by Chu Chin Kwok

Created on: December 06, 2009

How can teachers connect effectively with students and families while maintaining professionalism?

First and foremost, a teacher is by definition a professional and he or she must act, behave, think and discharge his/her duties professionally. This means that - for a start - in the eyes of all levels of society the teacher should be someone who possesses expertise in a particular area of education: be it a specific subject ( eg. Math, Biology, History etc) or a special, non-academic field ( student counselor, student psychologist, etc ) or the administration of schools and other educational institutions ( eg. School Principals and other school administrators ).

To me, a teacher must always maintain his/her professionalism at all times - especially when working within the school environment. The teacher must display integrity, honesty, moral rectitude, courage, firmness, and possibly even wisdom, not just when interacting with school colleagues, but also when dealing with school-children and their families, over and above the quality that a teacher must possess: professional knowledge and skills in the dissemination of knowledge - which brings to point the subject of this article: how to connect effectively with students and their families, while still maintaining professionalism.

In the first instance, teachers connect with students viz interact with school-children in their everyday encounters with them. In classroom settings, teachers connect with students when conducting lessons, connecting the students' minds to the vast field of knowledge that the new world requires, and a certain amount of which knowledge the teachers have to attempt to make the students master. Outside the classrooms too, teachers connect with their students when they take them to filed trips or museum visits or visiting factories or art galleries etc. A connection is made whenever the professional teacher arouses the interest of the students; connection is also made every time a teacher brings the students' attention to certain salient features of a painting, a photograph or sculpture and other relevant exhibits associated with the theme of the visits. In such situations professionalism is evidenced by the teacher guiding the students, explaining how seeds germinate into plants, how dinosaurs appeared and then disappeared on the face of the Earth, and how Van Gogh ended his life in anguish and suffering.

What about other situations - situations that are potentially contentious

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