You must have their hearts

I’m leaving a job that I’ve worked at for the past five and a half years, that has, at times, been all-consuming, in the best and worst of ways. I’ve been reflecting a great deal about my experience and all the things I was able to witness and create. There’s enough to write a book if I were talented or disciplined enough to do so. For the time being, I’m sharing a series of vignettes that I hope illuminate what I’ve learned about education and about myself. 

You must have their hearts

“How can you assess a student, if you can’t even see their humanity?” - Shauna Brown, @teachfortheculture

Something I love most about life is when you have an experience that, in real-time, you are aware will become a milestone that you will look back on as a critical moment. Sometimes it might be a revelatory flash where you realize something profound, sometimes an intense feeling of belonging, and sometimes it is a moment when you witness the culmination of an achievement that you have been a part of. This story is about a time that, for me, was all three.

It was winter in Mauritius, July of 2016 when our initial cohort of 58 undergraduate students completed their first year at our ‘startup university.’ They were about to leave for their internships and they had organized a celebration to commemorate the end of the year. I was a part of a group of staff and teachers who attended the event at one of the student residences. We met in the Sky Room, an open space on the top floor of the building where we had gathered many times before for assemblies, celebrations, and even some classes. That first year, despite being a brief period of time, had been an intense experience. We were all enchanted with and burdened by building something new. We sat in chairs arranged like an amphitheater, and staff and students took turns standing at the front of the space to share memories, reflections, and advice. I remember feeling a bit shy, as I often do in larger groups, but impressed by the power of this community.

One of the teachers I was close with and who was beloved by the students stood and faced the group. What she did blew me away like little else that I have ever experienced in any educational setting. She didn’t share the usual platitudes like telling students how proud of themselves they should be. Instead, she stood there and proceeded to recount her first memorable impression of every single person sitting in the room. She did this for each student, and for each staff member in turn. My memory of the details of what she shared has faded, but I remember waiting with bated breath, nervous but also excited to see if she was actually going to say something about me. She did. I remember how it felt to be recognized, seen, and appreciated for my uniqueness, and to know that everyone in the room had this experience as well. And I knew, at that moment, that I was witnessing evidence of the power of what we had accomplished that past year.

When I first started teaching, a good twelve years prior to this moment, I was 21 years old; too young, and very unprepared. I was closer in age to my middle school students than I was to many of my colleagues. They warned me that it was important to be very strict and to show my students that I was in charge so that they wouldn’t take advantage of me.

“Don’t smile for the first three months, at least” was a common piece of advice that I heard several times. “Especially because you are so young, and a woman. They won’t respect you if you are too nice.”

This was terrible advice, and even an inexperienced teacher like myself knew this as I laughed it off. But the broader message about the importance of control and leveraging power over students stuck in my brain. My ‘boot camp’ teacher training had drilled us in the ‘no excuses’ mantra pushed by the education reform movement I was a part of in the United States. It was by no means a mindset unique to that movement.

I had a miserable first year of teaching as I muddled through trying to force my students into compliance so that they would complete enough of the mountains of work required of them and me to say that they had made ‘significant gains.’ I improved by my second year after realizing that it was astronomically easier to motivate students to do their work if you not only smiled but actively worked to make them like you. Still, I knew that I wanted something beyond their compliance.

By my third year of teaching, a student labelled a troublemaker in some of her classes said something that at the time made me proud. Looking back now, it has proven to be some of the best feedback I ever received about how to teach. “Miss, do you know why I like your class?” she asked. “Why?” I replied, glad to hear her so optimistic. “Because I can tell that you want to be here with us.” “Of course I do,” I said, grinning at her and the rest of her classmates. At that moment, at least, I did.

If I am honest, what she observed wasn’t entirely true. I didn’t want to stay up until midnight every night planning lessons and get up each day before dawn to arrive in time to prep my materials and teach six classes of up to thirty students about US history. I resigned from teaching at the end of that year, exhausted by the grueling conditions public school teachers face and the ever-increasing stress of high-stakes standardized testing. Still, I loved teaching like nothing else I’ve done before or since. Despite the constraints of the system, it was a job where I was not only allowed to love my students wholly and unabashedly but where my love for them made me better at my job. When I resigned, I meant for it to be a break, and I thought that I would return to teaching after a year or two. Yet I didn’t end up teaching in a formal education system again for another seven years, when I found myself in Mauritius, helping to start a university.

In the Sky Room that evening I witnessed a practice that might at face value seem simple to some. A teacher publicly recognizing and validating their students for their uniqueness may not seem profound. But this was not recognition for a favorite few. It was every one of us. How many university professors in this world are actually capable of doing this, let alone take the time to do so? It was an act of radical love. 

The level of intimacy that we had built between the staff, teachers, and that first group of 58 students was precious; a privilege that students and teachers alike seldom get to experience in any type of formal education, let alone at a university. A few staff lived with students at their residences, many of us ate meals together, and staff and students were both completely invested in co-creating an education institution distinct from what we had ever experienced before. It was imperfect and completely unsustainable. We were in over our heads in almost every way. But I am so grateful that I was there to witness that first year. My favorite education theorists are ones who challenge the power dynamic of the teacher and the student and envision education communities that embrace the full humanity of us all, but few of them give you concrete directions for how to enact this. I had never lived what that would truly be like, as a student or a teacher, before that year.

Great teachers know that the ability to see every one of their students as unique, complex human beings is a prerequisite to teaching well. On principle, I believe in the humanity of all people, as a part of my faith and the way that I hope to navigate this world. But it is easy to forget this belief or not always spend the energy needed on every person that I encounter to realize its truth. However, when I teach I have the opportunity to put this belief into practice and see how effective it is in enhancing the learning experience for myself and my students. Even then, it is not easy to do this for every single student. Some might question if it is possible, or worthwhile given the investment that it takes. I know that I have failed many times to reach all of my students and to let each one of them know that they are valuable, capable, and loved. But I know that this is not only a worthy goal but an attainable one because I witnessed it firsthand that evening.