Rethinking the Grammar of Student-Teacher Relationships

One educational structure with its own grammar is the student-teacher relationship. The conventional relational grammar involves teachers and students connecting to pursue academic learning—a grammar rooted in both historic attempts to define the professional domain of teaching as the transmission of academic knowledge as well as current efforts to “learnify” education. This study describes 154 student-teacher relationships experienced by three high school teachers in a Midwest middle college to depict a revised relational grammar. Encouraged to reimagine teaching as academic and nonacademic support-giving, the Lincoln teachers exhibited a relational grammar based on knowing students as learners and also deeply as people and giving nonacademic support as much as or more than academic support, with implications for equity.