Getting on Their Turf: The Complete Educator Guide to Connection, Trust and Behaviour in the Classroom

Teacher student relationships are not a soft add-on that happens after the real work of teaching. They are the mechanism through which real teaching becomes possible. When you understand what student behaviour is communicating, manage your own regulation before you respond, and get on your students’ turf consistently, you change what is possible in your classroom – for every student, including the ones who seem the furthest away. This guide covers all three in research-grounded, practical language drawn from 30 years in education and six years inside a youth psychiatric unit.

Are you a parent?

Read the home version of this guide here.

You became a teacher because you believed you could make a difference. And you probably have, more than you know. But somewhere between that belief and the reality of a full classroom, escalating complexity, and a system that keeps asking more of you with fewer resources, the relationship piece starts to feel like a luxury. Something you will get to when the real work is done.

Here is what six years inside a youth psychiatric unit taught me: the relationship is the real work.

I taught in an inpatient concurrent disorders unit alongside psychiatrists and mental health clinicians. My students were teenagers in acute crisis – concurrent mental health and substance use disorders, significant trauma histories, and a long pattern of being failed by the adults around them. What I found in that setting, and what my doctoral research at Simon Fraser University later confirmed, is that the professionals who made the most lasting difference in those young lives were not always the clinicians. They were often the educators who refused to give up on the relationship when every signal from the student said to.

I asked 25 of those teenagers what they needed most from the educators in their lives as their mental health declined. Their answers came back to three things across every age, background, and diagnosis: support, understanding, and care. Not programs. Not behaviour plans. Not clever management strategies. Adults who could see them, stay regulated in the face of their worst behaviour, and keep showing up.

Getting on their turf is what that looks like in a classroom. This guide covers the foundation of every effective teacher student relationship: reading what behaviour is actually communicating, managing your own regulation as the prerequisite for everything else, and building the kind of trust that changes what a student believes is possible for them.

Behaviour
is
Communication

It is not defiance.

It is a message that doesn’t have words yet.

What Student Behaviour Is Actually Communicating – and Why That Changes Everything

The most significant shift available to any educator is this one: treat behaviour as data, not as a moral verdict. When a student is disruptive, defiant, withdrawn, or completely disengaged, they are not doing it to you. They are communicating something about their internal state that they do not have the language or the safety to express directly.

In the psychiatric unit, the students most labelled as difficult were often the most transparent, once you learned what to listen for. Aggression, shutdown, apparent indifference – these were not personality traits. They were adaptations to environments that had consistently failed to respond to what the student actually needed. The behaviour was always information. The question was whether any adult in their life was willing to read it that way.

In a mainstream classroom, the patterns are the same. The student who challenges your authority every lesson may be carrying a home situation that makes safe adults feel dangerous. The student who never asks for help may have learned through repeated experience that asking leads to embarrassment. The student who stares at the wall may be so exhausted from what is happening outside your room that showing up at all is the full extent of what they have today.

None of this excuses the behaviour. All of it changes how you respond to it – and how you respond determines whether the behaviour gets better or worse over time.

The shift in practice: When a student’s behaviour frustrates or confuses you, pause before you respond and ask: what is this student communicating that they do not have the words for? What do they need that they are not getting in this moment? That question does not mean you ignore the behaviour. It means you respond to what is underneath it, which is the only response that actually works.

Why Your Regulation Is the Most Powerful Tool in Your Classroom

Teacher training programs spend a great deal of time on curriculum, pedagogy, and classroom management systems. They spend almost none on the most powerful variable in the room: the teacher’s own nervous system.

Your emotional state is not private in a classroom. It is broadcast. Students read your tension, your frustration, your containment, and your calm in real time – not consciously, but accurately. Students whose nervous systems have been shaped by unpredictable or threatening environments are especially attuned to adult emotional states. They are reading you before you have said a word. When you are activated, the room becomes less safe. When you are regulated, the room becomes available for learning.

In my doctoral research, students consistently named teacher calm as one of the most significant factors in whether they felt safe in a classroom. Not well-designed lessons. Not fair consequences. Calm. A steady adult who did not escalate when they escalated. Who could hold the line without losing warmth. Who made the room feel predictable even when the student’s own state was chaotic. That quality is more teachable than it sounds, and it is more important than almost anything else you will bring to your classroom.

This is not about emotional suppression or performing patience you do not have. It is about developing enough self-awareness to know when you are activated, and enough skill to give yourself a moment before you act. Thirty seconds between the provocation and your response. That pause is where your professional expertise lives. The quality of your classroom relationships is built in those thirty seconds, one difficult moment at a time.

The concrete starting point: Identify the student or the situation that most reliably activates you. Notice what happens in your body when it does – the tension, the urge to speak immediately. That noticing is the beginning of regulation. Then practise giving yourself 30 seconds before you respond. Not to go soft. To go intentional.

Get on their Turf

Enter their world on their terms to prove they matter.

Five Things About Your Students That Will Change How You Teach

After six years in the psychiatric unit and 30 years in classrooms, here is what I know about the students in front of you.

They know who notices them. Students have an acute awareness of which adults in the building see them as people rather than performance. They remember every teacher who learned their name in the first week, asked a question and actually waited for the answer, or followed up on something they mentioned two weeks ago. That noticing costs you nothing. It means everything to them.
The ones furthest away need you to go first. The students who seem most indifferent to connection are almost always the ones who have been disappointed by adults enough times that they have stopped initiating. They are not unreachable. They are protecting themselves. The adult has to take the first step, consistently, without expecting an immediate return.
Safety determines whether learning is possible. A student who does not feel relationally safe in your classroom cannot learn in your classroom. Not because they are choosing not to but because the threat response in the brain physically closes down the higher-order thinking required for learning. Building safety is not a detour from academic instruction. It is the condition under which instruction works.
You only need to be one safe adult. You do not have to be everything to every student. For some students, one adult in the building who sees them, stays warm, and keeps showing up is the thing that changes the trajectory. You may never know which student that is for. Show up as though it could be any of them.
Repair matters more than perfection. When you handle something badly – when you lose patience, raise your voice, or let your frustration show in ways you regret – the repair of that moment is more valuable than if it had never happened. Students who watch an educator own a mistake and come back to repair it learn something irreplaceable: that relationships can hold through rupture. Model the skill you are trying to teach.

Getting on Your Students’ Turf – What It Actually Looks Like

Getting on their turf in a classroom is not about lowering your expectations or abandoning your authority. It is about being willing to enter a student’s world briefly, on their terms, as a signal that they matter to you as a person and not merely as a learner to be managed.

Consider a teacher I know who taught in a school with significant behavioural challenges. Her September looked like this: for the first three weeks, she spent two minutes before every class at the door – not to manage the entry of students but to make brief, genuine contact with each one as they came in. She knew nothing about most of them yet. She asked about small things. She remembered one thing each student told her and mentioned it the next day. By week four, the room was different. Not because she had implemented a new behaviour system. Because the students had decided she was someone who saw them.

That is getting on their turf. It is the two minutes at the door. The question in the hallway about something that has nothing to do with class. The moment you notice a student is off and say quietly: “You seem like you are having a hard day. I am here if you want to talk.” You are not solving anything in those moments. You are building the relationship that makes solving things possible later.

Start this week: Pick one student who you find difficult to connect with. For five consecutive school days, find one small moment each day to acknowledge them specifically – not about their work, not about their behaviour, just about them as a person. Do not look for a result. Just do it. Notice what shifts in how they carry themselves in your room by day five.

When a Student Needs More Than You Can Give

Part of getting on their turf is knowing your role and its boundaries. You are a teacher. You are not a therapist, a crisis counsellor, or a case manager. You are a teacher – and that is a significant and powerful thing in its own right. Your role is to be the safe adult who notices, who stays warm and consistent, and who connects the student to the right professional support when what they need goes beyond your scope.

Students in my research described this kind of handoff – when a teacher they trusted connected them to a counsellor or support person – as one of the most meaningful things an adult had done for them. Not because it fixed things, but because it communicated: I see that you are struggling and I care enough to make sure you get real help. The handoff, done with warmth and without withdrawing the relationship, is the relationship in action.

If a student discloses something that triggers your mandatory reporting obligations, act on it. Document what was said, report through the appropriate channels in your school, and follow through. Being a safe adult does not mean keeping unsafe secrets. It means being trustworthy – and trustworthiness includes taking action on a student’s behalf even when they have asked you not to.

Listen to the Get on Their Turf Podcast

The Get on Their Turf podcast goes deeper on every topic in this guide. New episodes every two weeks.

Frequently Asked Questions

I only have 60 minutes with each class. How do I build real relationships in that time?

Consistency over volume. You do not need more time. You need to use the time you have intentionally. Be at the door when they arrive. Learn every name in the first week. Remember one thing each student tells you and mention it the next time you see them. Those small consistent signals accumulate into a relationship across 60 minutes five times a week. The quantity of time matters far less than the quality of attention within it.

I have a student who is actively hostile toward me. What do I do?

Stay warm without chasing. Give them space without withdrawing. Do not let the hostility become the defining feature of the relationship by getting into power struggles about it. Find one low-stakes moment each week to make contact about something entirely unrelated to their behaviour or their work. Hostile students have almost always learned that adults cannot be trusted – and they are testing whether you are different. The test is whether you stay warm through it. Stay warm.

How do I know when to refer a student to the school counsellor?

You do not need certainty. You need professional concern. A pattern of withdrawal, sudden changes in behaviour, signs of distress that go beyond ordinary difficulty, or anything a student discloses that worries you – these are all sufficient. You are not required to diagnose anything. You are required to say: I have a student I am concerned about and I want to make sure they have access to support. Act on it early. The cost of acting too early is a brief, uneventful conversation. The cost of waiting too long can be much higher.

What do I do the day after I handled a situation badly?

Go back and repair it before the lesson starts if possible. It does not require a long conversation. “Yesterday didn’t go the way I wanted it to, and I want you to know that didn’t change anything for me. You are still someone I am glad to have in my class.” Brief, genuine, no drama. Students who watch an educator repair a mistake without making it a big production learn something that stays with them: that it is possible to get things wrong and come back. Teach that by doing it.

stays with them: that it is possible to get things wrong and come back. Teach that by doing it. I am burned out. How do I stay present for my students when I have nothing left?

You cannot give from an empty place, and trying to will not serve your students. Burnout is a signal that your own support needs are not being met – not a character failing. The most important thing you can do for your students when you are running low is to take your own regulation seriously. Small practices during the school day, honest conversation with a trusted colleague, and being clear with yourself about what is sustainable right now. A regulated, imperfect teacher in the room is worth more to students than an exhausted one performing presence they do not have.

Is it possible to rebuild trust with a student after a serious rupture?

Yes. In many cases the repair of a rupture produces a stronger relationship than one that was never tested. What is required is a genuine acknowledgement of what happened – not an explanation or a justification, just an honest ownership of it – and then consistent behaviour over time that shows the relationship is still intact. Students who experience genuine repair from an adult often become the most trusting students in the room. The rupture, handled well, becomes the evidence that the relationship is real.

About Dr. Suzanne Simpson

Dr. Suzanne Simpson is a doctoral researcher, educator, and host of the Get on Their Turf podcast. She has over 30 years of experience working with young people in educational settings, including nearly six years teaching inside a youth psychiatric unit. For her doctoral research at Simon Fraser University, she sat with 25 teenagers in psychiatric care and asked what they needed most. Their answer was clear: support, understanding, and care. Those three things are the foundation of everything she teaches. Suzanne helps parents understand teen behaviour, get on their turf, and rebuild connection at home – even when it feels hardest. She works with parents, schools, and communities across Canada.

Download the free guide “8 Ways to Get On Your Kids’ Turf” at drsuzannesimpson.com

Please note that the contents of this post are not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. My scope of practice is as an educator, and this work is intended to provide information for educational purposes only. Testimonials of lived experiences are opinion only and have not been scientifically evaluated.