A webinar about "rebuilding trust" presented by Lea Brovedani highlighted the importance of trust. She was interested in understanding the conditions that must exist in order for trust can survive and thrive, how can someone assess trust and trustworthy, and the key steps for rebuilding broken trust.
The main point is that we as human usually work and do business with people that we know, like and trust. Therefore we should know why is that so.
Trust is defined by Jennifer Dunn and Maurice Schweitzer as the willingness to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations about another's behavior. Thus emotions are involved in the process, whether negative or positive. Studies shows that positive emotions increase trust while negative emotions decrease trust. The positive emotions are happiness, gratitude, joy, and being appreciated. The negative emotions are anger, sadness, and guilt.
The cost of trust is high where the highest the trust the higher positive outcome you will get from your students or any relationship. So as educators, we have to maintain positive emotions with our students if we wish to obtain more good results from them. In other words the more more we trust and believe in them , the more we get back;"what you expect is what you get".
So try to know from your student on the scale from 1-10 about how much they really trust you as teacher or person. Ask them the following questions:
- How much they feel respect toward you?
- How much are they appreciated from you?
- How much they feel supported in your presence?
- how much are they criticized from you?
After finding out the number, you should design a plan in order to increase these numbers from being non-trusted person to become a trust person. in this way you will be get better results from them. For sure the trust should start from you. Trust your self first before trusting others. Then take a good look into your trust relationship circle and where you place your students within it. Trust is reciprocal. If all your students are placed outside your trust circle then you are outside their circle of trust. Therefore, you should try to earn their trust through any trust system. The following system is based on the communication of your caring, commitment, consistency and competence for others.
"We all are mistaken sometimes; sometimes we do wrong things, things that have bad consequences. But it does not mean that we are evil, or that we cannot be trusted ever after."
-Alison Croggon-
So if mistaken, then you should say : "I'm sorry" without any "but's" making it a sincere apology. Own the mistake because trust takes years to be build, only seconds to break and forever to repair. So it takes a strong person to say sorry and an even stronger one to forgive. Even though our relationship with students is limited but we should provide continuous evidence that we trust them and we are able to apologizes if mistaken.
"Hanging on to resentment is letting someone you despise live rent-free in your head"
-Ann Landers-
Finally, as educators our ultimate goal to has a great outcome from our students. Therefore trust them to be able to do so. Never allow one mistakes to affect your relationship with other students. Don't break all your trust in all students due to only one.
Yes Zeinab, Trust is a basic block in buiding a positive relationship for and within you teaching-learning environment.
ReplyDeleteHowever, do you think that, in our cuture, students would be so clear and plain about their feelings?
No wonder that the webinar you attended is fabulous; it shows how teaching moves beyond the walls of content to focus more on a humanistic angle, that sees the student-teacher relationship more than content, grades, or material. Furthermore, the webinar really makes it less stressful for those teachers that believe that they can’t be mistaken and thus they can’t apologize. I really appreciate the fact that, we as teachers should set our minds first; believe that if we keep doing what we are doing we will keep getting what we got, and that, we should blame ourselves first if something goes wrong, because the change and the solution to any situation or problem should start from within us so that it could penetrate to others. To be honest, I adored the sentence that states: “Trust takes years to be built, only seconds to break, and forever to repair.” I just made of it my personal What’s App status; you really inspired me! Bless your efforts
ReplyDeleteTrust is very important in every relationship and it is as essential in a student- teacher relationship .. students must be taught the importance of trust from the early stages and be treated upon it
ReplyDeleteI agree with you girls. Trust is the crucial aim when we seek to build an intimate and affecting relationships in our life. whether among teacher-students; students-students, colleagues at work , family members.Thus we should teach our students from early stages self-trust in order to trust others,build and accept trustful relationships throughout their personal and employment life.
ReplyDeleteit is true, how much teacher gives affection, attention, and trust for students how much he/she receive respect and regards.
ReplyDelete