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Imagine walking inside of classroom for your first term of a new class and with little means of communication the teacher who will be responsible for the class points to the board filled with instructions you barely understand. How would this make you feel towards attending the class? It is important to know that being a teacher comes with many responsibilities and one of them is building a good rapport. In order to effectively build a good rapport we must first know what is meant by the term. According to the Cambridge Dictionary the term rapport is defined as a good understanding of someone and an ability to communicate well with them. Establishing a rapport is a very important task for a teacher as it is one of the main factors that will decide the outcome of their class. To get the most out of students a teacher first needs to create an environment where the students feel comfortable around the teacher. This environment can be created in several simple ways and does not necessarily requires a teacher to have years of experience. According to Buskits and Saville 2001 building a rapport can be as simple as addressing students by their name or arriving early for classes. Some other strategies that can be used to help establish a good rapport with students are, introducing yourself and telling students basic things about you, for examples your hobbies, this can help reduce tension for first classes of the semester, as students might feel nervous and not know what to expect from a new teacher. In addition having a warm and welcoming personality inside the classroom can help students to feel more relax around you and want to participate in discussion. In some instances you might also notice that students who are more reserved will even be more willing to participate in class and may approach you for help or assistance when unsure of a task. There are also other advantages of having a good rapport apart from those previously listed. These include, the teacher being able to have better classroom management, students will become more motivated towards learning, the level of respect towards the teacher will increase and finally students will be able to establish an even better rapport among themselves. Based on the article I read by William Buskits 2001, I can link some of this information to my own experience as a teacher. For the past two years teaching, I noticed that students will perform better inside my class if there is a good rapport established between us. Although there should always be a level of authority shown by the teacher there should also be enough room for students to not feel as if their existence inside the class is unnecessary. Content alone won’t allow students to receive the full effect of what is being thought. Student will become more engaged by how the teacher delivers this content and this all depends on the rapport with the teacher. Finally modeling good rapport as the teacher will contribute to students social skills that can be used outside of the classroom. In conclusion we can say that Rapport is not something to be over look as a teacher as it contributes well to students learning.
