Heart4kidsadvocacyforum's Blog

What does it take and whom must you be to serve children as their teacher?

You must be a person of integrity.

We are as parents and teachers must be steeped in essence of being in integrity with our words and our actions.  Children have access to an open portal that ignites their ability to discern who is and who is not in integrity with them immediately.  It is a means of protection to safeguard them from people and situations that might hurt or harm them.  This practice of being in integrity as a teacher, feeds into everything we do in the classroom, and it colors the texture and fabric of the relationship we have with each individual child.  We are in our humanistic nature, drawn to each child in a way that knowingly or unknowingly, tends to be different from one child to the next.  We respond to children, as we do with adults, in accordance with our internal psychological network of preferences and field of connections that we can identify with.

 I don’t think this is as critical for our adult relationships as it is critical with our relationships with children.  With adults we are working through relationships dynamics on a more equitable playing field.  However, when we are engaged in a relationship with children our affect and the nuisances of our behavior with them is more tenuous and imprintable on their psyche.  It really only takes one experience of us not being in integrity with them for them to shut down that vein of communication and relationship with us.  Parents and teachers do not have the luxury of taking a chance for their child or student to disengage with them.  These are after all critical relationships.  Once the trust is broken, it takes a lot of work to try to regain that trust and heal that relationship. 

It is said in some cultures that –“Parents are the first guru in their child’s life and their teacher is the second”.  Meaning that a teacher has the potential of being the second most important person in a child’s life.  This is a huge responsibility and commitment. This means that we as parents and educators that are training, mentoring, and are in positions of being a teacher’s immediate supervisor, have not only the responsibility of also being in integrity, but we have to be held accountable of positioning teachers in a classroom with children that are authentically in integrity with their work and the children they serve. 

The world today is void of so many people, events, and circumstances where integrity is  of value, but when it comes to our children, we will not tolerate anyone or any environment that fosters anything not rooted and expressive of “INTEGRITY”.