Haim Ginott was a teacher, educational psychologist, child psychotherapist, parent educator, and loving stepfather. He was also a survivor of concentration camps and saw highly educated and highly trained professionals use their skills and knowledge to commit the most awful atrocities.
He was determined to ‘make humans more human’ by creating educational settings with strong leaders that accept, validate, include, motivate, and support their students - rather than punish, overlook, or exclude.
School environments can be such traumatic places for a great many children and it’s often caring and compassionate educators that make all the difference - a safe face in an unsafe place - taking the time, paying attention, showing a genuine interest, inspiring, problem-solving with young people, and making creative use of limited resources.
School based anxiety, disruptive behaviour in school, fall out from school - these things make up a large part of the working week of most professionals supporting children and families. It can be difficult to believe that teachers and other school staff care care about children when we're the parent of a child curled up on the sofa crying - refusing to go in - because school feels like an unbearable place to be. Or when we're the parent of a child who masks through the school day and then we have the coke bottle effect when they come home and can let it all out. And when we're the parent of a child who doesn't have the skills to manage sitting still, staying quiet, or occupying themselves when there's no adult to help - watching them miss out on rewards and class treats and seeing the impact on their self esteem as they begin to identify as 'the naughty one.'
In my experience teachers and other school staff want to do right by children - just as most of us want to do right by the people we’re paid to teach, treat, support etc - we wouldn't go into the jobs we do otherwise. Things go wrong when we're stretched beyond our resources and we feel hopeless to find a way forward.
In my experience it’s much more effective to validate, collaborate, and to show gratitude to our teachers - one human being to another. It's not a fix for everything that's wrong in education but we're much more likely to get the best out of what's available.