One of the wonderful benefits of autonomous professional development is that as teachers we can partake in inquiry that inspires and rejuvenates us and that is absolutely critical in an increasingly thankless profession. My professional development day took a different turn this morning when I decided to opt out of a workshop on teaching children to draw and do a personal inquiry into teacher caring. This research was sparked by research that Heather Marren-Reitsma is doing and by some things that I have noticed in my classroom. Teacher caring is not a new concept; I know when I was in the New Caltec PDP caring was a focus. The first book I read related to this concept was The Challenge to Care in Schools by Nel Noddings (2005).
I felt inspired by this work and as a new teacher was determined to show each and every student how much I cared for them. Now ... 15 years later ... that caring is tempered sometimes by stress, burnout, boredom, challenging student-teacher relationships, increasing workload, negative public perception of teachers, difficult union-employer relationships, feeling undervalued and unappreciated by parents, employer, students etc. I do not believe I am the only teacher who has experienced these feelings.
When I started teaching I felt like I was born to teach and saddened that I wouldn't have more time to do it; recently I've felt sentenced to teach and as though the ball and chain known as a pension, benefits and reasonable salary were holding me to a job I no longer loved. Faced with grinding through the next 5 years or so or reviving enjoyment in my work I chose to find ways to boost my feelings of satisfaction in the classroom. I wanted to return to feeling enthusiastic about being a teacher.
At the beginning of the second semester I challenged myself to increase my connection with my students because intuitively I knew that if I connected to them that boost their positive feelings but also my positive feelings about my work. Since February I have employed a few techniques to boost my feelings of satisfaction and also to purposefully send a message to students that I care about them:
1. I greet them individually when they arrive to class and ask them how they are.
2. I say goodbye to the students at the end of the class and wish them a good day, good evening or good weekend etc. and let them know I'm looking forward to seeing them tomorrow.
3. I spend part of most classes checking in individually with each student to see how they are doing.
None of these techniques are rocket science and they are all techniques that I used when I first began teaching. Using these techniques more purposefully in my teaching practice has given me the gift of increasing satisfaction but has also given my students the gift of knowing that I care about them. So then I wondered ... if these basic techniques work then what else could I do to incorporate this ethic of care in my classroom?
My research today involved looking at some research around teacher caring. I would like to share some links with you:
Zakrzewski,
V. (2012). Four ways teachers can show they care. Greater
Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life. Retrieved April 24, 2015 from: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/caring_teacher_student_relationship
Garza, R.,
Alejandro, E. A., Blyth, T. & Fite, K. (2014). Caring for students: What teachers have to say. ISRN
Education, 2014, 1-7, doi: 10.1155/2014/425856 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2014/425856/
Weimer, M.
(2013). Students place a premium on
faculty who show they care. Faculty Focus. Magna Publications. Retrieved April 24, 2015 from: http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/students-place-a-premium-on-faculty-who-show-they-care/
(2015). A quality teacher is a caring teacher: Show students you care about them. National
Education Association. Retrieved April
24, 2015 from: http://www.nea.org/tools/15751.htm
I'd also like it if you would post what you do in your classroom to show students that you care.
Thanks for reading. I hope you all enjoyed a rejuvenating professional development day.
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