Relationships with Academic Content

Most people think building relationships is only with people. However, if students build relationships with academic content, they will succeed in all they do.    Building relations with content is to find what is interesting to the child.  The child needs to be an active advocate for what he/she likes with the content.    The child needs to take an active role in learning.  The following will show how to have the child take an active role in the learning process.

Following in the field of psychology on how to build relationships with people. Relationships building in content mirrors what students need to do with academic content.  It is different since relationships are with people. However, building a relationship with content has similar components that can build success. One idea for building relationships is a sense of belonging.  People need to feel they belong in the community which is the same as children need to feel they belong in academic content.  What that means is that the child needs to feel that each content area he/she has a connection to the content.  To assist the child to belong with the content area is by building activities that engage the child with the content.  Building engagement with a child and content is to find ways the child wants to investigate more and doesn’t want to stop learning. Having a relationship with content material means the child feels he/she can tackle all the areas in the field. If an obstacle occurs, he/she can overcome it. Since he/she is experiencing the learning with an open mind and willing to be vulnerable to take the time to learn what they are interested in. Some of this is for the child to lead their learning and learn what interests them to learn,

In building relationships, one needs to show a level of vulnerability. Vulnerability, as it relates to students with content, is that the child needs to be open to all the possibilities to find solutions to problems. It is not just taking a test or finding the answer in a text. It is for the child to research the topic and take the time to find possible answers to questions or problems.   How to help the child be vulnerable is to make sure the child is experiencing all the areas of the material by researching and investigating all areas. Finally, look for what excites them in learning the content.  The child needs to be willing to research the topic and obtain what he/she wants to investigate further.

The last component to build a relationship with content is a child needs to have a sense of ownership.  The child needs to feel they own the content meaning he/she is advocating for him/herself to guide the direction of the content.  This can happen at any age.  Being an advocate for themselves enhances the relationship they are building with the content. As an advocate, they are having a relationship with the material.  The more the child advocates and owns their learning the more the child is engaged. They then see the value in the content especially if it is a subject more difficult for the child.

Building relationships with content builds more confident students and self-advocacy.  The relationship will empower the child to ask for help when needed and trust the subject will open worlds to them that they did not even think about.   Think about how many children struggle with math and find it very frustrating.  When the child builds a relationship with math, he/she needs to show a level of vulnerability.  Meaning the child needs to see all the possibilities and all the relationships there are in math.  The child needs to see the relationship between addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, and fractions, decimals, and percentages.  The child will then be able to own the mathematics content. Then advocate her/his understanding of the content and build upon relationships in the content.

Students need to build relationships with the content so they can master the information at any level.