Building Trusting Relationships Starts Here

This month we’re sharing some special insights and resources from our Director of Transformative Practice Integration, Rachel Bacosa. Read below for her reflections on building trust with students in order to strengthen relationships, and learning. Valuable practices and resource included!

I have. It was the second week of September and my 24 first graders were rotating through math stations. I was working with a small group when I heard laughter coming from across the room. Before I even looked up, my mind had already decided: “They’re off task. They’re not taking this seriously. I need to redirect them.” This assumption took half a second. Maybe less. But what had I actually observed? Laughter. Talking. That was it. Everything else was the story I had added.

What else could have been true? Maybe they were talking through the problem out loud. Maybe the laughter was how they were working through something hard. Maybe there was a whole world at that station I couldn’t see from across the room.
That question has stayed with me—in classrooms, coaching conversations, and other spaces where certainty can arrive before curiosity.

Curiosity changes the response.
Moments like this are why I keep returning to the importance of our Anchor Competencies Framework, and the anchor competency ‘Building Trusting Relationships’. At CRTWC, we view Building Trusting Relationships as foundational to the creation of spaces where learners feel safe, valued, respected, and supported—and spaces where teachers understand enough about their context to let that knowledge shape how we teach, respond, and connect.

Below are 3 practices to use alongside our Framework. Reflect on these practices and how you might implement them in your life and work as the school year begins.