who is going to ask for help and as a teacher is important to be ready for this kind of situation. To work this conflict out, a teacher has to develop activities not related with the subject to work with the students. For example, special meeting can be arranged during the afternoon. These meetings are going to allow the teacher to have a closer connection with the students inside the school. Another possibility is to create small spaces during the classes to talk with your students about different topics that are not allowed with the class, in order to make the students see that you are a person and not only a teacher and that you care about them. Interesting activities like these help the teacher to create a bond with the class.