Don’t be too quick to la­bel that child in your class­room as a pest, trou­ble­mak­er or men­ace, be­cause that child might well be dis­play­ing be­hav­iours in­dica­tive of some un­der­ly­ing is­sue that re­quires in­ter­ven­tion. This is the view of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), as it seeks to im­plore teach­ers through its ini­tia­tive Teach­ing with Em­pa­thy, to be­come more cog­nisant of the “un­seen” when deal­ing with chil­dren.

Via its week­ly ra­dio pro­gramme ‘TTUTA Speaks,’ the as­so­ci­a­tion has been il­lus­trat­ing ways in which teach­ers could im­prove on their in­ter­ac­tion with stu­dents who may have au­then­tic be­hav­iour­al is­sues.

Asked why the as­so­ci­a­tion felt the need to em­bark on such an ini­tia­tive at this time, TTUTA pres­i­dent Lyns­ley Doo­d­hai said there are chil­dren through­out the coun­try deal­ing with a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of is­sues that are not con­ducive to learn­ing and they bring them to school. These stu­dents, he re­lat­ed, do not have the cop­ing mech­a­nisms that adults have de­vel­oped, there­fore if they can­not deal with their prob­lems, they will act out and dis­play be­hav­iours that are their cries for help. He said these stu­dents are of­ten re­ferred to the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, but teach­ers can al­so play a huge role in reach­ing out to the stu­dent in an ef­fort to find out what is go­ing on with them.

“We are see­ing this in our schools to­day. Teach­ers need to recog­nise some of these be­hav­iours and help stu­dents to deal with these is­sues so that we do not lose them,” said Doo­d­hai

“Just as mod­el­ling kind­ness is vi­tal to teach­ing stu­dents kind­ness, so is mod­el­ling em­pa­thy vi­tal to teach­ing stu­dents em­pa­thy. The most im­por­tant thing that can be done to en­cour­age em­pa­thy in stu­dents is to em­pathise with them.”

Doo­d­hai was quick to note that a great ma­jor­i­ty of teach­ers pay close at­ten­tion to stu­dents with be­hav­iour­al is­sues, but the as­so­ci­a­tion felt the pro­gramme was es­sen­tial to act as a re­in­force­ment of the im­por­tance of be­ing em­pa­thet­ic to stu­dents.

Ac­cord­ing to Doo­d­hai, there was a greater need for teach­ing with em­pa­thy par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause of the alarm­ing sta­tis­tics on sex child abuse in T&T, re­cent­ly re­vealed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi dur­ing the pro­pos­al of leg­is­la­tion which seeks to amend the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act to in­tro­duce a na­tion­al sex of­fend­ers reg­istry to be kept by the Po­lice Ser­vice and which al­so pro­vides for the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion to be man­dat­ed to stamp “child of­fend­er” on the pass­port of such a per­son.

He said this was cause for se­ri­ous con­cern by every­one in­clud­ing teach­ers. And in an at­tempt to do its part to al­le­vi­ate this scourge, TTUTA has de­vel­oped a work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence and oth­er bod­ies work­ing with and for the pro­tec­tion of chil­dren.

Asked if the ini­tia­tive would be a “one-off” ap­proach, Doo­d­hai said the as­so­ci­a­tion in­tend­ed to con­tin­ue its ad­vo­ca­cy for an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that was all in­clu­sive and which caters for all stu­dents and al­lows them to de­vel­op their own po­ten­tial.

A teacher must have pas­sion for peo­ple

Guid­ance of­fi­cer and so­cial work­er Al­soona Boswell-Jack­son is in agree­ment with TTUTA’s ini­tia­tive but said it must fol­low a prac­ti­cal process. She con­tend­ed it may not al­ways be fea­si­ble for teach­ers to go ‘above and be­yond the call,’ of their teach­ing du­ty to eval­u­ate, as­sess and di­ag­nose stu­dents’ be­hav­iours to de­ter­mine the un­der­ly­ing cause, as the is­sue of time and com­plet­ing a cur­ricu­lum are to be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there are a num­ber of caus­es that a teacher may have to elim­i­nate to as­cer­tain a stu­dent’s be­hav­iour, she not­ed.

“Chil­dren act out of peer in­flu­ence, some­times it could be just plain ‘at­ten­tion seek­ing,’ trau­ma, abuse or it could even be as a re­sult of a spec­trum dis­or­der, like autism or at­ten­tion deficit hy­per­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der (AD­HD). Some teach­ers may not know how to di­ag­nose these is­sues and that is where train­ing needs to step in,” Boswell-Jack­son ad­vised.

Ac­cord­ing to her, more than a pas­sion to teach, a teacher must al­so have a pas­sion for peo­ple, which can fos­ter ef­fec­tive class­room man­age­ment.

“Class­room man­age­ment is very im­por­tant for teach­ers to mas­ter in or­der for them to recog­nise stu­dents that have au­then­tic be­hav­iour­al is­sues that re­quire em­pa­thy fur­ther eval­u­a­tion and in­ter­ven­tion,” she said.

Boswell-Jack­son al­so said that in or­der for a teacher to have that “dis­cern­ing eye” to dis­tin­guish au­then­tic be­hav­iour­al is­sues from those that are not, they need­ed to be taught emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence and mind­ful­ness—a 21st-cen­tu­ry ap­proach ed­u­ca­tors are now be­ing en­cour­aged to em­brace.

Emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence and mind­ful­ness as de­scribed by pos­i­tivepsy­chol­o­gypro­gram.com are de­fined as the abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy and man­age your own emo­tions and those of oth­er peo­ple. It in­cor­po­rates emo­tion­al aware­ness, emo­tion­al ap­pli­ca­tion, and emo­tion­al man­age­ment.

Speak­ing on Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices, Boswell-Jack­son re­vealed the pro­gramme, which is made up of guid­ance coun­sel­lors, so­cial work­ers, and be­hav­iour­al spe­cial­ist, lacked sore­ly, in the lat­ter de­part­ment, as such there aren’t enough be­hav­iour­al spe­cial­ists in schools to deal with the chil­dren who need their in­ter­ven­tion. This, she un­der­scored, is a se­ri­ous chal­lenge, which need­ed to be ur­gent­ly ad­dressed.

She said for ‘teach­ing with em­pa­thy’ to be ef­fec­tive there was a com­bi­na­tion of frac­tions that make up a whole that will aid in as­cer­tain­ing a child ex­pe­ri­enc­ing psy­cho-so­cial or per­son­al-so­cial is­sues. The main in­gre­di­ent, Boswell-Jack­son re­it­er­at­ed, must be pas­sion for peo­ple.