This book shows that building genuine trustworthy relationships between teachers and students is pivotal in student capacity to learn. Based on research by Miriam Raider-Roth, an educational researcher and former elementary school teacher, the book reveals what students think about their relationships in the classroom and how these relationships affect their ability to learn. The book includes guiding principles for teachers, researchers, educators, and parents who want to understand the ways that human relationships at school fundamentally influence what children learn, know, and trust. Following a Foreword (Carol Gilligan), Acknowledgments, Author information and Prologue: Peeling an Onion, the book is divided into three sections. Part One, Considering Trust and Relationship, includes Introduction: Constructing a Relational Landscape of Learning; and (1) Trusting Relationships, Trusting What You Know. Part Two, Listening to the Students, includes: (2) Jose: "Response Is the Whole Thing"; (3) Maya: Two Shelves for Knowing; (4) Sharon: Constructing Confidence; and (5) Gabe: Examining Two Kinds of Body Knowledge. Part Three, The Relational Context of Learning and Teaching, includes: (6) Who Is Speaking? Deciding Which Truth to Tell; (7) Who Is Listening? Deciding What Knowledge to Share; and (8) The Relational Learner: Why Classroom Relationships Matter. The book concludes with the Epilogue: The Heart of the Onion. Listening Closely: Discovery and the Research Relationship is appended. References and an index are included.