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MOST PARENTS do not send their child to a new pediatrician each year. Rather, they try to arrange for a single pediatrician to monitor their child's growth and development over time. Presumably, these parents conclude that one doctor's growing knowledge of their child makes the management of that child's health care more effective.
Similarly, research on school effectiveness has consistently suggested that long-term teacher/student relationships improve both student performance(1) and job satisfaction for teachers.(2) Yet, despite these findings, meaningful discussion of long-term teacher/student relationships is scarce in our nation's schools, and implementation is rare enough to be regarded as exceptional.
A close look at the literature makes the scarcity of discussion and the rarity of implementation of multi-year teacher/student relationships puzzling. For example, one group of teachers who taught the same students for three years told researcher Nancy Doda that the experience had been the "most satisfying" interval of their professional lives because it allowed them "to see students grow and change over time."(3)
Teachers in a different school using the same organizational plan affirmed those findings.(4) Approximately 70% of them reported that teaching the same students for three years allowed them to use more positive approaches to classroom management. Ninety-two percent of them said that they knew more about their students, and 69% described their students as more willing to participate voluntarily in class. Eighty-five percent of the teachers reported that their students were better able to see themselves as important members of a group, to feel pride in that group, and to feel pride in the school as a whole. Eighty-four percent of the teachers reported more positive relationships with parents, and 75% reported increased empathy with colleagues. The reactions of students in this study were favorable as well,...