4 – The class teacher

 

 

The quality of the relationship between teacher and student

by Rubens Salles 

In primary education at Waldorf schools, a class teacher is adopted, who accompanies the class from 1st to 8th grade and teaches the main subjects (Portuguese, mathematics, history, etc.) days.

These subjects are taught in periods, which last from three to four weeks each, in which the teacher can deepen the subject and enrich his classes with the support of artistic activities. Complementary subjects, such as languages, physical education, music, etc., are usually taught by specialist teachers. The aim of the class teacher is to train his students and not just teach the subjects of a given year. It is a commitment. He gets to know each student's family well, their life story, their problems and qualities. And each class teacher has a tutor, an experienced teacher, sometimes retired, who attends his classes periodically and guides and helps when needed.

Thus, in Waldorf schools, teaching is carried out by the teacher, who plans and carries it out. Textbooks are used only for your preparation and planning. He is free to prepare his classes, choose or create poems, stories, plays, etc., and the students write their period notebooks with great care, because everything must be beautiful. With the proper use of his voice, the teacher carries out education. No textbook or technical resource replaces the quality of the human relationship between a teacher who is prepared, motivated and enthusiastic about his work, and his students. No educational method surpasses or replaces the spoken word that goes from one human being to another.(1)

 

In Waldorf schools, whenever a new first-year class begins, there is a ceremony where parents take their children to the one who will be their teacher and educator. Working every day with his students, the class teacher is able to establish a relationship of trust with them and achieve a natural authority, essential to create the best conditions for the action of educating.

The school is a privileged environment for the development of creativity, aesthetic sense, and values such as responsibility, solidarity, sociability, tolerance, inclusion, justice, democracy, diversity, citizenship and sustainability, among others. But a positive influence does not happen by chance, but by a conscious action of the trainer. A teacher only teaches justice, for example, if he is fair with his students, he only teaches solidarity if he is sympathetic, he only teaches responsibility if he is responsible, he only excites his students to learn if he teaches with enthusiasm. The Waldorf teacher knows that his example as a human being is part of the child's formative environment, and he assumes this responsibility. Every child needs to feel that they are important to their teacher.

In conventional Brazilian schools, children have a single teacher for the main subjects up to the 5th grade, who, although he changes every year, lives on a daily basis and creates a bond with the children. According to INEP/QEdu data referring to the public school system in 2016, the failure rate in the 6th year, which is when students no longer have a single teacher and start having a teacher for each subject, was twice the failure rate. of the 5th year, reaching 15.7% of students, and the dropout rate in the 6th year was 165% higher than in the 5th year. In the Waldorf school there is no failure, except in exceptional cases, but I cite these national statistical data because they corroborate the importance of students having a teacher who is a reference for them.(2)

Today, due to changes in the family model and the fact that most fathers and mothers work outside the home, many children have little adult dedication within the family, which increases the social importance of a teacher committed to the education of their students. Research carried out for 40 years by the Van Leer Foundation (3) showed that countless children, despite being exposed to very negative and disruptive family experiences, managed not to repeat these experiences in their adult lives, because they had at least one reference person, whom they trusted, to turn to in difficult times. And this reference person was often not a family member. Ute Craemer considers that this reference person “must also exist, for example, in day care centers, orphanages and schools, which implies organizing the work in these institutions in such a way that one person accompanies the child as closely as possible and for a as long as possible”

This protagonism of the teacher does not develop in schools where teaching is based on programs imposed by an authority, developed outside the reality of the school, the classroom and the coexistence between teacher and students. The teacher's commitment to his students is one of the mainstays of Waldorf Pedagogy, and it favors the teacher to act on relationships and attitudes within the class and in families. From this position, the teaching of coexistence takes place, which together with the development of thinking, feeling and wanting, basic principles of Waldorf Pedagogy, coincide with the four pillars of contemporary education established by UNESCO in 1998, in the Report of the International Commission on Education. for the 21st Century – Education: A Treasure to Discover, coordinated by Jacques Delors. Are they:

Learning to be (feeling – sensitive life)
Learning to do (want – will)
Learning to know (thinking – cognition)
Learning to live together (coexistence – human relationships).

This view of the importance of humanizing education is recurrent even in contemporary authors who are not part of the Waldorf movement. Discover some opinions:

Francisco Imbernón

“Currently, knowledge is considered as important as attitudes, that is, everything that represents the formation of attitudes. In order to really educate in life and for life, for this different life (plural, participatory, solidary, integrative...), and to overcome social inequalities, the educational institution must definitively overcome technological, functionalist and bureaucratizing approaches, approaching, at the same time, on the contrary, from its more relational, more dialogic, more cultural-contextual and community character, in which the relationship established between all the people who work inside and outside the institution acquires importance. It is in this context that the social and cultural dynamism of the institution is reflected with and at the service of the entire community, certainly considered in a broad way [...] The institution that educates must stop being an exclusive “place” where only the basics are learned. and the dominant knowledge is reproduced […] It must teach, for example, the complexity of being a citizen and the different instances in which it materializes: democratic, social, solidary, egalitarian, intercultural and environmental.”(4)

Maria Candida Moraes

”A fundamental challenge of current education is how to collaborate in the construction of a multicultural and intercultural citizenship based on learning environments, as well as the role of pedagogical mediation for the development of a critical, responsible and creative citizen conscience [...] of internal values is causing serious social pathologies, such as the seduction of young people by drugs, the increase in corruption, kidnappings, tax evasion and criminality in general”.(5)

Saturnino De La Torre

”Emotional intelligence, and not the abstract ability to reason, is what really determines the important acts and decisions of life, as well as success in human relationships and often professional success […] in this way, the emotional dimension of being human, which only two decades ago was banned in many educational institutions, emerges with its own value together with experience and reason.”(6)

Edgar Morin

“Understanding is both the means and the end of human communication. However, education for understanding is absent from teaching. The planet needs, in every way, mutual understanding. Considering the importance of education for understanding, at all educational levels and at all ages, the development of understanding calls for the reform of mentalities. This must be the work for the education of the future. Mutual understanding between human beings, whether close or strangers, is from now on vital for human relationships to get out of their barbaric state of incomprehension.”(7)

Paulo Freire

“It is not possible to think of human beings as far from ethics, let alone outside it. To be far away or worse, outside ethics, among us, women and men, is a transgression. That is why transforming the experience into pure technical training is to undermine what is fundamentally human in the educational exercise: its formative character. If the nature of the human being is respected, the teaching of contents cannot be disregarded in the moral formation of the student. To educate is substantively to form.”(8)

 

Being able to meet these challenges requires constant self-education from the teacher. Peter Biekarck states that self-education involves the teacher creating an internal, healthy ecosystem for his or her own existence. And, when he creates it, the child who is in front of him perceives it, and this ecosystem surrounds him and also becomes a heritage for him. The teacher becomes more fully in front of the children and they more fully in front of him. To educate, it is not enough to know techniques, a humanizing dedication is essential. The author states that “indiscipline is already a side effect of today's life, because there is no preparation of the internal environment. All good education results from the serious and grateful commitment of the human being to educate himself.” (9)

The Waldorf teacher knows that first we have to educate ourselves and then we can educate the children. It is necessary to create an environment that favors a mental and spiritual harmony between teacher and students, which goes beyond words and pedagogical techniques. The teacher’s authority depends on how he “answers” the following questions from children:

“Do you really see me?”
“Can you help me make a date with the world?”

“This defines the position of the teacher and the type of relationship the student has with him. The answer to these essential questions occurs during and through a teaching that is not only aimed at the mere transmission of mundane experiences, but that allows one to experience the world. If the teacher passes this test, he is accepted by the students as an authority.”(10) Tobias Richter

 

Bibliography

1. CARLGREN, Frans and KLINGBORG, Arne. Education for Freedom – the Pedagogy of Rudolf Steiner, 2006, p. 46 and 47.
2. INEP / QEdu – http://www.qedu.org.br/brasil/taxas-rendimento
3. Apud FRIEDMAN, Adriana and CRAEMER, Ute. (orgs). Paths to an Alliance for Childhood, 2003, p. 69.
4. IMBERNON, Francisco. Teacher and Professional Training, 2006, p. 7.
5. MORAES, Maria Candida. Complexity and Pedagogical Mediation. New Perspectives for Intercultural Education. 2008, p. 15.
6. TOWER, Saturnino De La. Innovative and Creative Didactic Strategies. 2008, p. 63.
7. MORIN, Edgar. The Seven Knowledges Necessary for the Education of the Future. 2002, p. 17.
8. FREIRE, Paul. Pedagogy of Autonomy – knowledge necessary for educational practice. 2002, p. 16.
9. BIEKARCK, Peter. Video Collection Great Educators. 2009
10. RICHTER, Tobias. Pedagogical Objective and Teaching Goals of a Waldorf School. 2002, p. 21.