The objectives of this coding research was to understand the learning environment from the students' perspective. A corpus of 30 students essays concerning classroom and teaching issues was coded according to word and phrasal meanings. The resulting codes had emotional content and indicated that these students valued trust and fairness and were motivated by a need for relationships. Therefore, teaching strategies which create realationships and embody trust would result in a positive environment. Accordingly, an effective strategy would be to aknowledge communication bids in a positive manner and thereby establish trust. In this way, by aligning with students' belief structure in developing relationships, a cooperative learning environment would result. Future studies could exam the different aspects of trust in the bid and response scheme.