The deadline to hand in my site report was only a little over a week after I returned from Mexico. I was exhausted and overwhelmed, upset in the aftermath of my experience there, aspects of which (homestay, aspects of teaching) had been negative.

After talking to colleagues and considering the situation from an ethical perspective, I decided I had a duty to write my honest opinions. We all agreed that it was important to point out the difficulties in hopes that future students weigh that information in their decisions. I knew that it was soon enough after the events — which took an emotional toll on me — to be writing about objectively about them. But I knew the assignment in writing the site report was to express our opinions, and I knew that the culture of SIT, down to its very core, is to allow students true freedom of expression.

I wrote the report. It was strongly worded, my opinions and my dismay apparent. But as much as possible, I also tried to present positive aspects of the experience as well. It was not an unbiased journalistic report, nor had I seen that as my assignments. I wrote with emotion about factual experiences.

In my haste to get the assignment handed in, I didn’t read about who got copies of what document, and simply presented a copy each to the internship coordinator and my advisor and supervisor.

A couple days later my supervisor asked to speak with me about my independent study. But it soon became clear to me that that was not what she wanted to talk to me about. For thirty seconds she reviewed my independent study, and then she pulled out her copy of my site report. It had pink highlighter marks on each page: her system to pointing out matters that need to be clarified or rethought.

I was taken aback. She said (I remember close to verbatim), “This is very negative… Since this becomes part of your permanent record you might want to reconsider how you say it.”

I became instantly defensive. I felt that I was being muzzled. She was right: I had written a lot of negative things. But I wanted the school to know my opinion that the Mexico supervisor was disorganized, for example, because it was a factor that had compromised the experience of all four of us there. And I had also written positive things that she seemed not to notice.

“You say all this negative stuff about the teachers you worked with. Why don’t you say anything positive about them? Why don’t you talk about your role in this relationship?” I asked to see my essay and I read to her the section she was referring to, in which I had said positive things about the teachers and did acknowledge that I played an equal role in our distant relationship. I felt I was being unfairly judged.

Matters escalated in my mind when she went on to refute a concrete example I’d given of what had made me the most unhappy during my internship: the ongoing antagonism of the housekeeper at my homestay. She told me outright that what I had written was wrong. It wasn’t wrong. I lived it; she didn’t. Moreover, it was corroborated by my homestay host.

It was upsetting not to have a single aspect of my experience acknowledged as valid. I can’t remember how I behaved or what I said. I know that my face must have revealed severe dismay, and I’m guessing that I argued back about the points she was making. I was not rude to her, I am sure, since that is not in my nature. But I am highly sensitive and stubborn, and those can combine into an entrenchment in defending my beliefs. So she may have been as frustrated as I, wanting to be heard at a deeper level — of motivation, perhaps — while all I heard was unremitting criticism.

Ironically, the moment that I had the most compassion for her during this meeting was when she did the most unprofessional thing. In the spirit of transparency, and knowing that she would be seeing my feedback, I gave her a copy of it. I hadn’t known that I was to give it only to the site coordinator, who would deliver it to her after she had written a report on my internship. We were to rank our supervisor on a scale of one (low) to five on various dimensions. I gave her a lot of fives, some fours and one or two threes. She knew, but I didn’t, that she wasn’t supposed to have read this. We both knew that her discussing it with me (“Why did you give me only a three on trust? You need to say more here.”) was wrong. I was appalled. And yet I sensed something in her voice that was vulnerable.

In my next statement I abandon all attempts to remain objective and describe the observable. I thought I heard her voice begin to shake, as though she was about cry. I believed that she was hurt by what I’d written in my evaluation, and that she didn’t understand it. She, too, seemed to be having a jarring between her perception of an experience — that is, our supervisor/student relationship — and mine. I felt bad for her that she seemed upset.

Even still, I was defensive, and shocked that she wanted me to “rethink” my evaluation of her. I even remember thinking “Wow, lucky I didn’t write everything I really thought. A three is higher than I’d put if it were anonymous.”

Shortly after that, I left the room as she went off to a meeting. Later I wrote to her and the internship coordinator saying I was going to resubmit my site report. I did take the tone down a notch here and there, but that was all. I didn’t back down on saying what I thought needed to be said. And I didn’t change a word of my evaluation of her, on principle.

I now see that she may have been trying to give me helpful advice, to prevent me from being seen by the MAT community as negative and critical. I see that her advice was as colored by emotion as was my site report. Indirectly, my site report hadn’t reflected well on her supervisory capabilities; she may have felt threatened by my critique of the future viability of the relationship between SIT and the Mexico supervisor. Though she’s in a position of power over me, she is also human and affected by her emotions.

In the aftermath of the incident, my SIT world collapsed. I had truly believed that the school was founded on a relationship of trust. I’d believed that I could say what I thought without repercussion. Since August of last year I’d build a whole new identity for myself on this foundation: a new person who isn’t afraid to express herself publicly, to stand up for her beliefs, isn’t afraid to put herself on the line and open up her heart in the spirit of community learning, who isn’t afraid to rock the boat or good-naturedly challenge assumptions and classroom norms.

After six or seven or eight months of this, I had emerged as a newly empowered thinker who had been in mental chains all her life. It was not a minor shift in my identity. It was hugely positive and significant, with potential to ripple throughout the rest of my life.

In writing my site report, I had made the conscious decision to tell my truth. I felt it was important for those who come after me. I felt it was important for my sense of integrity. I knew it wouldn’t make me popular but I felt it was the “right thing.” It wasn’t easy to make that choice. I considered just keeping silent. But the philosophy of SIT, in which I’d come to believe at the deepest, most personal level, was my beacon.

So this experience was far larger than just one disagreement with a professor. It uprooted me. In the classroom again and again, they’ve invited us to reflect deeply and honestly, to explore ourselves so that we can be better teachers to others. I bought the whole thing. And in this one brief span of time, it vanished.

It is amazing to me that one single human interaction can have such an impact. And starting on the day of the event, I began to think of how important is this knowledge for a teacher.

What happens when a teacher and/or an institution creates a climate of trust and then breaks it?

I think many factors contribute to that, and they include:

• To what extent has trust been central to the learning experience? Are the core of the curriculum and the educational philosophy rooted in the idea of honest community, or is it just an element of certain exercises?In my case, trust has been the core of my educational experience at SIT and so its loss has been a profound awakening. It reverberates through every class, and its effect is permanent. I will never write another assignment that exposes my deepest and most personal thoughts about education. I know the loss will be largely mine, since I believe those reflections are key to understanding good teaching. But I am too raw, and I can’t risk it. It is interesting to me that this one exchange with this one teacher has generalized to a mistrust of the entire school and my withdrawal emotionally from all my classes.

  Also, as mentioned earlier, I had invested a great deal in the concept of trust, and developed a new identity based in it. I suspect or hope that more people aren’t so naive as to put as much of themselves into an institution, no matter how noble its intent or how excellent the majority of its faculty.

  But even if a teacher does only one exercise that requires the student to invest something of their deeper self, and then the teacher violates that in some way, I believe the trust will be permanently broken. When does that trust seep out of the classroom into other areas? I don’t know. One guess is that if, as at SIT, the concept of trust is important at the institutional level, the student’s faith may crumble over a broader area.

• What are the stakes of telling the truth? What does a student stand to lose for being truthful. Being ostracized by teachers? By other students? By the institution? A failing grade?In my case, I don’t know the stakes beyond the emotional. I am worried that I won’t be given a fair shake in my internship report from my supervisor. But I’m trying to think of her as someone who can rise above our disagreement and separate from it. Ostracized by the teachers? I can’t tell. Sometimes I think one teacher is treating me differently but I assume I’m being neurotic. Ostracized by the students? No. I think they admire me, in fact.

• What was the nature of the action that broke the trust? Intentional or unintentional? Public or private? Over a trivial or an important matter? Emotional or neutral context? Personality or situational conflict?What is a bit scary as a would-be teacher is that I think it may be pretty easy to break, unwittingly, the trust of a student. I am certain that my advisor never set out to ruin my life. To the contrary, I believe that part of her motive was to help me. The part that made trouble was, I’m guessing, driven by self-interest: not wanting a bad report from the place she had supervised, not wanting anything but a glowing evaluation from her students. She made a mistake that is not uncommon in human interaction. Perhaps it happened because she blurred the line between student and teacher. Perhaps she felt she was talking to me as a friend and I felt that I was being inappropriately corrected by a professor. Who knows.

  Ways to be careful in the classroom might include keeping lines between teacher and student clear. That can be difficult, depending on the circumstance. If I’m on friendly terms with a student, I think I need to be particularly watchful of what I say and do. As long as I’m teaching their class, I have a certain kind of power — limited or significant, depending on circumstance — that is like a dagger. If wielded carefully, that power (founded on trust) can help students cut their way through language-learning. If I trip, I can hurt someone.

  The other questions I posed above — about the nature of the trust-breaking — don’t relate particularly to my situation, but I think they can affect the weight of the action. Probably a public violation of trust has more emotional impact than a private dialog.

• I guess the remaining question is: What is trust? What violates it?Violation of trust can mean encouraging people to believe it’s safe for them to pour their hearts out and then upbraiding them for it. But it can be much more subtle, and that’s where it’s harder as a potential teacher to recognize. Is a teacher always in danger of blowing it in this way? Is it easier to blow trust as a teacher in a classroom than as a human in a friendship? I don’t recall ever in my past thirty years having blown the trust of a friend. Is teaching different? If not, how could an experienced teacher have blown it so badly with me and not been aware that she was doing it? That last question unsettles me.