Blogs for Educators: In Teachers We Trust

On Edutopia Rebbecca Alber poster a blog "In Teachers We Trust: Can Kids Count on You?" where she describes different ways to earn and keep student's trust. She starts by saying that students don't learn from you if they do not trust you. A few of the ways she says to earn trust is to be true to who you are as a teacher, don't take the things students do and say personally, be honest with the students and apologize when you make a wrong, if you say you are going to do something do it, be fair with your students, don't confusing being liked with being trusted, and continue to learn your content and teaching skills.

I choose this particular blog because I always though it was vitally important for teachers to have the trust of their students. I always hated when teachers in high school would make a mistake and refuse to admit it even though it was so clear to the students, or when they would not follow through on a promise, or they would highly favor certain students. When I think about it, the teachers I disliked the most were the ones who did these things and never gained my trust regardless of how nice or competent they were.

I personally want to have the trust of my students. I plan on doing all the things Alber says to do to gain student's trust. There was one thing she said that I think needs a little more emphasis. While she spoke about being competent she mentioned shortly that teachers should stay sharp with the content they teach whether that be read a book or experiment on the computer. I think, however, that staying fresh should include staying up to date on technologies that students are using and fluent in. It is important to use technologies in the classroom to help teach and keep students interested, but part of gaining student's trust, is to show that you can use these technologies just as well as they can. Although it is not technically what you are trying to teach them, it still shows a level of care for the students and competency if you do not need student's help to use technologies in the classroom.