5 Simple Ways To Be More Likeable To Your Students


The idea is simple.

If your students like you, they’ll want to please you and seek your approval. Which gives you leverage to influence behavior like almost nothing else.

And the best news is… it’s automatic. Your students will automatically behave better simply because they like you.

The prevailing wisdom says that teachers need to be grim-faced and serious or students will walk all over them.


Hogwash.

This old way of thinking doesn’t work with today’s kids. What does work is creating leverage and rapport through, among other things, likeability.

Five Simple Ways To Be More Likeable

It isn’t difficult to become more likeable to your students. Anyone can make a few changes in how they relate to their students and see results quickly.

Commit yourself to following the list below for just one week, and behavior in your classroom will improve—both because your students will be happier to be part of your class, and because you’ll have more influence over their behavior choices.

1. Relax

Stress will permeate your classroom like a thick fog, creating excitability in your students and negative feelings about you. So before greeting students every day, take a deep breath and shake the tension out of your arms, legs, and shoulders. Just let it go…

You’ll be more likeable, feel more confident, and carry the calm, relaxed demeanor of a teacher who knows what he or she is doing.

2. Smile

Deadlines, test scores, meetings, paperwork. When you’re under the gun, stressed, or not at your best, your smile is the first thing to go. And with it goes your likeability. You can’t be influential with a furrowed brow and a frown.

A smile is the first step to creating a mutual admiration society with your students; the more you smile at them, the more they’ll smile back. And the more you’ll like each other—a little known key to exceptional classroom management.



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