Editor
May I take this opportunity to share with my fellow colleagues about teacher-learner friendships. Friendship between educators and learners is one of the most important aspects in education.
As an educator being friendly to your learners makes your learners free in class during a lesson and are able to ask questions. It also makes learners develop trust in you and be able to share their problems with you.
An educator who is not friendly is usually very strict to learners.
Being unfriendly makes learners scared of you, even during the contact sessions, thus making them take a longer time to understand you. If you are friendly to your learners, no matter the age, your learners, become open with you, they can tell you things that happen in their homes, that makes them not perform well at school.
Friendliness makes it easier for you as an educator to communicate with your learners about issues that are sensitive, such as rape or being an HIV/Aids victim. It helps you as an educator to find the deepest problems of learners and thus be able to help them solve those problems. Remember, as educators we always act in loco parentis.
Though a teacher-learner friendship is good to assist in teaching, its must have a limit. Friendship that has no limits between a teacher and a learner becomes dangerous to the learner.
A teacher who becomes too close to the learner tends to forget the boundaries and begins to see the learner as a close friend. The moment the educator begins to see the learner as an intimate friend, that is usually where harassment begins. My dear colleagues, let us be friendly to our learners but at the same time remember the limits of our friendship to eliminate temptations and the possibility of reaching our retirement, having been thrown out of the education system. Let us love our learners as our own children and be always willing to help them to develop to adulthood. Let us develop love of learning in our learners and let them grow up being away from hatred.
Mrs IB Mazibuko
Hlabane High School
