Equipping Students to Develop Friendships

As humans created by God to be in relationship with Him and others, it is a vitally important developmental milestone that our students have the opportunity and ability to form friendships. Friendships, especially healthy ones, allow our students to learn and practice selflessness, thoughtfulness, curiosity, independence, and self-discovery. Self-esteem is significantly impacted by relationships (or the absence of relationships), and having just a few deep, genuine relationships with peers and adults is a significant protective factor for the mental and emotional health of our kids.

Below are some ideas for how to help those children who seem like they may need a little extra help with finding and making friends. But first, a note: It is important and incredibly useful to normalize friendship issues with your students. Students can easily feel very alone in their struggles, yet we know that lots of students feel similar feelings. Take opportunities in class to remind students that they are more alike those sitting around them in class than they realize. Almost every student in the room has some kind of insecurity, or wants to feel like they belong, or has known the feeling of loneliness or rejection. Remind students of these connections with each other, and in doing so, you will help students rewrite their internal narrative that they are completely alone. Now, let’s talk about some ideas for helping students make friends.


Friendship Bench (Elementary)
The idea of the Friendship Bench is that if a student wants to play with someone new or is looking for a friend to play with, they sit on the bench; it is the job of other students to notice when someone is sitting on the bench and invite them to play. Elementary teachers with whom I have spoken about this say that it is really successful; most younger students will get excited about their role in this and will be quick to rush over and invite a student to play.

A note about social emotional learning at the elementary level: When implementing social-emotional learning into the classroom, bring up the topic of best friends. This is a big topic; there is an embedded expectation in children today that every person is supposed to have one true, best friend. What would it be like to help your students change their expectations so that the idea of having a lot of friends within a classroom is normalized, versus focusing on only one best friend to the exclusion of everyone else?


Lunch Bunch (Elementary & Middle School)
To implement a lunch bunch, a teacher or staff member can invite a small group of students to have lunch with them on a weekly basis. The staff member should create an informal structure by choosing a topic to focus on and casually asking each person to contribute. For example, What’s your favorite thing to do? Is there a TV show you really like right now? Pick simple, non-threatening topics for several weeks. Often the group will stop needing your guidance and will organically come up with topics to talk about; at that point, you can take a back seat and allow group cohesion to form. Eventually, if the group is meshing, you can tell them, “I can’t meet this week, but you should have lunch together anyway.” Help them choose a place. Once the group is more independent from you, you could still occasionally drop by their lunch bunch location to check in, bring them a snack, and maintain those relationships with your students.


Modified Lunch Bunch (High School)
A lunch bunch concept at this level can also be effective but needs to be done with great care. High school students are very sensitive to how they are perceived by others, including you, and are gifted at sensing when you are doing something because you feel sorry for them. When working with a high school student, you will be much more effective if you can form a genuine relationship with individual students, and only then guiding them toward each other. You do not need to be underhanded about this. As you get to know some students, you might feel that two would have a lot in common. Invite them both to have lunch with you; tell them beforehand that you’re inviting both of them because you think they have some really interesting similarities. Mitigate any awkwardness by having a plan. If the thing you have in common with both of these students is Dr. Who, then invite them to watch part of an episode with you while you eat lunch together. Maybe there’s time to talk, and maybe there isn’t, but invite them back the next week to watch more or discuss the episode. This is a long-term investment, and it could be a while before you see these students actively choose each other as friends, but with some thoughtful and intentional assistance on your part, you could play a transformative role in the lives of students who need some help making friends.


An extraordinary resource for friendships and social skills is your school’s counseling department, if you have one. A counselor can set up a lunchtime group for students who want to discuss the topic of friendship, thereby creating a safe space in which to connect with others and have deeper conversations about the trickiness of navigating friendships in your particular context. A counselor can also set up a specific therapy group for social skills, with students being referred to the group by staff members. These groups tend to be heavy on psychoeducation (i.e., being taught a specific list of skills and having opportunity to practice on each other). Frequently, students with social anxiety, attention deficits, or autism spectrum traits might be referred to these types of groups, but many other students might be good candidates depending on a number of factors (such as how often the student has moved, if they have been isolated based on their parents’ geographic location, whether they have been bullied in the past, etc.).

It is important to note, though, that school counselors are a limited resource and are frequently unable to offer all of the groups that would be helpful for students. Even without a counselor available, educators can and should feel empowered to intentionally connect with students. As you pray for your students and seek the Lord’s guidance in supporting their development, consider the ideas listed above and take the initiative to connect students with each other. In doing so, you can help to facilitate their God-given design to live in relationship.

Sarah Fine
Sarah is a licensed clinical social worker and previously served with TeachBeyond as a school counselor. Her husband, Keane, is TeachBeyond’s Director of Communications. Sarah has been a guest on TeachBeyond’s podcast, Transformed & Transformational, where she shared about processing loss. You can listen to that podcast here.

 
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Photo Credits
Kindergarten Students. Shutterstock. Cropped & resized.
Kids Eating Lunch. Shutterstock. Resized.
School Friends. Shutterstock. Resized