Caring and Trust in The Teaching Profession

      Modeling Caring – One would like to think that in most situations a teacher is a caring individual. However, depending on a teacher’s pre-service training, a teacher may not have received the proper training to understand the caring levels needed to reach students of color and low income students. Therefore, the first level of caring has to start with the teacher, while they are in pre-service. We propose that using this model (Caring Community Model) to nurture caring attributes in pre-service teachers and thereby influence caring in PreK-16 classrooms-can help overcome the personal, family, ethnic and class problems that often get in the way of effective teaching, learning and living (Bruce & Stellern, 2005 p. 34).

      Bruce and Stellern’s ‘Caring Community Model’ has twelve principals. Because my study examines the communication models used by teachers in the classroom, Principle number one and Principle number two of Bruce & Stellern’s ‘Caring Community Model’ are of particular interest. Principle number one deals with ‘Acceptance, Non-judgment and Support’. To model this principle, Stellern began each class by asking the students, “How is everyone today? Let’s go around and check in briefly. Any way that I, or we, can help you? This authentic display of consistent caring may be the most important principle of healing as well as of the change process in general (Bruce & Stellern, 2005). Perhaps teachers receiving this kind of caring in their pre-service training, after feeling the effects, will in-turn use it in their own classrooms? Principle number two deals with ‘Nonverbal Language, Verbal Language and Behavior’. To demonstrate this principle Stellern would notice students who displayed visual signs such as sad expressions, anxious foot tapping or an irritated voice inflection. He would then make a point of talking to them privately or slipping them a note asking how thing are (Bruce & Stellern, 2005). In a communication situation caring people often notice voice, language and nonverbal clues such as body language or facial expressions. Teachers should also be aware of voice inflections or nonverbal clues such as body language and facial expressions. Having taught human communication for over fifteen years, I have learned that information heard is oftentimes information not always spoken, but sometimes seen.

References

Berliner, D. (2005). Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform. Teachers College  

        Record. Retrieved March 23, 2006 from:

        http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=12106

Bruce, M. & Stellern, J. (2005). Building a Caring Community in Teacher Education.

        The Teacher Educator v. 41 no. 1 pp. 34-53.