Below is a brief version of The Art of Teaching section of The Ethics of Touch Teacher's Manual.
If you need support, have any questions, or would like to make suggestions regarding the Teacher's Manual, please contact us.
Included in this Teacher's Manual are goals, learning objectives, exercise, activities and test questions for each chapter. We realize that every school dedicates differing amounts of time to these topics and that they may be woven through many different courses and classes including ethics, professionalism, developing a therapeutic relationship, clinic preparation, communication skills, business, practice management, dealing with sexual issues, and working with survivors of trauma and abuse.
The material in this Teacher's Manual, as well as in the book The Ethics of Touch, allows flexibility and ease-of-use in any type of program. Ideally each school would have separate and coordinated courses specifically addressing ethics, communication skills and business. We also advocate and encourage schools to have a special course designed to teach students how to work with survivors of trauma and abuse.
The material in this manual can be covered in varying depths. Ideally the total hours to cover all of these subjects thoroughly would range from 100 to 150 hours and span the entire length of the students' training. We know that this is not always possible. You may offer a program which includes 40 hours on this material or only have time for 10 hours. We provided a variety of activities and exercises which allow you to teach this material in different time frames and at varying depths.
Even if you only provide a handful of hours you can be assured that your students will understand how to run an ethical practice if they are required to read The Ethics of Touch. These skills are crucial for a practitioner's well-being and the well-being of the clients and our profession. One alternative approach to an in-depth course is to have students read various chapters of the book throughout your training program and address the related ethical issues within the context of each course.
Special attention must be paid to creating a safe and inviting learning environment or covering the sensitive topics. It is very helpful for those teaching this material to have some background in communication and psychology. We highly recommend that you read the entire book over some period of time, not all at once, before planning your classes. Even though the various topics are broken into discrete chapters, some of the concepts overlap. By reading the book in advance, you will be more prepared to inform students about which topics are explored elsewhere in the book.
We suggest that you review all of the activities and exercises and select the ones that you feel most comfortable with as you begin to teach this course. It may be helpful to try some of the activities with some of your colleagues if you are unfamiliar with a particular exercise.
Be sure to state and reinforce the concepts of confidentiality within the classroom setting to provide a safe environment for students to honestly look at and share personal information. If this is not done first and well, you will get a lack of participation, resistance, blind compliance or inappropriate use of personal self-disclosures outside of the classroom.
Teaching ethics requires specialized skills and knowledge along with an intangible quality of authenticity that students instinctively trust. The instructor needs to be psychologically savvy and skilled at building a safe and open atmosphere with clear limits and boundaries. An educational background in psychology and communication skills is prerequisite for the job.
The skill set consists of creativity in the area of experiential learning, a good deal of life experience, and a knowledge of different learning styles and how to teach to them. The primary qualities are the ability to maintain neutrality and a non-judgmental attitude, honesty, humility, sincerity that both denotes strength of character, warmth and care.
Establishing safety is the first task in setting up a learning environment conducive to honestly talking about personal values and ethics. First the instructor must appropriately set the tone for honest and authentic communication through some authentic self-disclosure. Talking about how you learned how to handle difficult ethical situations, mistakes you have made or why you are teaching this course are good places to start.
Utilize exercises and learning experiences to create a safe emotional environment Encourage students to share things at the appropriate depth: too much or too deep a self-disclosure in the beginning of a group's development can act as an inhibiting factor.
A good initial exercise is to discuss how students feel about making mistakes. This is best done first in pairs or trios, then opening the discussion up to the whole class. Another exercise is to have each student tell a story for 2-3 minutes about someone whose values, honesty and sense of ethics they look up to, including why they admire this person.
The instructor must inspire trust and be a person with whom people feel comfortable talking. Can you speak from your gut in a way that others feel safe and can reciprocate? Do people trust you easily? One way to find out if you are the right for this job is to ask those you know who are capable of being really honest with you about your qualities as a teacher and a person. Your communication has to be perceived as heartfelt and authentic.
You must have a passion for this material. It must really interest and stir you. This is not just another course -- you must put you whole self into it and deeply connect to the students. This is one of the most important courses in the students' education, it will set the tone of their entire career and maybe their life as well. Your experience and depth of knowledge of the material are essential to the students' confidence in you.
It takes thought, time and work for students to bring into conscious awareness their personal values, attitudes and a sense of what is right and what is not right. Everybody has them but most of us are not aware of what they are until we bump up against our experiences or we are challenged in some way. The activities you plan as well as the information you provide helps students discover what is inside and develop a greater ethical awareness.
Exercises, discussions and activities help the adult learner to discover and assimilate new information more effectively than a lecture. A lecture can plant a seed; an experience makes it grow and develop. Ethics is life in action not something we can easily learn through passive listening and reading only.
The last decade has taught us that a multisensory approach to teaching is most effective and this is especially so for teaching ethics. The use of dyad and trio discussions often allows students to more easily participate before a group discussion takes place. A debate where you take the other side from what you think or believe stimulates empathy and understanding. Role-playing ethical situations provides invaluable learning. The use of videos, having students write scripts and present them to the class using video is another powerful learning tool. Exercises where students practice how to deal with boundary violations, dual role requests, lateness and inappropriate sexual innuendo are invaluable to the students' learning.
According to David Lazear, author of Eight Ways of Teaching: The Artistry of Teaching with Multiple Intelligences,1 there are four stages to teach with Multiple Intelligences:
For students of touch therapies, some aspects of the school setting are closely equivalent to a supervision group. Students are generally expected to discuss in certain classes their questions about client interactions that occur in a clinic, internship, or homework session. Client names are most often withheld in these circumstances. When students gather more informally, especially in public places, client confidentiality should be upheld.
On another level, students themselves have rights to confidentiality in the school setting. Personal information sheets, schedules, grade reports, and the like are usually held in locked cabinets. Work-study students should never be authorized to see the confidential records of fellow students. Details from a student's records should be revealed by school personnel on a need-to-know basis only; this means that if a student has revealed a distressing home situation to an advisor, the information does not automatically get forwarded to every teacher or administrator who comes in contact with that student. When students learn in an environment that protects their rights of privacy and safety, they will be more likely to grasp and ethically apply the right of confidentiality to their future clients.
Like practitioners, teachers should be cautious, conscious and communicative with their students about dual relationships. How students interact with their teachers and their in-school clients sets the stage for their later professional interactions. Students also learn by example; they learn not only what they are taught but how they are taught. After graduation, students are more likely to deal sensitively with issues of power dynamics, transference, countertransference and dual relationships if their education came from professional and ethical teachers.
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1. Lazear, David G., Eight Ways of Teaching : The Artistry of Teaching with Multiple Intelligences.,
4th ed., Thousand Oaks CA: Corwin Press, c2003. xi, 200 p.
ISBN 1-575-17852-4