Personal or professional? Reflecting on teacher-student relationship

By Tarissa Pickens
EDI 17 Psychology and Development of Adolescent Students

School of Education
Long Island University, C. W. Post
February 27, 2010
 

First off I would like to say that yesterday class was refreshing because it was nice to have a conversation among my peers. It made me consider a lot of different perspectives that I never thought of and confirmed those I have already established. Sometimes having meaningful conversations among your peers is insightful and allows you to reevaluate your views.    

An interesting topic we spent some time on was teacher/peer relationships.  This has been and always be a touchy subject because some unfortunate situations have arisen in the education sector. Some teachers have taken advantage of students and preyed on their innocence and inappropriate relationships have developed or favoritism has occurred. Regardless of these unlucky and rare situations, I believed that teachers and their pupil should have personal relationships so that they can develop a positive rapport that can stimulate cooperation and learning from their students.  Also creating personal relationships will allow teachers to more accurately report abuse and misguidance in their students lives. If teachers have to be concerned with their personal lives, they why not have students get to know them personally.  Personal relationships humanizes the teacher and teachers begin to not only been seen authoritarians  but as co learners when this happens.     

Although some may feel that technology has killed creativity in students, we must also praise technology for facilitating online learning, and providing access to resources that students might have access to otherwise.  You must draw line when communicating with your students via technology like never discuss personal issues on a social network. Perhaps it can be used to send reminders of deadlines, drop a note about progress in a project or just say hey I haven't seen you in class in a dew days stop by.  It could be seen as an another avenue where teachers can connect with the students and gain ground on a subject.  

Yes it is true that teachers are secondary role models to students and some things might damage that role like befriending your students on social networking web sites. It may even be detrimental to the teacher student interaction. When using technology you just have to always conduct yourself as an educator and realize there should be rules to virtual engagement and just engagement that must be kept when developing student -teacher relationships.   People shouldn't always see student teacher relationships as a negative aspect of education but should embrace it. .