Reaching our children

I believe that nations whose welfare are tied to those of their children place a high premium on building relationships with them. This is probably even truer for adults whose welfare are tied to those of their children. Parents who need their children take care of them ensuring that these children are well placed to do so. I wonder what would happen if the future of teachers particularly beyond retirement were tied to the future of their students. I believe they would have vested interest in the lives of these children and what happened to them.

Our welfare is no longer tied to those of children because we live long enough,work hard enough; make money enough, and we are healthy enough, and for longer to take care of ourselves. Who needs these children? We can secure our own insurances and governments have taken over our social security. We have 401Ks and retirement funds, who needs children? Children, therefore, have become liabilities not assets. This perception of children appears to permeate our values.

Increasingly, I am beginning to believe that our security and safety are tied to those of our children - the next generation. We have a responsibility to teach them our values and reach them or risk them adopting the value of others or being reached by others. The best way to reach them is to befriend them, treat them with appreciation, treat them like they matter and that they occupy places in our classrooms that no one else can duplicate. To feel loved, appreciated, wanted and celebrated is what draws children to us as educators. This leaves them open to our guidance and prodding and influence. We must reach before we can teach them. It is in reaching that our welfares become entwined. After all they will become what we are to them.

Building relationships with students

There is a reason why our kids keeping falling behind their international counterparts. I believe it is the same reason they are dropping out and the same reason they are not meeting the grade. You see, education is a social and cultural construct. It was never designed for the economic cure-all many have tried to turn it into. Schools are about children and their future. It is in schools we determine what they become but more importantly who they become. It is in schools we pass on our our legacy and our values to the next generation. The hope is that those values are shared and that they are common among those who inculcate them, and that the recipients are treated as equals. It is in schools therefore, that social and cultural transfers from one generation to the next are made. In is there then that most children acquire their social and cultural inheritance. Relationships therefore, if one thinks carefully of the concept of inheritance, is the basis for this transfer. Blood relations transfer material inheritance. Social relations transfer social and cultural inheritance. Schools are spaces where this social and cultural transfers are made.

What is wrong with our schools? Nothing! It is our relationships with children in schools that has gone awfully wrong. To build relationships is to establish connection; to build relationships is to care about a child and what happens to that child. To show interest in his life outside of school; his pains and hurts; his difficulties; after all he is just a child and like all other young species, need the nurturing of adults - teachers in his life to show him how to survive among his peers. Other species get it right. Because children spend most of their waking and receptive hours in our presence, we as educators have a responsibility to bond with them. It is with this bonding we can truly reach them and teach them

So you are wondering what happens to all the money we spend on education. Well they go to pay salaries, build state of the art structures and procure equipment but they aren't spent on building relationships. I wonder what would happens if we were to pay for caring and relationship building in schools.

The rest of the world does not have the financial resources we have nor do they spend as much as we do on education but I believe they spend time, they care and they know that relationships are the foundation for success and they use it.