A Question about Trust

Nadia is an occasional teacher in GTA mostly teaching primary level; whenever she goes to school ‘A’ she receives a warm welcome from students.

In class,  Nadia tries to follow guidelines provided by the teacher to the best of her abilities. She thinks and sometimes is told by teacher-assistants present in some of her classes that she is doing great job as good as a regular teacher in that class making use of every teachable moment. However, Nadia is concerned, sometimes,  if she is taking too much risk when she allows a certain student in her class to use equipment such as a computer while the rest of the class warns her against doing that, telling her that the student doesn’t have the privilege to use it. At other times she allows the student to be part of groups and she is told by other students that this student is only allowed to sit with the teacher.

After hearing such comments Nadia casually mentions to the class that she has not received any such instructions from their teacher and is sure that the student would not let her down by doing something irresponsible. She says no untoward incident has happened so far in any of her classes. Nadia adds that she has never experienced any discipline issue that she can’t handle during the past year and half since she started supply teaching.

To learn more about this scenario, including the author’s own response, please attend the Intersections of Diverse Teachers and Diverse Learners at CSSE 2013, or stay tuned to the DiT website because we will be posting those details in the near future.

Until then, please leave a comment so that we can read your responses to this scenario. Here is a question to consider interacting with each other and the author (Syeda Rufeeda Bukhari, from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, at the University of Toronto) about:

  1. Is Nadia doing the right thing by including all students in all activities, teaching them to behave responsibly because she trusts them?  She fears sometimes if this may result in an unexpected outcome at other times she feels confident of her abilities to handle situations thinking if it was necessary the teacher would have left instructions in the best interest of the given student.

 

 

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