In this chapter regarding respect and trust amongst the students and the teachers, one line that I found to really jump out at me was: “’Because I said so’, or ‘Because I am the teacher’, are also not good explanations for punishments. Teachers must be clear and fair, or students will be hurt or angry” (p. 27). So, in other words, students like to know exactly why they are being punished, or why they are getting the assignment, and it is our responsibility as good teachers to provide them with an intelligent and clear answer.
I think this is really important in being a teacher. I was one of those students who would always ask why we were doing the assignment, or why we were getting split up into groups. In fact, once while in middle school, I received a detention for asking why we had to do the homework. To this day, I still haven’t got an answer. I feel that it is the teacher’s responsibility to be able to have a legitimate answer about why we are doing the homework, no one just wants to be doing busy work. It should be meaningful, and have a purpose. This also comes with punishments, “because I said so” may be the easy answer, but the teacher should take the time to really tell the student why it is that they are giving them the punishment. This is a quality that I will be sure to take with me into the classroom, however, I have already begun to practice this through working with kids at camp. While it is sometimes easier to just say “because I said so”, I always make sure they know why
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