Category Archives: 1.1 Social Justice

The Importance of Relationships

Relationships are vital in a child’s development. In school, a happy, healthy relationship has long-lasting academic and social benefits for a person. This means it is the teachers’ responsibility to ensure all children are given opportunities to build relationships with their teachers and peers.

Dr Suzanne Zeedyk spoke about the importance of relationships to a child’s brain development. The living environment a child is raised in will develop their brain to adapt to these surroundings which they are familiar with for the rest of their lives. For example, if a child is raised in a bad living environment with bad relationships, such as a domestically abused home, their brain will be too worried and searching for the next sign of a threat rather than learning. The chemical, cortisol, is released when stressed, and children in bad relationship living situations have a much higher volume of cortisol in their system than other people who were brought up with healthy relationships. Relationships are key in every aspect of our lives because our brains develop due to the relationships that we have with others. Good relationships are critical in the teaching profession because those children who have better relationships with their teacher, classmates or family will feel safer, and more eager to learn in a friendlier and more welcoming environment.

Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnochan spoke about how adaptive babies are, and they will adapt to the environment they live in in order to survive. Relationships are important in the first 4 years of a baby’s life up to the age of 3. This is because “babies need consistency in their life”. However, not all children receive this at home, therefore, they need this support in nursery and primary. “One of the best ways to encourage brain development in a baby, is to smile at them”. As a primary educator, this speaks volumes to me as it shows that friendliness is the best way to encourage learning and good social relationships, which will better a child’s life.

In my professional practice, I will ensure I create a friendly, safe environment for my pupils to learn in and will take the time to create relationships with my pupils, as well as make time to allow them to create relationships with one another through play and groupwork.

Values Workshop 1 – A task with a lot of meaning.

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I thoroughly enjoyed my first Values workshop. When we entered the class, we were split into four groups consisting of approximately eight to ten people. Each group was then handed an envelope and instructed not to open in until the instructions were read out to us. We were informed that there were objects inside the envelope, and within the first ten minutes of our task we were to come up with an idea of an object that would benefit a first-year student starting at the University of Dundee. My group opened our envelope and poured out the contents; one piece of white paper, a few paper clips, some blue tack, a few elastic bands, a pencil and a pen. At first nobody knew what to say as there wasn’t much that could be made out of such limited resources. There were not many suggestions, however, one that did qualify as a possibility was that the elastic bands could be used as wristbands for buddies to wear in order for the first years to seek out someone if they ever required help, such as directions. After much discussion, as a group, we decided that the best ‘help’ object we could make out of our limited supplies was a map of the Dalhousie building. This was decided as most members of the group admitted they struggled with finding their way around. During our discussion time, my group and I noticed how other groups had been provided with better materials than ourselves. Our advisor stopped our discussions after ten minutes and asked us to build what we had decided using the contents of our envelope.

This task proved a lot more difficult than originally expected as the Dalhousie building is very big and we had only been provided with a small piece of A4 paper. We managed to build some sort of map that illustrated the bottom floor of the Dalhousie building. After another ten minutes, we were instructed to stop what we were doing.

All groups presented their final product and we were shocked to see what two other groups had produced. One had designed a pencil case with all of the essential stationary a first year would need, and another had created a guide to University life in Dundee. The group next to us had opted for the same option as us, a map. Both groups who had created maps of the University of Dundee felt cheated that the other two groups had been given such better commodities to create their final product with.

Finally, our advisor told us what the aim of this task was. It was to illustrate that those who have a lot in life do not notice those who are struggling with so little, however, those with not much notice those who are given more help to achieve their best.

It is important to note how this relates to everyday life. Many children in less privileged schools are aware of the success and positive outcomes at the more privileged schools, however, it is not the same the other way around. The children in the better off schools are not aware of how less privileged schools do not have as much as they do. Overall, I felt the first Values workshop had a powerful meaning behind it and was highly beneficial to take part in.