“Very Nice, but Not Very Helpful”: The Education Profession’s Divergent Representations of Teachers’ Social-Emotional Support Responsibilities, 1892–2011

Abstract

The exploration of the teacher’s advisor role continues by taking a very wide view of it, beyond the individual or school level. In this chapter, we provide a broader view of the advisor role by considering the messages that teachers receive from leaders and scholars in their field about how they ought to care for and support their students. In The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher (2005), Wong and Wong advised readers that “the sincerest form of service requires no money, no training, no special clothes, and no college degrees. The sincerest form of service comes from listening, caring, and loving” (pp. 75–76). While this best-selling text showers teachers with pages of detailed advice on procedures and routines for the classroom, it offers no guidance about how teachers might effectively listen to, care for, or love their students. “To say that you are on the side of caring for students is very nice, but not very helpful,” Proefriedt (1975, p. 56) writes, 30 years prior, as if anticipating Wong and Wong’s statement. “What does such caring mean in terms of the specific behaviors in which you will engage?” (p. 56). Proefriedt’s question is particularly relevant to this book’s exploration of teachers’ work as advisors, in which they encounter expectations to provide social-emotional support to their students by knowing them well, learning about their lives, and intervening when problems arise. But the advisor role presents only one way in which teachers have been assigned these responsibilities. The history of American education contains abundant examples of demands—some subtle, some more explicit—for (and against) teachers to provide social-emotional support.

Beth Wright is a doctoral student in Cultural and Educational Policy Studies at Loyola University Chicago’s School of Education. She previously taught high school history in Chicago. Her research interests involve the sociology of education and school choice policies.