Build the Trust

Today we will talk about the influence teachers have on the minds of their students. We have a lot of stories to demonstrate this, but the ones we have chosen were shared with us by two parents.
The first story is about Ishaan who is fifteen years old and like most teenagers spends more time in the virtual world. His parents often worry about the amount of time he spends in front of his PC. They feel that he is somehow losing touch with the real world and Nature. On a recent road trip to the country side, Ishaan was spending a lot of time on his smart phone updating his friends about the journey rather than experiencing the real journey. As the car was passing near a village, Ishaan suddenly asked to stop. There were sugarcane fields on either side of the highway. He stepped out of the car, entered a field and just touched a sugarcane plant. He then requested one of the farm hands to give him a cane. He turned to his mother and said, "Mom, do you remember in KG we did the theme on sugarcanes? Seema ma'am got some sugarcane for us and we had so much fun chewing them! I never realized that sugarcane plants grow so tall and that the leaves have such sharp edges! It has always fascinated me….and Nature too."
Seema would never have thought of the deep impact her getting sugarcane to class would have on the children. She had simply done what she thought then was the right thing, to help children learn better. It eventually influenced at least one child in the way he looked or connected with Nature.
Here is another story.
A little while ago, when the environmental conservation drive was just gathering steam, prominent schools across the country started a 'Ban Polythene' drive.
Our friend, a parent from such a school was strictly instructed by her son to never pack his lunch in a polybag again. Back in those days, paper bags weren't readily available. Packing anything for school had become a daily battle. Every morning there were tears and fights about not taking poly bags to school. This continued for quite some time, till one day, during a struggle to find paper bags, the son just shouted, "Give it to me in a poly bag!"
The parent was taken aback. After months of abstinence from polythene bags, why did her son suddenly not mind them anymore? More than anything, she was concerned that maybe her son no longer gave enough importance to rules or socially-relevant causes. So she asked him, "Why are you asking for a poly bag all of a sudden? Won't your teacher tell you off?" To this her son replied, "How can she tell me off? She gets polythene bags to school herself!"
Adults have incredible impact on children. Sometimes this influence is way beyond what they intend or expect it to be. This is an important message for all adults who engage in 'educating' children as parents as well as teachers – Practice What You Preach. Always try to be honest in your intent. Children look at 'grown-ups' with trust and expectation. We need to work towards retaining and building on their feeling of deference. For if children stop trusting us, then who will they look up to for guidance?