Taken directly from today's lecture notes, this quote holds a mighty objective that I believe has great importance in the lives of teachers and school administrators. The tricky part is to define these core values and decide which values should be included into the assimilation. Now this conversation could easily get into an argument over whether who should be responsible for teaching values- parents? churches? schools? but I am not equipped to begin that argument nor do I want to. All I will say is that morals or values do have a place in school. Children spend a majority of their day, 3/4 of the year in a school classroom and I think ignoring values and morals in the classroom is doing a disservice to them.
A teacher is a role model for children: they look up to this teacher, and trust this teacher to give them a good education (even if they are unaware of this). Therefore, I think teachers need to care about their students and show them that they care. They need to create trusting relationships with all students. Maybe some would see this as going past the expected teacher behavior, but as Jim notes, teachers teach morals whether purposefully or by default, so we may as well endorse and encourage teachers to get to know their students and form relations with them.
In talking to Jason Rausch, choral director at Decorah High School, the topic of caring about kids and forming relationships with them came up. He said it makes all the difference, especially in a subject that students choose to do (such as music). This conversation along with the lecture this week really drove home the idea that teachers need to invest in students beyond academics. In doing this, teachers teach their students that they value them as people and not just as elements of their job. This can make all of the difference in impacting a student's life.
Since Jim can't comment, I'll just put it on here for him:
ReplyDelete"Regarding your last blog related to caring, values and schools.....I do believe that schools should actually be centered around issues of caring. As far as deciding what values we should include I think it is helpful to begin to think about values related to other important relationships in your life. Respect, responsibility, responsiveness, commitment, kindness, honesty, forgiveness, inclusiveness, equity, are just a few that come to mind. I also believe that we need to teach these values intentionally, intensively, unapologetically, and daily and once in awhile, we might even resort to words to do this. In other words, "We Teach Who We Are" (Parker Palmer) and we don't teach music, art, reading, etc for the subjects themselves but rather these are the vehicles we use to teach our students about life and about making this world a better place, as trite and as fluffy as that might sound."
-Jim