Friday, September 10, 2010
Respect
Respect is an interesting term and can certainly mean different things to different people. I tend to associate respect with admiration of a certain quality within a person. I have respect for my brother because he, among other reasons, is a very knowledgeable scholar in theology and has taught me a lot. Also, I have a lot of respect for my mother, because she tries to love any person she comes into contact with. I have respect for both people because i admire and value the qualities within them and i desire to have these attributes within myself. Within the classroom a more traditional style teacher might hold the belief that in order to maintain respect in the class room, one must be strict, firm, and stoic. To a certain extent, i think these are valuable traits of a teacher, but the ideal is to get students to be excited about learning and the role of the teacher is to encourage and guide which might entail being strict sometimes. High school kids can be vicious. In high school choir, my choir director could simply not keep control or respect of the classroom. The sopranos would be gossiping, the altos complaining, and the tenors and basses chucking wads of paper across the room at each other all while the director would be trying to conduct rehearsal. The director would start to get emotional and angry and the more emotional she got, the rowdier the students would get. Its a scary thing about human nature; people take pleasure in watching some one they dislike, suffer. The important thing as a teacher in the classroom, is to win the hearts of the students. I think this is best done by being competent in what you are teaching, showing an excitement about what you are teaching, and charisma and kindness. Respect must be established from the beginning and it must be obvious, in the choir setting, that the students are there to sing and learn about music and not an hour of whatever mischief they can think of. I think this should be established verbally, as well as in nonverbals and how you present yourself. Respect is the most basic key to having a successful class and for students to learn. If students don't respect you, if they don't admire any qualities within you, then they don't want to hear what you have to say.
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Hi Charlie, (I'm Jim's student aid, in case he hasn't "virtually" introduced me to your class yet; he gave me permission to read/comment on your guys' blogs
ReplyDeleteWow, your entry is loaded with good discussion topics, questions, and things to think about. First, you define respect as a kind of admiration for someone, and I agree. But it seems that there's also this definition floating around of respect meaning something like "treat others the way you want to be treated," in that every human is entitled to receive respect from others. But lets face it, there are just some people we don't admire! Personally, I think that's ok; as some of your other classmates wrote, respect is something that needs to be earned, not demanded. So, can we have both of these types of respect at the same time? Can we SHOW respect by exhibiting kindness toward others in our actions, while only truly ADMIRING those we deem wise, or loving, or incredible in some way?
Another comment of yours that jumped out to me: the fact that there is a part of human nature that gets a kind of satisfaction from watching people whom the dislike, suffer. I can't argue with you that this isn't a part of our human nature, because it definitely is...but is there something behind this cynical behavior in us all? When we find ourselves reacting this way, what might be the cause? What, in us, is lacking, that we are able to build ourselves up at others' expenses? Just some thoughts to mull over....