The Importance Of Trust In School

Trust is one of the most critical parts of a school that is often unseen but generally felt by everyone within the school. When a school is successful, strong working relationships are built between administrators, staff, students, and the community. This type of deep seeded trust is not something that just happens. So how is this type of trust developed and what does it look like? These are a few of the questions that are answered in Trust Matters: Leadership for Successful Schools, written by Megan Tschannen-Moran. In Trust Matters: Leadership for Successful Schools, written by Megan Tschannen-Moran, the first thing that must be discussed is what is trust? Megan Tschannen-Moran defines trust as “one 's willingness to be vulnerable to another

Tschannen-Moran defines betrayal as a feeling of being wrong that leads to a separation of trust between people. Betrayal starts with disbelief, then anger, and then a long for revenge. Betrayal can be extremely detrimental to a schools performance. If this feeling of betrayal is not dealt with, we can move from betrayal to revenge. The author expresses five “paths” of revenge: social withdrawal, revenge fantasies, feuding, confrontation, and forgiveness. If they are not dealt with quickly trust will be very hard to build and may take a very long time for someone to finally forgive. This creates a culture of distrust, which can ultimately bleed into the school environment causing more problems. Tschannen-Moran explains, "Distrust can be costly. As trust declines, the costs of doing business increase because people must engage in self-protective actions and continually make provisions for the possibility that another person will manipulate the situation for their own advantage. When teachers or students feel unsafe, energy that could be devoted to teaching and learning is diverted to self-protection." With leadership comes responsibility to build trust, even though you may face levels of distrust, you must build and repair those trusting

The most important part of repairing trust is to repair it quickly. Even though earning someone’s trust back will take time, the effort to fix the problem is the first step. If the trust is broken and nothing is done to help mend the situation, this will only lead into further problems within the relationship. After the problem is confronted, trust can start to be rebuilt. This takes time and effort in order to show the person the five areas of trust defined by Tschannen-Moran of benevolence, honesty, openness, reliability, and competence. Working to display these five areas will greatly increase your chances of regaining that person’s trust and moving into a trusting and productive