A personal reflection of a two-day online conference of the St. Maarten Catholic Education Foundation "Building Relationships between Educators and Students”
A personal reflection of a two-day
online conference of the St. Maarten Catholic Education Foundation
"Building Relationships between Educators and Students”
By Ria Uiterloo
Some experiences shape you for life. As an 11-year-old, I started at a large Secondary school. I vividly remember a fellow classmate who was hungry early in the morning at 7 a.m. and discreetly took a bite of her sandwich. The French teacher reacted sharply to the situation: "What are you doing? Who eats during class? You have no manners! You are a pig, your mother is a mop and your father is a dishcloth"! The whole class turned to my classmate. She was shocked and sad and so were we. You could hear a pin drop. Nobody spoke in class after that incident. We comforted our classmate for the rest of the day.
The recent conference “Building Relationships between
Educators and Students” brought back sad episodes from my high school life.
Simone Mark, an ecological pedagogue and co-founder of Centrum Pedagogisch
Contact in the Netherlands, presented Pedagogical Contact and the Circle of
Attachment. Her presentation on the importance of the educator adapting to the
needs of the child is essential in working with children. It is the role of the
educator to create a safe base for the child.
According to Simone
Mark, the role of an educator is to protect, comfort, enjoy and help the child
sort out his/her feelings (see figure). As an educator, she says, you are
bigger, stronger, wiser and kinder. She emphasizes the need to follow the
child's needs, to name them if possible, and to give guidance if necessary.
Figure 1
During the conference content, I thought back of my former
school days, which were warm and pleasant during primary school. During a
reflection and discussions with colleagues, I shared my first experience in
high school. It was sad and even traumatic. The incident with the eating
classmate and the teacher's reaction to it has stayed with me. My classmate's
self-image was damaged for a long time.
Teachers make the
difference
My early experiences prompted me to reflect daily on my role
as an educator, human being and the influence and impact on another's life.
School should be a safe place. That experience made me tiptoe for a long time
in order to prevent insults from adults. School should be fun, if one realizes
that school has to teach and give experiences to build self-esteem and a high
sense of self in children.
The whole class during our years in high school avoided the
wrath of this teacher, who dressed impeccably and walked proudly with her head
up through the school. I became a victim of her wrath in third grade biology
class when I tried to keep track of her notes. While copying some notes from my
friend to make sure I had all the study info, I suddenly heard "Girl, I
will insult you, I will insult you so that the ground splits open and you
disappear". I am sure she never realized that at that moment I wanted to
disappear.
Teachers say a lot to children without realizing the
influence and impact this can have on them.
Words have power. Therefore, we need to shape our beliefs
and our behavior and become creators. The three pedagogues: the environment,
the teacher and the child create the child's world. Now from the confrontations
with teachers in secondary schools, my world was created. The role that some
teachers played in my life did not contribute to values of confidence and
self-esteem.
This realization inspires me to speak up and expose others
to positive words. The words of this teacher really touched me as a teenager. I
was fortunate to have had wonderful parents and grandparents who were very
protective and contributed to my self-esteem. I avoided further insults from
this teacher and it took me a long time to forgive her. At the same time, she
was part of a group of many teachers who thought that insults would challenge
us to learn and compete for the highest grades or results. They did not
hesitate to say that their approach was that of their upbringing at school and
challenged them to become successful in their studies, in other words,
"They did not know any better".
Of course, there were also extraordinary teachers in high
school who were real and who recognized us. They approached us as individuals
and provided a safe space for us to learn, explore and challenge ourselves in
the 60s and 70s. They were so influential in allowing us to think, feel and
figure things out with their guidance. The space we were given gave us
responsibility and allowed us to become autonomous students by learning and
developing as young people with self-confidence and high self-esteem. You were
allowed to make mistakes and given the opportunity to correct your mistakes
with the right guidance and reflective questioning.
Building self-esteem in children
Bastian Goedhart, in his master class "Pedagogy in
Physical Education and Games (a core element)", pointed out the importance
of building self-esteem in pupils. He places Physical Education and Play in
relation to, among others, motivation, self-confidence and self-image and emphasizes
the role and the task of the teacher.
Looking back on my childhood, my high school days, I would
have liked to have had a dialogue with the teachers of the time and emphasized
how self-confidence is related to self-esteem. I think their approach was part
of their upbringing during the hay days of the colonial era, where colonial
punishments and ridicule would make you an individual who is obedient to any
adult at any time.
I think we, as teachers, should build more confidence in
children by giving them responsibilities to figure things/situations out.
Fifty-two years ago, my classmate who discreetly took a bite of her sandwich
was unnecessarily excluded by the negative attention she received.
In the presentation “Knowing what to do when you don't know
what to do...”, Marcel van Herpen gave the participants the opportunity to
think about Pedagogical tact, which can best be described as doing the right
thing at the right time, also in the eyes of the children.
The content of the presentation addressed the importance of
the basic need of a child. That is to "develop a good relationship".
Only in that relationship, when you feel seen and accepted, can you develop
coping skills to deal with life's experiences.
Developing autonomy is also a basic need where a child can
and will always be challenged and able to correct a mistake made. The French/Biology teacher had a problem or
dilemma. We were not allowed to eat in class. She could have quietly walked up
to my classmate and passed on the agreement or reminded her of the rule. A
teacher who is connected to children and has a good relationship would start a
dialogue with the child. What should this look and sound like? Think about this
question as an educator.
Marcel van Herpen, who supervises pedagogical projects in
and outside the Netherlands, makes us think about how we can deal with
dilemmas. Because working with children means facing surprising things and
sometimes not knowing what to do. Marcel van Herpen's advice: "Give your
dilemma back to the children. Tell the children what your dilemma is; ask them
what they think we can do. For example, "I have a dilemma. I want to teach
and someone wants to eat during the lesson. What should I do? What would you
do?
In the session, he emphasizes, "A problem is a question that you can solve (matter/issue).
A dilemma is a field of tension in which two things demand
priority".
Marcel continues "The first guideline is: If you do not
know what to do (with children), there is never a problem, but always a dilemma”.
“Give that dilemma back to the children and ask how they can
deal with it".
Recently I received a great insight during a meeting with
parents and members of a school. One of the discussions at the meeting was on
"Can parents address classmates of their child after a conflict between
children?" Feelings and hurt of both parents surfaced during the meeting
when confronted with the task of putting themselves in the shoes of the child
and the other. Perception came up, intuition came up; what do you do when you
are confronted with a conflict of two children where one of the pupils is your
child? It was a long meeting and in the end, after apologizing to each other,
the parents proposed to go out with their children as a family, to build a
relationship. After the meeting with the
parents, I received a description from one of the pupils: "The child has
low self-esteem, she is seeing a psychologist, she is being bullied, we have
had bullying sessions with a social worker, but the situation has not
improved". I reminded the school management of an influential teacher and
philosopher:
Mr. Kanamori
Mr. Toshiro Kanamori from the documentary "Children
Full of life" in which life lessons such as teamwork, community, the
importance of openness and the damage of bullying are used to process and
understand feelings. His life lesson "If one person is not happy; no one
is happy". The school has the task of preparing a lesson or lessons with
children by watching the documentary together. The preparation, which I have
advised, is to go back to the presentation of the conference "Knowing what
to do when you don't know what to do" and prepare the session with children.
I am excited about the students' experience.... The dilemma is theirs. Can they do it themselves or not? What do the
teachers believe?
Understanding and
guiding gifted students
Bjorna Appel's presentation “Understanding and guiding
gifted learners” requires the same approach of building relationships, seeing,
knowing, observing and understanding an individual. The bottom line is that an
educator can only understand the pedagogy of Tact and Contact if they
understand and appreciate the importance of meeting the basic or psychological
needs of a child in their care.
This is important to increase their engagement in learning.
Children must be given a voice to say what they want to learn, which equates to effective or deep learning. They are expected to have the right to express their own interests in relation to learning. Having a voice and involvement in their own learning and development is an increasingly important aspect of education and pedagogy.
With the above recap of the conference for teachers of
schools of the St. Maarten Catholic Education Foundation, I hope that all
educators will be inspired to continuously reflect on their pedagogical
approach and consider the emotional effects of a wrong approach on children in
the end. A negative reaction to undesirable behavior can increase, resulting in
damage to the human psyche. Negative actions, reactions and creations damage.
Practice the skill of reflection and choose positive inspiration and dignified
discipline. It guarantees self-confidence, self-worth and self-reliance. My
message to teachers is "Give to others what you want for yourself".
If a child needs a challenge or an adjustment in approach, do it. You will
transform "lives".
For more information on dealing with children, dive into Max
van Manen's book, Pedagogical Tact, which gives a clear picture of the
child-teacher relationship: "Knowing what to do when you don't know what
to do. It gives adults, parents, teachers and youth leaders appropriate
insights for acting with tact and thoughtfulness.
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