Appropriate disclosure can enhance the classroom experience.
Inappropriate disclosure can be dangerous to teacher and student alike.
Personal disclosure by teachers of social and emotional learning is designed to promote community, authenticity and appropriate role modelling. One goal of a caring, learning community is to create environments in which teachers, as well as students, can be real and authentic in more and more spheres of their lives. This model reflects a shift in the greater society away from a pattern of people moving from role to role in which of the self is hidden or distorted. We also believe that young people benefit from personal relationships with adults other than their parents. Role models and mentors who are not primarily in an authority relationship to teenagers offer an important perspective.