First-grade teacher Dorothy Mitchell has taught at four other Chicago public elementary schools on the South Side. The level of trust is linked to a school's leadership, research has found. Trust tends to be higher at schools like Earhart and Beethoven, where principals set aside time for planning, seek teacher input, assist with discipline problems and set priorities and follow through on them. At schools with a history of poor leadership and failed programs, however, distrust often becomes ingrained in the school culture and is hard to dispel, says Payne. Eventually they begin to attract people from the gray middle.
Students obviously benefit when parents and teachers trust each other.
The responsibility for building trust, says Consortium Director Anthony Bryk, rests with the teachers. Many low-income parents lack the education and skills teachers have to help children learn and, as a result, may feel vulnerable, even intimidated, at the school, he says. At Beethoven, teachers make that effort to bridge the gap. And the school never sends home an all-negative progress report. In every child you can find something good.