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Demonstrate how to establish rapport and professional relationships with adults As a classroom assistant or individual support worker, your role will normally be

weighted towards supporting the children in your class, or the individual child to

whom you are assigned; however, you will also play a strong support role to the

other adult members of your team.

This means that when your help is requested, you will be expected to assist, within

the parameters of your role, your skills, and your abilities. School communities act as

a team because the level of support that is needed in order for children to be

adequately served is too great for individuals to work outside of the established

requirements for the community. Because you belong to a team, you will be expected

to have strong professional relationships with the other adults in the school, and a big

part of this is through establishing rapport with them.

Building rapport with adults.

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Establishing rapport with adults Establishing rapport with other adults is very similar to the way you establish it with

children. You may need to break the ice, so that the similarities between you can be

identified and accepted; you may need to employ active listening skills and ensure that

you are hearing what the other person is trying to communicate. Your non-verbal

communication needs to be congruent, because adults will pick up on incongruence

even more quickly than children do, and above all, your communication skills in

general must be adequate to avoid miscommunication. Professional relationships Professional relationships in schools tend to be initially based on the relationships

between the roles. Therefore, a professional relationship between a teacher and a

classroom assistant may have a different 'flavour' from one between two classroom

assistants. There are things that you might say to your professional peers that you

might not say to someone more senior.

Expectations may also have a strong bearing on how well or badly a professional

relationship is conducted. For example, a visiting supply teacher may believe that

classroom assistants are there to clear up after the class, as well as to provide support

during lessons. If your usual teacher normally asks the children to clear things away,

you may find that you feel resentful or annoyed if asked to do so by the visiting

teacher.

Good communication skills, as ever, are the key to the establishment of positive

professional relationships, so you should always continue to clarify expectations and

situations, check understanding - both your own and the other person's - in all

situations and express yourself as clearly as possible, as well as employing active

listening skills.

Part of your role is in modelling best behaviour for the children you work with. This

means treating the other adults in the school with the same respect and courtesy that

you would expect for yourself. When this aspect of communicative etiquette fails, it is

not long before an adult relationship begins to have difficulties, so you must reflect on

your working day and include your interactions with other professionals as part of your

reflective practice.

As long as you remember that your support may be required in many different forms,

from giving help and advice when it is requested, and providing information when

asked, to providing feedback about an activity or a particular pupil under your care,

you will most likely have a strong basis for a good relationship with all the people you

work with.