looking for a student's respect is not via their friendship but their feedback and success in achiving their course.
You must maintain a professional image by showing genuine concern for your students, but not by becoming their friend. If you become their friend, they have a tendency to believe you will start making allowances for them; an obvious ineffective technique for good classroom management.
Even after teaching for almost 6 years, I still sometimes have trouble of distinguishing the difference between what is considered showing concern for the student versus friendship.
Hi Roberta,
You are absolutely correct! It is way too risky to befriend students. You have too much at stake when you become students friends, like putting your job in danger.
Patricia Scales
crosing the line with student teacher relationships sets teachers up for disaster
Hi Erin,
I concur! We should be the professionals that we want our students to become.
Patricia Scales
It is very important that they do not see you as a peer rather an instructor. They should neer cross that line.
As professionals in education, we are training students to be professionals in their chosen fields. We are there because we not only have experience in our fields, but we have the passion to share our experiences and what we know with the people who are working hard to go on that career path. As such, it is important to be not only educators, but role models as well. If we require the students to wear scrubs and we don't, what is that showing them? That the rules are different for us and we don't take our uniforms seriously? If we gossip about other instructors or students and tell them not to, again, what are we teaching them? Keeping that professional distance can be thought of as job training too. Your employer isn't your buddy, he is your boss. I let the students know "I'm your instructor, I care about your success and will help you any way I can, but I have to keep my private life separate from my job". We have to keep the level of respect as high as possible...we see every day how "buddies" interact. Do we really want our students to come up and say "Hey dawg, not going to turn in that assignment, you understand, great party last night!" Yep, have to keep some distance.
I that it is extremely important to remain professional in front of our students. I think that when instructors act like friends to the students, the boundaries become blurred. The students will lose respect for the instructor and they may start to manipulate the situation.
