Now that they have settled into the school term, I hear the students I know chattering about the teachers they “got” this year: the good ones and the ones “everybody hates.” Though they’re in different grades and different schools, they seem to share a universal teacher ranking system.

As a mentor of beginning teachers for the Hawaii Department of Education (HIDOE), I was an admiring student of the pioneering research of Charlotte Danielson. She, and her graduate students, observed thousands of teachers in a myriad of classroom settings and school systems, to determine exactly what teachers say and do that creates their efficacy, and published her “Framework For Teaching“ in 1996.

The framework, updated by educational researchers, forms the basis of a rubric (“The Framework For Teaching Evaluation Instrument”) that has been adopted by many American school systems, including HIDOE, to rate teachers from Unsatisfactory, through Basic and Proficient, to Distinguished.

The framework posits four “domains” of teaching practice:

>> The nonobservable domains of “Planning/Preparation” and “Professional Responsibilities” each contain six elements for which evidence can be obtained; and

>> The domains of “Classroom Environment” and “Instruction” each contain five elements, which can be directly observed.

The evaluation instrument includes descriptors for each rating category of all 22 elements in the rubric — a complex and comprehensive system.

I wondered how the students’ informal shared rating system matched up with the research-based rubric of professional educators. So I asked all the children I know — family and friends, here and on the continent, elementary and secondary, general education and special ed — these basic questions: Think about the best and the worst teacher you ever had and tell me — what did they do and say, and how did you feel in their class to give them that rating?

Here’s what I heard from elementary students, about their favorite teachers: “nice, smiles, no yelling, patient, shows she likes me, feel glad, happy, good and proud of myself.”

Here’s what I heard from secondary students, about their favorite teachers: “welcoming, interested in and knows each student, you’re not just anonymous, always has time for you, cares and wants us to succeed, relates to us, no put-downs, shows respect, I feel interested and ambitious.”

Here’s what I heard from elementary students, about their least favorite teachers: “Gets really mad, scolds, yells and shouts, says only bad things about my work, I felt scared, worried, ashamed, stupid, sad, mad at myself.”

Here’s what I heard from secondary students, about their least favorite teachers: “Sarcastic, condescending, easily annoyed, unresponsive to student feedback, controlling, doesn’t really care, yells at us, embarrasses people with public scolding, treats us as stupid children, I felt irritated, angry, frustrated.”

I remember my favorite and my worst teachers 70 years later, and I would say the same about them. The critical force in the classroom is how teachers relate to their students. This matches just one element in one domain of the Danielson evaluation rubric: Domain 2, the Classroom Environment — Creating an environment of respect and rapport, teacher interaction with students.

When my grant team mounts culture-based learning activities in classrooms or teacher trainings, the first goal we have is to create pilina — positive relationship — with and among the teachers and students. We model strategies for doing that first-step work in teaching and learning because we, and professional researchers, all know intuitively and by personal experience what all data proves: If students share a caring relationship with their teachers, they will put their hearts into the learning work and they will flourish.

Elly Tepper is a consultant educator and Ulu A’e Transitions Grant Team member.