Teachers: You Matter More than You Might Think

If you are a college professor or high school teacher, you may have some concerns about returning to school given the challenges many of you have reported about engaging Gen Z students. From being sidelined by their screens to getting “crickets” in class discussions, you may feel as though you’ve gone from the center of attention in your arena of influence to an interloper in your own classroom. It’s enough to make even the most optimistic educator frustrated. 

And yet, survey data consistently show that while it might seem like no one is listening, relationships with teachers are among the strongest determinants in a range of student outcomes, from academic performance to overall wellbeing – this according to the students themselves. 

Last week, the Walton Family Foundation and Gallup released the most recent edition of their annual Voices of Gen Z Study, which asked 1,758 Gen Zers in middle or high school what makes a school experience enjoyable and engaging. According to the responses, the strongest predictors of whether students enjoy school are having teachers who recognize and encourage their individual strengths and goals, along with feeling their coursework is interesting and feeling like they belong at their school. 

“The students who are the most engaged at school are those who are most likely to say that they have close, meaningful relationships with their teachers,” the report states. “These students say that they have at least one teacher who checks in on their personal wellbeing, and not only encourages their goals and ambitions, but also helps them understand and develop those goals.” 

In higher education, the correlation between relationships with faculty and overall wellbeing is well established. A long-term Gallup study found that six key college experiences are linked to preparedness and wellbeing later in life and that half of them involve relationships with teachers. These are: having at least one professor who makes you excited about learning, having professors who care about you as a person, and having a mentor who encourages you to pursue your goals. 

This past spring, the LearningWell Coalition (publisher of LearningWell magazine), together with the AAC&U and Morning Consult conducted the survey “What Students Value in College” and found that relationships with faculty and staff are among the most powerful elements of the undergraduate experience. 76 percent of students said having a mentor was “very” or “extremely” valuable, making it one of the top-rated college experiences in the survey. 

The impact of these relationships extends beyond perception into measurable outcomes. Using the PERMA framework of wellbeing, students with a faculty or staff mentor report higher wellbeing (7.12) compared to those without one (6.62), making mentorship one of the strongest contributors to student flourishing among all experiences studied.

The essential point is that educators matter more than even they might think. Despite the challenges in engaging pandemic-affected Gen Z students, they still expect and want their teachers to be present and to actually care whether they are learning. At LearningWell magazine, we have the privilege of reporting on teachers and faculty who are looking past the eye rolls and/or lack of eye contact to successfully connect with their students. This superpower may simply be the ability to engage with students as human beings, letting them know, “I care about you as a person.” 

Jennifer Woolard, a psychology professor at Georgetown University, begins every class with a breathing exercise as a way to ground students and ask that they pause and be present. She was one of the early participants in the Engelhard Project for Connecting Life and Learning, which engages faculty in making connections between students’ academic studies and their broader life experiences, especially in the areas of wellbeing, flourishing, and mental health. 

“For me, Engelhard is about modeling,” Woolard said. “Taking the time out of class to discuss these issues says to my students that I care about their wellbeing.” Student reflections confirm they get the message. One student reported, “I felt cared for — like the professor was genuinely interested in our wellbeing rather than us just churning out good grades.”

Nearly a decade ago, Matthew DeLeo began teaching the QUESTion Class to his sophomores at the Bronx Academy in New York City. The course gives public high school students in low-income neighborhoods the opportunity for self-reflection and personal development, with questions like: What is purpose? Is life about me, or is it about others? Why does it take courage to be yourself? 

DeLeo said the benefits of the class were remarkable, and bi-directional. “It was the students’ growth and development — and the way they express what the program has done for them — that has enabled me to learn and grow as their teacher.” 

Sunny Gaye Hallowell is a professor of nursing at Villanova University. She wanted her students to be able to connect the meaning of nursing practice to who they were becoming as adults, much like they might in a humanities course. She enrolled in a year-long faculty workshop offered by the university that embeds character education, particularly human development, into multi-disciplined curriculum. 

“I wanted to blend art and science to help students explore the human experience of health and healthcare through the eyes of both patients and providers,” Hallowell said, “and to help them form a professional identity.” 

Even at the largest universities, a professor’s desire to connect can be felt in her classroom. At the University of Washington, Elizabeth Kirk regularly arrives early to her introduction to nutrition class and stands outside the lecture hall to welcome her students inside — all 500 of them. Kirk participates in a program called Five for Flourishing that guides faculty members in the implementation of strategies to promote connection in the biggest classes across the university. 

These strategies include adding language to class syllabi that expresses support for student wellbeing, organizing small student groups that meet weekly, and instituting mid-quarter evaluations for students to offer feedback on the course. They may be small gestures, but they speak volumes about Kirk’s appreciation for belonging in her classroom. 

These educators will tell you they have good days and bad days when it comes to student engagement. But they, and hundreds like them, share a grounding principle that it is the students who are their reason for being, and not the other way around. Through all the credentials, the research and the publishing, it is the opportunity to enlighten someone through education that drives them forward. 

You can reach LearningWell Editor Marjorie Malpiede at mmalpiede@learningwellmag.org with comments, ideas, or tips.