The Empowered and Empowering Educator

At Children for Health we love the ideas from?The Virtues Project; we have two of their books and often refer to the pedagogy and activity ideas. This is particularly the case when we are trying to wrap our heads around difficult topics and how to approach them - like we are at the moment with two very different topics:

• sexual reproductive health; and
• climate change!

One of the key ideas from The Virtues Project is?The Empowering Educator?whose characteristics are described as follows…

• This person is confident, assertive, kind and enthusiastic about her role. S/he balances caring and assertiveness. S/he shows respect to the children.
• The classrooms of empowering educators have a peaceful sense of relaxed order. There is enthusiasm in both the teachers and students. There is a bond of affection between teachers and student and among students.
• The children are aware of ground rules which are known and posted on the wall and to which the educator refers to and discusses when there is a problem.
• Empowering educators call upon values to discuss conflicts or behaviour issues.
• There are always consequences when ground rules agreed upon are broken. Where possible there are choices over these consequences. As the?consequence is being acted upon, or after it, the empowered educator names the value that is expected.

We like these questions to deal with conflicts between children.

• What happened? What’s happening??
• What are you feeling? What did you want by doing that??
• What do you need??
• What do they need??
• How can you make it right??
• What would be fair to both of you?

On Linked In I'm enjoying following the work of Henry Anumudu Kelvin Nsekwila Gavin ?? McCormack all of whom demonstrate these and many other ideas around the empowered and empowering educator.

A lot is said and written about the importance of #childrensparticipation and #empowerment and the people children rely on to create the everyday opportunities for participation are the educators - parents, teachers, health personnel and others. We need to find ways of better recognising and supporting those educators.

As I have travelled around the world I meet them everywhere. Tools we use to recognise and strengthen teaching practice is our

T-Shapped Teacher. Click here to read more

https://www.childrenforhealth.org/how-we-do-it/training-workshops-tools-resources/the-t-shaped-teacher/

...and our Rainbow Tree

https://www.childrenforhealth.org/how-we-do-it/training-workshops-tools-resources/the-rainbow-tree/