Nov 27 2007
Are Students Needs Met by Teachers Whose Needs are Met?
I’m a good dance partner. I find myself entraining to the weight and rhythm inherent in a client’s body. I often take my cues from my client. I also tend to take my cues from other people around me; my spouse, children, friends and … my students.
At this time of the term, my students are flowing with enthusiasm, dread and intensity toward their final projects and exams and I’m … flowing with them. After 10 years of teaching, I still cycle with their cycles. This makes me an attentive instructor, but a little on the ragged side as the term wears on.
Somehow it all goes back to a time long ago.
When I was a child I would wake up at the family cottage in darkness that was impenetrable. There was NO light. I was small and I would reach out with a toe or a hand to find the edge of the bed and I couldn’t figure out how I was lying because I would encounter the edge of the bed at an odd angle. It would take some doing to figure out which way I was lying and then to align myself with the bed.
Then, my frustration would grow.
I usually had a sheet, and a flannel blanket and a bed cover on top of me to keep warm. The three layers would be all shifted up and down and sideways. To pull the sheet up to where it belonged, I would often be pulling the overlying flannel blanket too high, and the bed cover might be off to the right, for example. The frustration of not knowing where I lay on the bed and then not being able to find a comfortable way to sort out the layers of linen to keep myself warm comes back to me at this time of year.
My students are working their way toward and through their final exams. Many of them have other stresses from sick friends, work and financial stress, to family pressures, and tough decisions in their love life.
My natural response is to unconsciously pick up their jangled rhythms.
Over the ten years of teaching I have evolved in how I respond to this situation. I used to try to calm them down, or try to cheer lead them through the experience. Then I got really focussed on designing test situations that were clear and fair.
All the time however, I felt myself pulled along by the class’s experience. I was still focussing on them and what their needs were. And I would find myself not sleeping at night. I would often self medicate with food and end up developing and end of term belly.
The last couple years I have been learning to concentrate on my needs and have found that I’ve got plenty of mental habits that stress me out without the help of an entire class (or several classes) of people to help out. I’ve gradually gotten to the point where I have a personal agenda that is at least as devoted to taking care of myself as the people around me.
Now I’m approaching the end of the term and I’ve got a few personal projects that are requiring my focus and I find that I can really empathize with my students’ tensions, but I’ve got some that are uniquely mine! And as I find my way with my own issues, I’m finding that I’m coming to trust and believe in my students’ abilities to sort out their own.
I believe that they are getting a better experience than when I tried to “fix” things for the class. It’s just a feeling, and sometimes I don’t really believe it. I still sometimes think I should be doing more for my students.
But then I see their work is more grounded and more sophisticated than any other graduating class. I find they are more able to find their own solutions to things and that their solutions are often brilliant and adjusted to the peculiarities of the clinical situation of that particular client.
I know I can’t take credit for all of this. Our students are throwing all of themselves into the process. And the program and teaching team are also evolving.
But, I can’t help but feel that my knowing where I end and the students begin is an important factor to them finding their unique way.
I don’t know exactly how I could have done things differently as a kid lying in the dark, not knowing where I was in the bed and how to sort out the sheets. But, I can go back through the lens of my psyche to that child and calm him, and reassure him that he is safe and just where he needs to be. And I can gently sort out the layers of bedding on top of him and tuck him in warm and cozy.
And it sure feels good to be nurturing my little boy with all those skills that I have developed from helping other people.
Wishing you peace and nurturing.