PRINCIPLE #10: The teacher fosters relationships with school
colleagues, parents, and agencies in the larger community to support students’
learning and well being.
KNOWLEDGE
All
systems are formed of multiple components; components which interact and
influence one another through symbiosis, feedback, and other forms of
regulation. The student, teacher,
parent, and community system is of no exception. From multiple points of view, the school
system is designed to provide the future of society with basic cores of several
knowledge bases: The Arts (language,
musical, media, etc.), Social Studies, Mathematics, and Science. As with any type of system, the school system
is one which needs to have general proactive maintenance scheduled and
conducted on a regular basis. The
maintenance of the school system falls on the shoulders of many jobs within the
make-up of the inter-relationships between components. As these inter-relationships change, develop,
and grow they require maintenance. As it now stands, the teacher is facilitator
and maintainer of many of these inter-relationships. For example, between the teacher and
administration, the teacher and student, the teacher and parents, and the
teacher and community many inter-relationships stand open and ready. However, such a situation may arise when the
teacher needs to be repair person, and not just facilitator, too. As the complexities between the teaching and
other components become more intertwined and difficult to manage, the component
which ultimately suffers is the student.
We. as a community, often say “That we would like to see the student be the
center of the system.”, but so often the student gets the short-end of a
decision. We would like to see the child
as the most respected member of the community, but so often we hear about
communities that put the needs of the learner at the near bottom of the
list. So often we hear of the unconstitutionality
of such and such state’s process for school funding. I understand that the a role of the teacher
is also protector of children, and who or what is the protection from? The other components of course.
As
an educator I understand that many of the parts of society are in undesirable
shape and that due to this type of feedback, many of the components are falling
short of their inter-relational responsibilities to the other components of the
system. This is an abominable situation,
one that needs immediate addressing. The
problems which are readily apparent and directly seen as a result of these
broken ties are: higher rates of school
drop-outs, larger populations of unwed and unemployed mother and children
relationships, violent crime statistics indicating a rise in violent crime
among the school-aged populations, etceteras.
All over the radio and television news comes reports from far away
cities where so much anger and hate is modeled for students, children, learners
to see. I understand that it is a
responsibility for the teacher to take an active role in the community for
fostering healthy ties between that communities various components. At the grass roots level, the teacher must
make meaningful and productive ties with parents, administrators (from both
school and community), and students; the effort to make the school-years safe,
productive, and full of knowledge for every child must start with the commitment
from the teacher becoming the binding glue between the efforts of each and
every component. Only through the
teacher’s centralized efforts will the learner get the fair and decent
education that they deserve.
My
experiences as a student teacher and Master’s candidate has created the impetus
for my current thinking and understanding of the role of the teacher. My performances in the area of Social Studies
and Sciences are of the nature which strives to link the understandings between
disciplines to the students. Through
writing exercises aimed at the community from the children’s point of view, I
believe that the other components will take and interest. Rather than the teacher constantly harping,
allowing the students the chance to express their thoughts and opinions with
their community is the quickest and most fair vehicle for creating a social
change. From the grass roots, it is
important for the teacher to be aware, at all times, of the relationships
between the various components. Through
the voice of the students will the drive for social change emanate.
In
the classroom, I stress the skills of critical-forward thinking and problem
solving , as a means of overcoming stress in the environment between
components. The students learn about how
the community, on a global level, arbitrates some of the conflicts and crisis
that occur as a result of faulty inter-relationshipsÀ,
the parents and community benefits with the knowledge that their children and
future are being treated with respect and dignity, and the future is serviced
with the notion that the people will be better able to recognize and arbitrate
their own disputes before they manifest symptoms of the crisis. Authors such as: R.Buckminster Fuller, Aldous Huxley, Aldo
Leopold, Edward Abbey, Thoreau, Emerson, and scores of others are the
frameworks into which I place my reasoning
about the various outputs and inputs of the system. As I come to understand more of the various
interconnections between the school and community, I begin to see that the
ultimate role that I have performed in my classroom is that of guide. I have reserved judgment of my students’
actions in favor of helping them to discover their own styles of arbitration. I
instead choose to focus on the learning that I know my students are capable of
accomplishing.
From
the community, I expect support and guidance.
it is the community, through the offices of its government, which must
be the leader in forming opportunities for which the various components of the
system can meet together and to be free to express their various forms of
feedback. It is the responsibility of
the parents to be in touch with the feelings of their children; the teacher is
the piece of the system which is best able to first assess and report to the
community the observance of a student who exhibits overt signs of abuse and/or
neglect. As a teacher, I understand the
importance of being a confidant of a child, yet I understand the dichotomy of responsibility
-- that other half being the duty to the
community. Teacher’s place in the
community, can therefore be construed as multi-faceted, complex,
multi-purposed, and above all central to the proper functioning of the
system. Teachers, therefore, need to be
treated in a fashion commiserate with this position. Unions and teacher’s organizations are a
central portion to the feedback cycle of the system. The special interests of a community are the
significant balance to that part of the feedback chain and the individual
members of a community can not be ignored, for each of these components are
made up of individuals. So, to bring my
discourse on the teacher, student, parent, and community system to a close I
must reiterate my understanding of the importance of creating a positive experience
for the student. The students are the
future individuals whom will ultimately form the core of society. The teacher is the guide to that student and
friend to all students.
EXPERIENCES
The
design and creation of prototype
newsletter targeted for students in all grades and all communities.
I
have taken part in several Student-Sponsor discussions at The University School
-- Grade 6. These sessions were
encroached with notions about civic responsibility and elicited responses from
the students about their understanding of these ideas. The sessions were primarily one on one, and
informal in nature.
As
a cumulating experience for the Child Development course, I facilitated a
meeting between myself, my co-operating teacher, and the student’s parent(s) on
whom the study was conducted. The
students strengths as a person were highlighted as well as some of the means by
which the parents may want to utilize when helping to shape their child’s ideas
about civic responsibilities.
**À
Using the term “faulty” allows the
reader to contemplate their own meaning behind the notion. As a analyst, I have come to realize that the
stresses placed on a system are not entirely at the “fault” of another, rather,
as a element of the feedback cycle, all too often a stress creates several
other stresses in its wake, and concurrently, those stresses may create a whole
host of others. To focus entirely on
fault ignores the problem. The
“timeliness” of the appearance of any stress I not in question; to gauge the reason behind the appearance of symptoms
associated with a system stress is to engage in exercise of inappropriate
thought on my part. The question
remains, what is the teacher’s duty to the system in terms of management and
how do I affect this sort of knowledge in my classroom.
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