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Education, Social Issues 638 Comments on Feeling Safe – A Teacher’s Responsibility

Feeling Safe – A Teacher’s Responsibility

By Michelle McWaters · On September 14, 2017 ·Photography by Joseph Barker

In my experience, for a child to learn and develop in confidence and self-awareness it’s important they feel safe, both emotionally and physically. However, in the classroom a whole host of things are going on – not just the child’s relationship with the lesson in hand.

Children are very aware as they are feeling everything, all of the time. They can feel what is going on outside the window in nature while they are colouring in or doing their maths. They can feel the rest of the school and what is going on in other rooms. They can feel how the teacher and the other children are feeling and what is going on at home for them and so on, all whilst getting on with something, and yet this is not recognised or honoured by the system.

Instead the education system reduces the child to a prescribed way of doing things in a very linear way. They have to face the front, sit in a certain way, do things in a certain order, not talk, not look out the window – not be themselves in other words – which squashes their spherical awareness by not allowing them to acknowledge or articulate what they are feeling or how they are responding to what they are feeling.

When we do not give children permission to express what they are feeling, they learn to dismiss the truth of what they know, second-guessing what is asked of them and ‘playing it safe.’

Over time this false configuration of expression becomes deeply embedded in the body, feeling so familiar it eventually becomes ‘normal’ and what is perceived to be true, but the true knowingness remains unexpressed and lies dormant and buried. It is not totally forgotten however, which creates a constant underlying tension, which of course plays out slightly differently for each of us.

These insecurities have the same root cause though because the current model of education suggests that who the children are isn’t enough and that getting things wrong is bad, and therefore they have to try harder, be better etc. In learning that it is only by what they do and achieve that gets recognition, a stress is created by over absorbing ‘knowledge’ and regurgitating it. This generally causes a lifelong, un-admitted issue with making things look good at the expense of how one is really feeling.

It is clear that underneath the façade of doing things ‘right’, children do not feel wholly safe to be themselves, learning instead to hold back their natural expression for fear of not being accepted for who they are. It is interesting to note that as the child becomes an adult this becomes normalised, and so the whole cycle is repeated as they send their children off to school and encourage them to value their self-worth through what they achieve, not because of who they innately are. As a consequence, and in my experience, children very quickly learn to self-bash when they don’t understand something or find something tricky, as underneath they are looking for recognition through being a ‘success’. Nowhere is it in their lexicon to even possibly articulate their value beyond what they perceive themselves to be good at.

As a teacher therefore, my main aim, on which I base all my lessons, is to build relationships with my students. This comes from my relationship with myself first before I connect to my pupils as they can very much feel where I am at (as nothing can be truly hidden from them – their not expressing it doesn’t mean it isn’t a known!), and so a genuineness, openness and honesty needs to be there from the start. I have found that the children I teach really appreciate this and if I am feeling fragile then it is perfectly ok for this to be communicated, as in this communication my students are treated as the equals they are. Often asking them for support when I need it confirms this too.

Not only is all of this in itself incredibly powerful, but also to accept my students for where they are at is also deeply registered by them and supports them to feel safe. Ultimately what I am teaching is not beyond their scope, even if they appear to be struggling. I know that this struggle comes from the self-imposed blocks and inner tension they have created by falsely believing they are not good enough and so I hold them in a quality that communicates the truth.

Ultimately, trust in the teacher is the cornerstone of true learning for a pupil because their bodies need to feel safe to be open to learning. For example, observing year 2 children playing with Lego recently I could feel that they didn’t mind their designs falling apart because they weren’t under any pressure to get anything right – they were relaxed, having fun, simply learning as they were playing – and the great thing was they were working out what worked and what didn’t with ease.

As teachers, through developing trust we can support our kids to feel at ease, to ‘have a go’ without fear of getting things wrong because they feel valued as a person first and foremost, not judged according to outcomes or results.

By Michelle McWaters, Bath, UK

Further Reading:
What would our Education be like if we Truly Supported our Kids to Connect to their Body?
Education, Schools & Teaching our Kids: ‘Quality of Presence’ in the Classroom
The True Purpose of Education – One Size Fits All or Evolution?

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Michelle McWaters

I am a mother of two amazing children and a part-time teacher of English. My idea of a good time is meeting new people, building relationships and in supporting others to know just how unique and amazing they are.

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638 Comments

  • Mary Adler says: December 28, 2019 at 4:07 pm

    There are so many beautiful lessons in life that are not on the education curriculum. When we come together in true friendship one plus one equals one.

    Reply
  • Greg Barnes says: July 26, 2019 at 5:33 am

    Trying in life to make things better and right only works for a few and as you have shared Michelle, never “judging” one against another, and when children work together as in your “Lego” example they learn together and have so much fun without the class room pressure.

    Reply
    • Michelle Mcwaters says: July 26, 2019 at 3:44 pm

      The joy children feel and come home with when they have had a fun day at school cannot be underestimated. But this fun always comprises a feeling of unity within the group, a feeling of settlement and acceptance in the body, the ability of having been able to express in their own way and of having simply been allowed to be themselves whilst they were learning. Unfortunately this is not a daily occurrence, in fact – it is incredibly rare in the yearly cycle.

      Reply
  • Greg Barnes says: April 8, 2019 at 6:36 am

    What you have shared Michelle is great, and we need teachers that can take a child from pre-school all the way through to the end of high school, university or college so living a life of “Truth” and Self-awareness become our normal.

    Reply
    • Michelle Mcwaters says: June 9, 2019 at 5:24 pm

      For us all to be so much more aware of self and of truth and make it normal would indeed be rather awesome! However we still have a long, long way to go before the majority of humanity is ready to live with this level of responsibility. In the meantime, the more individuals who see this reflected to them by those who have chosen to go there already, the more those numbers will exponentially grow.

      Reply
      • Greg Barnes says: July 26, 2019 at 5:35 am

        How “long” as history has shown, depends on our reflection being held, and holding as you have shared Michelle so that the numbers will “exponentially grow” as we the students live with a deep-humble-appreciative-ness so that when a new student is ready there is someone who has a Livingness that inspires because this level of Truth is felt by its lived unwaveringly-ness. With deep being our foundation that we continually build on, humble being our Soul-full connection, and the appreciate-ive-ness that we are living to our up-most in the understanding we are allowing the light of God to come in and through us as our expression, and appreciation is the glue that holds us from one moment of True purpose to the next. So ‘appreciation’ is awesome as it comes with the ‘authority’ and ‘confirms’ us in life so we are living with True Purpose, and for so “long” we have waited for this level of teachings, and the Livingness as presented by Serge Benhayon can be lived now and reflected, without being crucified, murdered or slain for our religious way of being.

        Reply
        • Greg Barnes says: August 1, 2019 at 5:04 am

          Appreciating our essences has never been so easy.

          Reply
  • Le says: March 15, 2019 at 5:03 am

    If education was based on love we would not have the adult rates of ill mental health or suiside that we currently have.

    Reply
    • Michelle Mcwaters says: June 9, 2019 at 5:29 pm

      The system is so broken. Yesterday I supported parents and colleagues by going on a short march through my home town in protest against the school cuts in our system, that has pared everything down to the bone with quite catastrophic consequences. Everyone wants to fix what we have, but what if it needs to break to expose the lovelessness in it? What if it has to get so broken that we will be forced to reassess what we want out of it and what it needs to deliver in truth?

      Reply
  • Annoymous says: March 8, 2019 at 9:01 am

    Our whole world could be so much magical wonderful and loving if we were brought up to know ourselves and follow our heart.

    Reply
  • LE says: February 27, 2019 at 8:32 am

    As adults we have a huge responsibility to be love with ourselves and others, so they can also see that this is the way. We are the ones who set the standards

    Reply
  • Alexis Stewart says: February 21, 2019 at 8:02 pm

    Feeling safe is a man made construct that is only necessary because we aren’t living the truth of who we are. If we were living the truth of who we all are then the concepts of fear and safety would not exist.

    Reply
    • Rachel Murtagh says: March 11, 2019 at 8:11 am

      True, Alexis and instead of fear we would only feel a joy and a deeper connection with each other. Life would look and feel very different.

      Reply
  • Michelle Mcwaters says: February 16, 2019 at 8:39 pm

    This is certainly what most parents wish for, sometimes not as in my experience a handful of parents simply want the relief from the responsibility of having to raise their children and they don’t want to look too closely at the system they are handing their children over to. That said, yes, teachers have a duty of care and they are normally very aware of it even if they fall short every now and then.

    Reply
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