By Ria Uiterloo
April 2022
Some experiences shape you for life. As an 11-year-old, I started at a large Secondary school. I vividly remember a fellow classmate who was hungry early in the morning at 7 a.m. and discreetly took a bite of her sandwich. The French teacher reacted sharply to the situation: “What are you doing? Who eats during class? You have no manners! You are a pig, your mother is a mop and your father is a dishcloth”! The whole class turned to my classmate. She was shocked and sad and so were we. You could hear a pin drop. Nobody spoke in class after that incident. We comforted our classmate for the rest of the day.
The recent conference “Building Relationships between Educators and Students” brought back sad episodes from my high school life. Simone Mark, an ecological pedagogue and co-founder of Centrum Pedagogisch Contact in the Netherlands, presented Pedagogical Contact and the Circle of Attachment. Her presentation on the importance of the educator adapting to the needs of the child is essential in working with children. It is the role of the educator to create a safe base for the child.
According to Simone Mark, the role of an educator is to protect, comfort, enjoy and help the child sort out his/her feelings (see figure). As an educator, she says, you are bigger, stronger, wiser and kinder. She emphasizes the need to follow the child’s needs, to name them if possible, and to give guidance if necessary.
Figure 1
During the conference content, I thought back of my former school days, which were warm and pleasant during primary school. During a reflection and discussions with colleagues, I shared my first experience in high school. It was sad and even traumatic. The incident with the eating classmate and the teacher’s reaction to it has stayed with me. My classmate’s self-image was damaged for a long time.
Teachers make the difference.
My early experiences prompted me to reflect daily on my role as an educator, human being and the influence and impact on another’s life. School should be a safe place. That experience made me tiptoe for a long time in order to prevent insults from adults. School should be fun, if one realizes that school has to teach and give experiences to build self-esteem and a high sense of self in children.
The whole class during our years in high school avoided the wrath of this teacher, who dressed impeccably and walked proudly with her head up through the school. I became a victim of her wrath in third grade biology class when I tried to keep track of her notes. While copying some notes from my friend to make sure I had all the study info, I suddenly heard “Girl, I will insult you, I will insult you so that the ground splits open and you disappear”. I am sure she never realized that at that moment I wanted to disappear.
Teachers say a lot to children without realizing the influence and impact this can have on them.
Words have power. Therefore, we need to shape our beliefs and our behavior and become creators. The three pedagogues: the environment, the teacher and the child create the child’s world. Now from the confrontations with teachers in secondary schools, my world was created. The role that some teachers played in my life did not contribute to values of confidence and self-esteem.
This realization inspires me to speak up and expose others to positive words. The words of this teacher really touched me as a teenager. I was fortunate to have had wonderful parents and grandparents who were very protective and contributed to my self-esteem. I avoided further insults from this teacher, and it took me a long time to forgive her. At the same time, she was part of a group of many teachers who thought that insults would challenge us to learn and compete for the highest grades or results. They did not hesitate to say that their approach was that of their upbringing at school and challenged them to become successful in their studies, in other words, “They did not know any better”.
Of course, there were also extraordinary teachers in high school who were real and who recognized us. They approached us as individuals and provided a safe space for us to learn, explore and challenge ourselves in the 60s and 70s. They were so influential in allowing us to think, feel and figure things out with their guidance. The space we were given gave us responsibility and allowed us to become autonomous students by learning and developing as young people with self-confidence and high self-esteem. You were allowed to make mistakes and given the opportunity to correct your mistakes with the right guidance and reflective questioning.
Building self-esteem in children
Bastian Goedhart, in his master class “Pedagogy in Physical Education and Games (a core element)”, pointed out the importance of building self-esteem in pupils. He places Physical Education and Play in relation to, among others, motivation, self-confidence and self-image and emphasizes the role and the task of the teacher.
Looking back on my childhood, my high school days, I would have liked to have had a dialogue with the teachers of the time and emphasized how self-confidence is related to self-esteem. I think their approach was part of their upbringing during the hay days of the colonial era, where colonial punishments and ridicule would make you an individual who is obedient to any adult at any time.
I think we, as teachers, should build more confidence in children by giving them responsibilities to figure things/situations out. Fifty-two years ago, my classmate who discreetly took a bite of her sandwich was unnecessarily excluded by the negative attention she received.
In the presentation “Knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do…”, Marcel van Herpen gave the participants the opportunity to think about Pedagogical tact, which can best be described as doing the right thing at the right time, also in the eyes of the children.
The content of the presentation addressed the importance of the basic need of a child. That is to “develop a good relationship”. Only in that relationship, when you feel seen and accepted, can you develop coping skills to deal with life’s experiences.
Developing autonomy is also a basic need where a child can and will always be challenged and able to correct a mistake made. The French/Biology teacher had a problem or dilemma. We were not allowed to eat in class. She could have quietly walked up to my classmate and passed on the agreement or reminded her of the rule. A teacher who is connected to children and has a good relationship would start a dialogue with the child. What should this look and sound like? Think about this question as an educator.
Give it back to the children
Marcel van Herpen, who supervises pedagogical projects in and outside the Netherlands, makes us think about how we can deal with dilemmas. Because working with children means facing surprising things and sometimes not knowing what to do. Marcel van Herpen’s advice: “Give your dilemma back to the children. Tell the children what your dilemma is; ask them what they think we can do. For example, “I have a dilemma. I want to teach, and someone wants to eat during the lesson. What should I do? What would you do?
In the session, he emphasizes, “A problem is a question that you can solve (matter/issue).
A dilemma is a field of tension in which two things demand priority”.
Marcel continues “The first guideline is: If you do not know what to do (with children), there is never a problem, but always a dilemma”.
“Give that dilemma back to the children and ask how they can deal with it”.
Recently I received a great insight during a meeting with parents and members of a school. One of the discussions at the meeting was on “Can parents address classmates of their child after a conflict between children?” Feelings and hurt of both parents surfaced during the meeting when confronted with the task of putting themselves in the shoes of the child and the other. Perception came up, intuition came up; what do you do when you are confronted with a conflict of two children where one of the pupils is your child? It was a long meeting and, in the end, after apologizing to each other, the parents proposed to go out with their children as a family, to build a relationship. After the meeting with the parents, I received a description from one of the pupils: “The child has low self-esteem, she is seeing a psychologist, she is being bullied, we have had bullying sessions with a social worker, but the situation has not improved”. I reminded the school management of an influential teacher and philosopher:
Mr. Kanamori
Mr. Toshiro Kanamori from the documentary “Children Full of life” in which life lessons such as teamwork, community, the importance of openness and the damage of bullying are used to process and understand feelings. His life lesson “If one person is not happy; no one is happy”. The school has the task of preparing a lesson or lessons with children by watching the documentary together. The preparation, which I have advised, is to go back to the presentation of the conference “Knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do” and prepare the session with children. I am excited about the students’ experience…. The dilemma is theirs. Can they do it themselves or not? What do the teachers believe?
I think this session, assignment has awakened moments of reflection, and teams of schools were excited to start the process of practicing and brainstorming on the fundamental message of this conference “Building Relationships…”
Understanding and guiding gifted students
Bjorna Appel’s presentation “Understanding and guiding gifted learners” requires the same approach of building relationships, seeing, knowing, observing and understanding an individual. The bottom line is that an educator can only understand the pedagogy of Tact and Contact if they understand and appreciate the importance of meeting the basic or psychological needs of a child in their care. 
This is important to increase their engagement in learning.
Children must be given a voice to say what they want to learn, which equates to effective or deep learning. They are expected to have the right to express their own interests in relation to learning. Having a voice and involvement in their own learning and development is an increasingly important aspect of education and pedagogy.
With the above recap of the conference for teachers at schools of the St. Maarten Catholic Education Foundation, I hope that all educators will be inspired to continuously reflect on their pedagogical approach and consider the emotional effects of a wrong approach on children in the end. A negative reaction to undesirable behavior can increase, resulting in damage to the human psyche. Negative actions, reactions and creations damage. Practice the skill of reflection and choose positive inspiration and dignified discipline. It guarantees self-confidence, self-worth and self-reliance. My message to teachers is “Give to others what you want for yourself”. If a child needs a challenge or an adjustment in approach, do it. You will transform “lives”.
For more information on dealing with children, dive into Max van Manen’s book, Pedagogical Tact, which gives a clear picture of the child-teacher relationship: “Knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do. It gives adults, parents, teachers and youth leaders appropriate insights for acting with tact and thoughtfulness.