What if some of the strategies teachers use are actually doing things for children that children can do for themselves? What message are we sending to children about their capabilities when we step in and take over for the sake of time or moving on?
Teachers make hundreds of decisions every single day—from the most trivial to the most consequential. Does the number of decisions we make have any impact on the quality of our decisions, especially at the end of the day? The answer is ‘Yes.’
No one sets out to make a bad decision, and yet we often end up making decisions we regret. We say ‘Yes’ to things we want to decline and we say ‘No’ to things we want to say ‘Yes’ to. Or we just give in. Why do we do that?
Teachers have one of the toughest jobs in the world. Caring professions, like teaching, bring with them the hazard of “care as worry,” a chronic affliction that is hard to shake without vigilance and great intentionality.
One of the most harmful things we can do to children is to hold them accountable for their parent choices. Not only because it damages the teacher-student relationship, but also because we are instilling in children, the false belief that they are responsible for someone else’s behavior.
Parents make decisions all the time that impact their child’s learning in both positive and negative ways. As professionals, we can help inform and educate parents about what is best from an educational perspective, but we cannot place ourselves in the position of judge or jury over parent decision-making.