I'll soon be finishing my second and last year as a geometry teacher at Hastings High School, a big, urban institution serving 3,200 mostly poor black and Hispanic students in Houston. I'm one of the growing number of college graduates who have taken on jobs in the nation's most difficult public schools through Teach for America (TFA).

Because my time at Hastings is winding down, I've been reflecting on what I've learned during my TFA tenure. One lesson stands out: Urban teachers lose a lot of students to apathy and alienation because they don't connect with them in meaningful ways; many students don’t care because they don't feel that schools care about them.

During my first week at Hastings, I was waiting in line in the school clinic to have my picture taken for my school ID when an adult grabbed my arm. "Students can't have facial hair," she told me. "You need to go to the restroom and shave. There's a razor on the sink." At 22 and 5'6", not even my wispy beard distinguished me from my students. I was nervous about how I would manage the streetwise teenagers in my classes. But I quickly learned that the advice from my teaching colleagues would have been the same if I had been 10 years older or 10 inches taller: Keep your emotional distance from students. Be tough. They don't need friends for teachers; they need authority figures. One common refrain was, "Don't smile until Christmas."

By the first day of school, I had internalized that advice, and I was ready to show my students that they could not push me around. I tried to seem tough and businesslike. I enunciated sharply, stood rigidly, and tried to avoid comments that were too personal or funny. I refused to answer questions about my age. My demeanor mirrored the cold solemnity of the equations I scribbled on the board.

As I saw it, my students and I each had distinct jobs to do. My job was to work hard to explain concepts clearly and offer extra help when needed. Their job was to stay focused, ask questions, and be positive. But, in retrospect, I failed to understand that I was only going to be a successful teacher if I convinced my students that I was there to help them, that we were in a partnership together.

During the first months of school, I struggled with unmotivated and uncooperative students, and I often left school at the end of the day feeling discouraged. Fourth period was nearly unbearable, thanks to Tara¹, who was raising a daughter when she wasn't terrorizing teachers. The problem wasn't Tara's blatant disrespect for me or lack of interest in learning. I could handle that. The problem was her raucous eruptions, which prevented other students from learning.

After one of Tara's outbursts in the second month of school, I started to wonder if I needed a new approach to managing students. After the incident, I asked to speak with Tara in the hallway. I was exasperated and tired. So I just asked her what I really wanted to know: "Why are you acting like this?" She seemed surprised by my question; instead of reprimanding her, I was trying to start a conversation. She replied quietly, "I don't know."

I realized that this simple exchange had been the most meaningful interaction I'd had with Tara. In my eagerness to maintain authority, I hadn't interacted with her or other students with much compassion. I hadn't found out about Tara's struggles to raise her daughter, or Diana's role on the basketball team, or Martha's desire to be a dentist. Instead of working, talking, or laughing together, my students and I seemed to be fighting against one another. The more I tried to get them to focus on learning, the more they resisted. And student-teacher relationships were just as sour throughout the school.

Gradually, I became friendlier in my classroom. Students continued to ask me how old I was or what I did on the weekends, and I started to answer these questions, as long as they didn't disrupt a lesson. I asked my students about things going on in their lives. I even started cracking jokes. I wasn't hanging out with them after school, but I was relating to them as a concerned adult. I started to connect with my students as human beings.

To my relief, I found I could maintain this friendliness while also holding students to high expectations for behavior and learning. I became a much better teacher. As students started to trust me, I could motivate and manage them more effectively, using our relationship as currency.

As I got to know these students, I better understood the reasons for their behavior, both good and bad. I found out that Elena had failed several math classes and was sensitive to being perceived as "slow." Being disruptive was a way for her to distract attention from her struggles with isosceles triangles. I assured her that I thought she was a very bright girl, and that I wanted to help her overcome her trouble with math, but could only do so if she were more focused. Slowly, we started to tear down the wall she had built around herself.

I tried to convince another student, a football player named Jason, to approach math class the way he approached practice. Like Elena, he started to work harder and earn higher grades. These strategies would surely have seemed insincere or trite to my students if I hadn't begun to show a personal interest in them. I would not have been nearly as successful in my classroom if I hadn't reached out to my students. Nor would my work have been as fulfilling. I have come to greatly value the relationships I have built with my students.

In thinking about how to improve public schools, we too often forget that education is fundamentally a social endeavor. A student's learning depends on countless personal interactions, and those interactions are far more productive when students and teachers understand each other, trust each other, and even like each other. 

We especially need to remember this in urban schools, where many students arrive suffering the consequences of lives in impoverished communities and dysfunctional families. One common consequence is a deep distrust of adults. I'm convinced that teachers cannot make progress with many inner-city students until they overcome students' distrust by forming genuine personal relationships with them.

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^1. All student names have been changed.