Trust First: Helping Teachers Move From Control to Connection

Many educators have shared that today’s classroom feels different - more complex, more demanding, and at times, more challenging than ever before. Those feelings are real and worth acknowledging.

At the same time, it’s important to remember:

Children themselves haven’t changed, but the world around them has.

We wrote this book to help educators shift from frustration to understanding—building classrooms grounded in trust, connection, and belonging.

The Children Didn’t Change—The World Around Them Did

“These kids! What has happened? I have never experienced anything like this in my 20-year career as an educator!” This sentiment, with varied verbiage and intensity, has been heard repeatedly in our post-COVID school era.

We have a strong statement to make:

The children didn’t change.

At their core, children are still the same. They just need us to meet them with connection and care. Go back in time; travel to a remote island, go to any culture (no matter the economic advantage or sophistication) and children are the same. A baby is born and she immediately looks at the adults to figure out how to navigate the world. As a baby develops into a toddler, he watches, processes, practices and learns - almost every second of his existence - to master one developmental skill after another, fascinating the adults around him - even those who have seen this process many times.

Why Trust Must Come First in Learning

Humans are learners. We are built to learn and grow. Children, as soon as they are born, are designed to learn. It is adults who can decide how that happens. Regardless of the content, age level, ability, culture, language or any other variable, at the center of all learning - trust is key. In fact, trust must come first. When we trust someone, we generally go along with them - do what they need us to do - and when feeling uncomfortable, we are more likely to have the capacity to struggle through it together - non-combative, respectful, loving and solution-centered.

Shifting from Behavior Management to Teaching

One of the Trust First tenets that builds trust and respects the human desire/need for learning and growing is centered around teaching--always. Somewhere along the evaluation of the modern classroom, behavior became something to manage, while math and reading are something we teach. We believe everything is teaching and learning. Everything. Once a teacher shifts their mindset to see everything as an opportunity to teach, the door opens into an entirely new realm. Instead of looking at behavior as a personal attack or manipulative in nature, Trust First says: teach. Period. Teach through the behavior until you get to where you want students to be. And through this journey decide: are they ready for your expectations? Just this one skill creates a foundation for trust and gives students more opportunities to feel successful. And teachers have more opportunities to feel the joy that is teaching.

Teaching always does several things.

First, it liberates teachers from feeling like they are somehow powerful enough to ‘control’ other people’s actions. “Getting” students to do whatever is a trap. Teachers lose every time they approach their students this way.

Second, approaching behavior from a teaching perspective demonstrates to students that you care enough to support them through a challenge. Whether that is a simple thing, like walking in the hallway or something heavier, like figuring out how to manage frustration in a healthy, respectful manner. When teachers take time to teach through behavior, they build trust with students organically.

Finally, this process builds a foundation of accomplishment that cannot be created in any other way. Mastering a skill, whether it is adding fractions or controlling hands and feet while standing in line, feels good. Humans crave achievement. We all do it. Children are no different. Every dose of success teachers gives a child, whether academic or otherwise, results in a stronger human. It’s that simple.

Trust First: Turn Behaviors that Challenge into Opportunities to Learn is the result of decades of teaching and school leadership, of practicing and reading and trying and reflecting. This process of shifting mindset and adapting new skills to support that mindset shift offers teachers an opportunity to do what they are designed to do - learn and rediscover the joy of teaching.