Recently I try to watch movies in French since I’ve been studying it for almost 1 year by myself (please somebody practice with me!!)
Then I came across one movie called “Monsieur Lazhar”, which made me think about the relationship between teachers and students.
The summary of the movie is as follows:
In Canada, a female teacher hugged her student when he cried out of stress. Being upset about that hugging, since there was no culture of teachers touching students (even patting), the student accused her of kissing him. Later on, she suicides in her classroom. Then an Algerian refugee who uses the traditional pedagogy, replaced her and the students will move on. But…..(I won’t ruin the end)
The most important thing is not on the textbook
Trailer: “” Monsieur Lazhar”(English subtitle)
This movie made me really think about the current teacher-student relationship in many schools (countries). Of course I am up against the violence. But do we have to stay away from any type of skinship? My answer to this is no. I could be totally wrong depending on the place.
If students did well on whatever the tasks they have, I think it’s natural to pat their shoulder saying “you did a great job.”
I always give my students high five whenever they did well on:
saying good morning to everyone;
making an effort on anything;
overcoming challenges;
scoring 100 points on test(though scoring is not everything), etc.
Therefore everyone gets a chance to do high touch with me.
The more my hand hurts, the happier I am. So are students (I hope.)
I believe that heartful phisical contact has inexplicable magic power just like when someone else touches on the small cut.