Ask any educator today, and they’ll tell you that relationships across the board are strained in schools. Our educational landscape is rife with sociopolitical pressures: political polarization, disagreements over the teaching of race and LGBTQ+ rights that lead to restrictions on addressing particular topics, curriculum debates and questions about the effectiveness of inclusive education that undermine inclusive curricula and social-emotional learning (SEL). Other concerns that impede supportive school climates include health and safety crises such as the pandemic, and student Mental health concerns that are manifesting in dramatically changing student behavior.

And the list goes on. What are educators doing to address these increasingly challenging pressures? What practical strategies are they implementing to rebuild positive, relationship-centered classrooms?

Amid these pressures, many educators are creating hopeful new ways of rebuilding school climate, as we learned through our research. This article highlights promising, relationship-centered practices that educators are using right now to foster belonging, productive classroom discussions, conflict resolution, and emotion regulation for both students and themselves.

Connection before correction: Cultivating a sense of belonging

Sarah, a fifth-grade teacher we encountered in our research, notices that Maeve often acts out on test days. As a math test is about to begin, Maeve becomes disruptive—bothering classmates, crumpling papers, and making accusatory comments. Sarah can either immediately correct the behavior or first connect with Maeve. She chooses connection.

Sarah pulls Maeve aside and asks how she’s feeling about the test. Maeve admits she’s nervous and afraid of failing. Sarah listens, reassures her that mistakes are part of learning, and shares that she gets test jitters, too. Feeling seen and supported, Maeve calms down. Only then does Sarah briefly address the earlier behavior, recognizing it was rooted in Maeve’s anxiety.

According to a survey our team administered to nearly 100 educators, teachers are utilizing practical ways to prioritize connections through strategies such as warm individual greetings when students enter the classroom, empathy and validating feelings, sharing personal stories about their lives, and showing sincere interest in students’ lives. By actively listening, using reassuring words and facial expressions, and recognizing student hobbies and activities, they establish common ground for building caring relationships. Saying something as simple as “I understand how you feel” can build a bridge.

Research indicates that when students are in a state of “belonging uncertainty,” they may question the quality of their social connections, directly impacting their motivation. A compromised sense of belonging can cause students to interpret tasks as more difficult than they are as they align the challenge with a feeling that they simply don’t belong. Connecting before correcting can bolster students’ view of problems as more temporary and typical than permanent and unsolvable.

Empowering student voice

Soon after the murder of George Floyd in June 2020, numerous graduates from a suburban high school reached out to their hometown school district’s curriculum office. Across their college classrooms, cafeterias, and dorm rooms, discussions about race in modern America were intense. All of the alumni who reached out felt ill-prepared to engage in such discussions. The director of curriculum shared this feedback with the secondary social studies and English language arts (ELA) teachers.

The teachers responded with fear and concern. They were worried that facilitating classroom discussions around controversial and emotionally charged topics, such as race, would lead to microaggressions, hurt feelings, and repercussions for teachers as a result.

Classroom discussion driven by student voice, where students share their ideas and learn from one another, can sometimes be counterproductive. Research indicates that teachers require explicit professional learning to design and sustain structured student voice practices, including strategies for eliciting authentic input, facilitating deliberation, and engaging students as co-designers of the practices.

To achieve this, the secondary social studies and ELA teachers received training in creating structured environments for discussion using evidence-based best practices:

• Co-create classroom norms: Let students set the norms and rules for class discussion.
• Scaffold respectful civil discourse: Structured techniques like Yes-No-Maybe and Respectful Debate teach students to articulate opinions, listen deeply, and reflect on others’ ideas.
• Practice audience-focused communication: Students tailor their messages for different audiences—classmates, teachers, administrators, or community members.

This framework validates all students’ voices and choices and tends to increase their internal motivation, while maintaining a safe and structured environment.

Structured, student-driven open forums—such as Socratic seminars, student-led meetings, and restorative circles—help formalize respectful exchanges and cultivate trust so students feel safe to take intellectual, social, and emotional risks, all of which are foundational conditions for productive discussion in and out of the classroom.

Co-regulation as the foundation for student-centered discipline

After a peer conflict in algebra class, a middle school student visited the counselor’s office, displaying signs of emotional distress—rapid breathing, tense shoulders, and defensive responses. Instead of asking questions about the situation or reinforcing expectations about appropriate behavior, the counselor sat next to the student, and in a calm tone of voice said, “It looks like you’re feeling frustrated, so let’s slow things down and take a few deep breaths together.” After the student’s breathing slowed and their tense shoulders softened, the counselor asked several open-ended questions to help the student reflect on and make sense of the experience and determine a clear plan of action to repair the peer conflict.

Self-regulation involves a wide range of skills, including emotional awareness, self-soothing, and flexible thinking. Students learn how to self-regulate through co-regulation, the bidirectional process between a child and adult, in which a calm and caring adult provides the environment and scaffolds for the child to regulate their emotions and behavior during stressful situations. When a child experiences feelings of anxiety or overwhelm, their nervous system enters “fight or flight” mode, which may manifest as an emotional meltdown or withdrawal. Through the calm and steady presence of an attuned adult modeling regulation techniques, the balance of their nervous system can be restored.

One of the counselors we surveyed draws upon the 3 Rs from psychiatrist Dr. Bruce Perry with her students:

• Regulate: Help the student to use exercises such as deep breathing or rhythmic movement to reach a calm state.
• Relate: Connect with the student through active listening and empathy to understand their perspective.
• Reason: Invite the student to engage in reflection and problem solving.

Perry’s steps are grounded in neuroscience, acknowledging that the lower brain must be regulated first before students can access higher brain regions, such as the cortex, to carry out activities like reasoning.

Over time, engaging in co-regulation with caring adults fosters whole-brain integration, reduces the long-term impacts of stress, and helps children to build resilience by internalizing emotional regulation skills through safe, supportive relationships.

Restorative practices to build accountability

After two students got into a heated argument during a group project in a seventh-grade social studies lesson, one student slammed her laptop and said, “That’s it! I give up! You do everything your way.” The other student rolled her eyes and continued typing. Rather than sending the students to the main office or school counselor, the teacher invited them both into the hallway for a restorative conversation.

She asked them each to share their perspectives and then to consider who was affected by their actions. After each student had an opportunity to share, she guided them toward repair and resolution by asking them, “What can you do to improve the situation?” and “What do you need to do that?” Within five minutes, both students verbally agreed to apologize to their fellow group members, as well as to clearly define everyone’s roles within the group. The restorative conversation allowed the girls to resolve their conflict, strengthen their relationship, and shift the focus from blame to accountability.

Restorative practices like this conversation consist of formal and informal processes that help to resolve conflict, foster relationships, and build a sense of community. Numerous studies find that exclusionary forms of discipline, such as suspensions, have detrimental effects on students, including heightened Mental health challenges, increased misbehavior, and lower academic achievement. Restorative practices offer a relationship-centered alternative that empowers students who have committed wrongdoing to take full accountability by understanding how their behavior affected others, acknowledging the harm it caused, and taking meaningful action to repair the harm.

Whether used formally through restorative circles and conferences or informally with restorative conversations and talking about feelings, when students are exposed to restorative practices, research finds they show benefits such as experiencing decreased bullying and violence, improved Mental health, fewer suspensions and expulsions, improved behavior, and restored relationships.

One school administrator we interviewed said, “I have found that schools who use restorative practices encourage stronger bonds and relationships between teacher and students and between students themselves. This sense of community is a vital facet of a positive school culture and climate.”

Routines to promote educator wellness and connection

Just before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic, the emotional labor demands on teachers increased to levels unseen in history. In an effort to mitigate the emotional distress of his teachers, one principal asked each staff member to give a positive shoutout to a colleague in the first few minutes of every staff meeting. This routine did lift the mood momentarily and promoted greater positivity, but there was still a great deal of emotional turmoil under the surface that was unaddressed.

Just as students benefit from adult co-regulation that scaffolds their ability to regulate their emotions in stressful situations, so do teachers. An effective co-regulation strategy that works for principals aiming to co-regulate their staff’s emotional distress involves adult modeling and scaffolding of emotional regulation strategies.

In the midst of COVID, the principal implemented a three-minute routine at the start of each staff meeting by modeling a strategy called structured SELf-Questioning:

• I do: The principal models via a think aloud, asking and answering out loud two questions (“What am I feeling?” and “What can I do to self-calm?”)
• We do: Staff ask themselves the same questions, write down their answers, share in pairs, and share out with the whole group if time permits.
• You do: Teachers replicate this in their classrooms with their students.

As the emotional challenges facing schools intensify, the steady ability to navigate one’s own emotions while helping others do the same is the key to a principal’s success.

Providing teachers with evidence-based adult SEL experiences—such as those embedded into staff meetings or professional development—can meaningfully improve educator well-being and promote greater engagement. Abundant research finds that SEL training and SEL teaching have major benefits for both teachers and students.

Reclaiming relationships as the heart of schooling

The pressures facing today’s schools are real, complex, and often overwhelming. It is becoming increasingly clear that meaningful change does not need to start with expansive policy revisions or punitive approaches; it begins with relationships.

Across classrooms, counseling offices, and staff meetings, educators and administrators are choosing connection over correction, regulation over reaction, and restoration over exclusion. They are prioritizing belonging, elevating student voice within classroom environments, engaging in co-regulation, utilizing restorative practices, and tending to educator wellness.

While these approaches are not quick fixes, they are grounded in research, brain science, and the lived experiences of educators who understand that behavior is a form of communication. When students and educators feel seen and heard, they take more academic risks; and when conflict is approached with repair instead of punishment, relationships thrive. Rebuilding school climate is not about returning to what used to be; it is about shaping how we will move forward, intentionally. And these educators and administrators remind us that the path forward is always better with connection.