We are teaching our students lessons outside of those surrounding academia. Our students are watching us and learning from us even in how we carry ourselves in our day-to-day teaching responsibilities. Modeling respect versus disrespect, patience versus frustration, calmness versus anger, responsibility versus irresponsibility. "Even if a teacher chooses not to participate proactively in character education with students, he or she is modeling a set of values, morals, and behaviors in the way that the teacher treats students, colleagues, and subject matters" (Shumaker, 2007, p. 114). Therefore, we should reflect on our own social habits.
Outside of the academic piece is hidden curriculum. Our students are learning how to develop into good people from the invisibile lessons present in schools, something as small as the rules we are or are not enforcing (Nucci, 2008). "Teachers - even when they deny that they do so - transmit something of moral values and, since this transmission is inevitable, they should seek to do a responsible job of it" (Molnar,1997, p. 10).
Universal virtues, such as fairness, should be used as the basis for our classrooms. We want our students to view themselves as a member of a community which is based on these shared values, where there is a respect for a wide range of talents. In a moral climate, students are not engaged in unheathly competition, competition "when ones person's success is defined in terms of another's failure" (Nucci, p. 167). Studies (Johnson & Johnson, 1989) investigating relative impact of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts on the 'quality' of relationships, as well as on social support, show a positive correlation between cooperative experiences and peer support (as cited in Nucci).
No comments:
Post a Comment