by Elizabeth Kim
Our last “GoodWork at Work” post introduced one Indian colleague’s efforts to sensitize her students towards the importance of GoodWork and another colleague’s innovative work in creating a GoodWork index. But how can we involve other stakeholders in this vision for excellence, ethics, and engagement? This post explores how GoodWork impacts other important stakeholders in education and how they can support students in powerful ways.
Because children and students are at such a formative period in their lives, it is crucial to involve parents in the discussion. Gurvinder Kaur addressed this need at the Punjab Public School. Bringing together parents for a meeting, Gurvinder encouraged parents to take responsibility and “nurture children with strong ethics.” Gurvinder provided several suggestions for the parents such as helping the school ensure discipline, being mindful of providing cash to children, and reminding children of the importance of ethics in life. Parents were receptive to these suggestions and expressed interest in future sessions. Indeed, by reinforcing values of GoodWork at home there is more promise that we will have students and children dedicated to upholding GoodWork. This is something we have tried to encourage in our work in American schools, but depending on the particular community, it has not always proved easy.
The responsibility for good work should not lie solely with the student; instead as the work in India has suggested, other stakeholders in the school ought to be conscious of and further encourage these values. As we have learned in our research, when teachers and parents are in alignment with one another in their goals and the vision for their students, good work is easier to achieve.
Next in our series, we address the question: how can health education be addressed through the lens of good work?