My apologies if it seems I fell off the planet. Please, take
a minute to read this post.
As a teacher, you and I must continue to reinvent our
passion for our chosen art – If we want the student (young and not so young) to
take that passion into the next generation, we have to genuinely deliver
something that we have done 1000 times, as excitedly as we did the first time. This
seems easy, right? Now here’s the trick: Even as we’re sending our passion
genuinely outward, we cannot get caught in the trap of becoming emotionally
attached to the daily give and take between ourselves and the material or to
the student’s reactions to the teaching rituals. To fall into this trap is easy
and to remain outside of this self-defeating situation takes vigilance. I’ll
try to explain.
What brought you to teaching was a love of the subject
matter. In the case of teaching fighting techniques, it is easy to love,
respect, and even take a bit of selfish ownership. If I am training myself, then it
is true, the material is mine – all mine – just like “My Precious” to Gollum.(A
reference for Hobbit fans.) However, if I’m teaching, the minute I teach
something it is then about the student and how they fit together with the
material, process it, and keep it as THEIR own. This realization got me to
thinking about ways teachers let emotions / an administrative fiasco / and
opinions change them from passionate and imaginative teachers to guarded and
even a little disagreeable.
Here are a couple simple things to remember when trying to avoid this
teaching trap:
-When we teach, it is not about us, it is about the student
and what they will achieve.
-Most of the time if parents or students are verbally
insensitive, it isn’t directed at the teacher; it is directed at the
frustration due to lack of understanding of the material and the students
knee-jerk reaction to remain in the safety of a certain weakness rather than
push through to growth.
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| Many reasons why we do what we do! |
-For us to be
verbally abusive and insensitive is reactionary and therefore not a sign of a
strong spirit. You may remember from blog posts past that I believe that our
students are more likely to become what we are, than they are to become what we
tell them to become.
-“Every person you deal with is doing the best they can,
with what they have to work with, at that moment.” This was said to me 20 years ago by a teacher
and I remember it to this day. It explains (but doesn’t justify) a lot of
conversations.
Here is a much more complicated but effective way to work on
this problem:
As many of you know, Master Kelljchian has taught us in his
Book of SET, we are made up of physicality, chi, brain and emotion. If we split
the emotion: keep emotion going outward – keeping that passion alive, but
refuse incoming (by compartmentalizing that skill-set) we give the material
passionately but guard against becoming callous due to oversensitivity to administrative chaos, parental impatience, or
student confusion.
To remain relevant to my students I constantly have to
compartmentalize things like “hurt feelings” when small things happen within my
day. Examples abound: Students show obvious love for another teacher / or their
teaching technique, a game I thought would be a great teaching tool flops, the
kids are constantly losing focus on my subject but are completely focused on a
bug or a car or a person wearing interesting clothes. Then there are the outside distraction: parents who want
their child promoted quickly and tell me I’m doing it wrong, administrators who
over tax my patience, co-workers who sabotage my class-time. It is
self-defeating for me to become emotionally attached to these type events. To
remain centered, compartmentalizing my emotion, is to find a way to either
incorporate a distraction, re-direct a
group, or (as I tell my 5 year old students) just ignore it. If, however, I personalize the emotion and get
“mad”. I could begin to punish unjustifiably and worse, begin to hold onto
events and allow callouses to begin to grow.
So today I’m keeping it short but challenging. If you have
more suggestions / tools you’ve used – please share.
