Learning to care!

To collaborate as adults, young people need to learn to care for others from an early age

One of the characteristics often observed in Enlightened Teachers is that they care for their students in terms of students feeling listened to and valued.  For a long time, I assumed that this was the basis for students’ willingness to pay attention to such teachers.

Looking through the lens of ‘teacherly authority’, I can now see that, although the above is important, I had things the wrong way round.  From about the age of four onwards children intrinsically know that, for healthy growth, they must learn how to care for others and when they come across someone who does, they pay close attention to them.  That person has ‘teacherly authority’.

Caring for and about others is the basis for being able to collaborate with them, one of the core twenty-first century skills (otherwise we are just co-operating – playing in parallel rather than playing together).

No matter what subject we are teaching to children we will get better learning taking place the greater the ‘teacherly authority’ we bring to bear.  ‘Teacherly authority’ goes up the more we can model the capacities that young people intuitively know they need to learn.

I presented a webinar on 3rd March where I made the linkage between student feedback, student engagement and ‘teacherly authority’ (you can replay the webinar here).  I have two follow-on webinars as follows (both at 12 pm AEDT):

• Student Engagement - what is 'Teacherly Authority' in the modern world? 17th March (register here)

• Teacherly Authority - how do we strengthen and build it? 31st March (register here)

 John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation. At the core of this work is the practice of encounter.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

• To purchase a copy of Red Brain Blue Brain, Student Feedback or Why We Teach go here