A Whole New World

Teaching at its core comes from a place of compassion. We all have it. There is a wellspring of love and compassion in all of us, especially us teachers,  but it often gets covered up by our ideas about the world, our egos and identities that we construct, the stories we assemble in order to make sense and survive in an ideal world that we want it to be. Our fabricated ideas about the world that we want it to be often come into conflict with the world as it really is, and this can result in an uncomfortable and uneasy feeling as we combat this experience.  Those moments of unfamiliarity bring about an insecurity that force us to bunker down and entrench ourselves even stronger so that our world view and our ideas about reality do not get upset. We overcompensate to fortify our old ideas and thus become less flexible and adaptable to new situations that we have never encountered. And so, we lose our ability to be compassionate and tap into our empathy. My first couple of weeks teaching at Westinghouse 6-12, in Homewood, brought me to this awakening. I say awakening because it hits at the heart of what great instructing can be and the essence of where it comes from.

There is a particular student that I teach, let’s call her Rachel… She was one of those students that did not engage, stayed to herself and made it clear she did not wish to be bothered. She was frequently late, and when I would address any situation with her to try and reach her, get her to participate or get information to better assist and assess the situation, she would become aggressive, vulgar, disrespectful and defiant. When trying to address the inappropriate and volatile behavior, she became more enraged and would swear directly at me and leave the room time after time. Being the conscientious and respectable teacher that I thought I was, I would try to engage the situation in order for everyone to know that I would not tolerate that type of behavior. I was being driven by fear… Fear that if I did not seem strong and punitive that others in the class would appropriate that same type of behavior because I did not earn their respect. I was also driven by ego that someone was insulting me and that I was looking bad in front of the class as she didn’t acknowledge my redirections or my comments about her behavior. I started to engage in a deleterious battle that made me look even worse.

I was in a conundrum. How could I let her just get away with the insults and defiance knowing full well that her behavior was destructive and detrimental to her wellbeing? If I let her run over me and do what she wanted without listening to my instruction how would I be perceived and how would my reputation get stained? It was a blow to my ego, and this ego made the problem more about me than Rachel. My self-centeredness covered up my compassion so that I was not able to channel my intuition and empathy in order to be of help and assistance. I was transmitting my own anger and frustration and imposing my ideas of how I thought she should be regardless of the circumstances that were most certainly influencing her behavior.  My world view of how I wanted the world to be was not corresponding to this new world as it was.

As a result, I was forced to remove myself from the equation and make it all about Rachel. I made adjustments to her. I didn’t combat her. I put up a mirror to her to allow her to see more of herself. I accepted…. When that acceptance was felt between the two of us, something miraculous transpired. We communicated and smiled. A trust was formed. Rachel slowly began to come out of her shell and participate without my assistance or urging; it came from her own volition.  She literally had made a 180 degree turn. There were still some outbursts of great frustration that were coming from a deep place, but they were not about me. My narcissistic point of view had let me convince myself that it was all about me, which made me respond to an illusory force and problem that I had invented. This fabricated idea was all driven by my ego. Her disdain and attitude had to be about me because then I could control that and make it better since the issue was within me.

We so often get in our own way with our illusory set of perspectives and faulty point of views built on our old ideas and stories that we devise ourselves. It is incumbent that we let go of those preconceived notions to allow for the world as it really is to reveal itself so that we can tap into our compassion and intuition that will lead us to doing the right thing and making right choices in our teaching and methodologies.  It is then that we will show the way and reach our full potential as teachers and guiders.  

I had difficulty reaching Rachel’s mother in the beginning of our failing relationship. There was a reason. When I finally made contact with her to relate the transformation that her daughter was going through and how proud of her I was at her progress, she informed me that she had just gotten released from a federal penitentiary. My old world did not correspond to this new one. Rachel has taught me a great deal.