Summer School 2 Teacher Know Thyself

The first Lesson Students Learn from you is Who You Are

Teaching is unlike any other job. When you walk into a room to teach, the first lesson students learn from you is who you are. They will be looking at you face first. Faces are the first thing we learn from in our early days and weeks. Babies are born with vision that is able to focus between 8 and 12 inches, the perfect distance to see the face of those who care for us. Particularly the eyes.

As much as we learn spoken language and learn to decipher squiggles that become words, the first thing we learn to read are people’s faces and not surprisingly are as interested in seeing what their eyes tell us.

We make our first judgement about whether someone is a threat within less than a second and we will constantly monitor people and environments for potential levels of threat on an ongoing basis. Part of the way we find safety is with others in pairs or groups. So although we may check one another out we are also naturally configured to connect and make relationships with others. So, in one sense others are a potential source of danger but they are also, paradoxically, the way that danger is alleviated.

Bringing In more than the Lesson

When anyone enters a classroom, they bring in much more than their bag and their books. They bring also a potential threat and a way of alleviating threat.

When a teacher enters a classroom, he brings in much more than the lesson. They also tread this paradoxical line. But teachers also bring other things in with them. They bring in the idea or feeling of authority. There is an immediate power differential. The teacher has come to ‘take charge’ of the class and students are taken charge of – if you’re lucky.

In terms of power and potential for threat, the teacher also brings in the school. He represents ‘school’ to the students. He also represents ‘adulthood’ and of course he stands in, in a way, for the ‘parent’. Because we are all an accumulation of our experiences, the students will ‘transfer’ their past experiences of ‘school’ and ‘teacher’ and ‘parent’ onto the ‘adult’ in front of them. And, as yet in our scenario, even though the teacher hasn’t actually said a word, the wiring of the students safety systems are already making judgements and calibrations.

Triggering Safety Systems

The students aren’t alone in this of course. The teacher too enters the room with these same safety systems coursing through him. His own systems will be running in the background. However, he may be more aware of them and may have even taken steps to manage them. In order to do that he will have had to think about these students; hold them in mind; decide how he will approach this particular cohort. He too may transfer his own feelings and judgments from past experiences onto this class.

So, as these two entities face each other for the first time, let’s say in the first day of term, they will already be well into a form on ‘conversation’. These transferences are useful in many ways. They help us draw on our depth of experience. We find our way forwards by looking backwards. But for some students, these past experiences are populated with parents who, for whatever reason, didn’t manage to give them the idea that adults knew how to keep them safe, they may have transferred this feeling onto teachers an may generally see you and school as a threatening place to be. So, even though the teacher may have prepared his lesson, he may not be prepared to meet these students, who no matter what he does, will struggle to trust him.

We are wired with defence mechanisms to keep us safe. Fight/flight/freeze is an example many of us know. Let’s say the teacher begins his lesson. It’s going ok. Students seem to be getting it. Then, not long into the lesson, a girl drops her pen. He looks at her and politely waits for her to pick it up. Then, out of nowhere she says “What are you looking at!”. The question is pointed, sharp, directed right at him and it’s come, as far as he can tell, out of nowhere. What of his personal experience might he draw on in that moment that would be useful? For the most part, these are exchanges that adult social life does not prepare teacher for. Nor, as far as I can tell, does teacher training.

What does he do next? What I have seen many times is either immediate retaliation or immediate collapse. Blown off course by this powerful emotional outburst our teacher can get flustered and tongue-tied or he can get angry and meet the students level of aggression and maybe send…her…out! If he is naturally skilled or experienced, he may respond more evenly. But that is a real challenge. To be seemingly disliked so vehemently for nothing we feel we’ve done can have us rocking on our heels.

We teach who we are

Add into this mix, a back story where the teacher had a parental figure who was dismissive of him.  He survived, got an education and eventually became the teacher we see today.  But strangely, when this girl speaks to him with such venom, his wiring links immediately back to his own less happy childhood experiences.   Usually, the experiences aren’t so present in his everyday life and he is able to maintain a good sense of internal balance. But then this girl comes along and for a second, he’s right back there, the silenced and fearful child in the body of an adult at the front of a classroom.

He realises also that how he responds to THIS situation right now, will have an effect on the way the rest of the class respond to him in future.  The safety monitors of the rest of the class are beginning to glow red. Is it safe in here?

In the long run, this teacher will hopefully survive.  It will mean that he has to develop a “thick skin” and that will take time. But he may not. Many people who come into teaching don’t make it past the first year.  The workload is significant. But many are also being challenged on a very elemental emotional level every day.  Unfortunately, they are not prepared for it.  They self-blame, isolate, believe that it’s only they who struggle and have many sleepless nights wondering why they just can’t stand up to those kids!

Imagine…

Imagine now a similar scenario where we trained teachers to think not only about the intellectual exchange in a classroom but also about its emotional currency.  Our tongue-tied teacher may have had the chance to think in more depth about the inner defence mechanisms that come to the aid of children who feel intimidated by learning.  He might have understood the pen as a decoy and the outburst of anger as a distraction – a firework to distract him from his task and her from having to deal with her learning worries.

Imagine that he had already had an opportunity to think, with trained professionals about his past relationships and what he might do if they became reignited in the present.  Imagine that this teacher then instead of self- blaming, isolating and maybe even leaving the profession, was able to discuss what happened in a forum that was interested not just in what he knew about Shakespeare or Maths but what he knew about himself.

What might happen then to retention and recruitment? What might happen to those students who spend their lives in corridors having been sent out by a weary teacher who has drained their personal lake of resilience.  I’m interested to know whether you believe it would make a difference.

I imagine it would.