Check the Chair

Why trust is important
Trust can be a very confusing and somewhat elusive concept, despite it seeming simple and being widely understood in general terms. It is a feeling, something intangible and yet easily altered. For trust to occur there needs to be emotion, feeling and thought involved. It can be simplified to a sense of comfort, ease or relaxation within specific context such as with a person or object which requires interaction. It would be entirely unnecessary to trust in something or someone who will have no impact on your life or the situation.
Trust is not an isolated thing, it is connected to and relies on experience and pre-established knowledge. When sitting down in a chair, most people would not give a second thought to whether the chair would hold them, even if it is the first time in that particular chair. This is simply due to the vast number of experiences with chairs in general and knowing they are most likely able to support their weight. This is a trust in an object and is important in order to reduce the amount of time wasted in a day, as a lot of time would be spent checking a lot of chairs if every person had to check every chair they sat in before they did so.
This idea translates equally well into person to person interactions within a school or classroom. Levels of trust are earned by the teacher and learners alike and each day new levels are established, build up or broken down by simple actions and how they can be interpreted or misinterpreted. When a level of trust is established, it removes the “checking time” taken and allows for content to flow more freely. When a learner trusts that a teacher will deliver only factually correct information that has been well researched, much less time is spent by the learner evaluating the correctness of the information and more time can be dedicated to the understanding of the information at hand. Trust is a relationship with what is not known, the learner accepts that the teacher has done the research but unless the learner does the research themselves and finds out for themselves, they will not know. In this instance trust in a classroom holds great importance as a lack of trust between a teacher and learner could drastically reduce the potency of a lesson as he learner grapples internally on how much time to dedicate to deciphering and understanding the content verses identifying whether the teacher is correct or not.
As a teacher, you would naturally want the best for each of your learners, if not for their own growth then at least for the results which you will have to display come end of year. Trust for a teacher is very similar to trust as a learner in that the teacher cannot force a learner to undertake in any task, nor can the teacher do daily check-ups on every learner with regard to homework etc. the teacher is simply to trust that each learner wants to achieve their best and will do the work to make that happen. However this is not always the case and when a learner proves that they cannot be trusted to work on their own or ae not able to cope on their own, then the teacher is required to take note of this and follow up on the learner. In doing so the teacher puts steps in place for the leaner to achieve and also builds trust with the learner who may in time reciprocate it.

M.