Listening to three doctors speak at
the recent TEDxABQ conference reminded me yet again of the centrality of
relationships in all we do in schools.
In a moving and riveting speech called “9 Minutes,” Dr. Arti Prasad, Dr.
Debbie Walhof, and Dr Kathleen Burke differentiated between curing and healing
in medicine, and described how our fast-food approach to treatment fails to
help patients in the long term and prevents doctors from feeling truly
effective. Patients may recuperate in
the short term, but they won’t be fully healed if they don’t feel like their
doctors can relate to them as people with hopes and fears about their illnesses.
At the same time, doctors may feel frustrated and dissatisfied that they are
not achieving all they anticipated, after leaving medical school, in being able
to care for and heal their patients. In
a day filled with outstanding speeches, their remarks resonated with me, as an
educator, as much as any of that day’s TED Talks.
Drs. Prasad, Walhof, and Burke said
in their presentation that healing occurs in relationships; the same can be
said for effective and meaningful teaching.
We see this in our academic classes, on the sidelines of our games, in
the black box or chorus room, and in the hallways. It’s almost as if what we are teaching is
secondary, for when it is all said and done, what we are really doing is
helping young men and young women learn how to relate to others and their world.
In a recent International Relations
class concerning the 2008 global meltdown, my colleague and I asked the
students to put themselves in the position of Secretary of Treasury Henry
Paulson as he flew to New York City over the weekend of the Lehman Brothers
collapse; they were not allowed to factor in any information about events that
they knew had occurred after that seminal November weekend. The students found that it was not quite as
easy to judge Paulson as it was before. The historian Barbara Tuchman wrote
that we need to teach students how to have “historical empathy”; they need to
be able to relate to those living in the past if they wish to understand their
decisions and actions. They can only do
that as Atticus Finch says in To Kill a
Mockingbird, if they “Get in another man’s shoes and walk around for a
while.”
Earlier this week on the morning
after a big win, the girls on our soccer team ran up to our athletic director
to give him high fives and celebrate their upset victory. They knew he would be proud of them and wanted
to share their joy with him. The girls
also knew, though, that if they had lost, he would still care about them. As
long as they had done their best, he would be disappointed along with them but
not necessarily in them. Our girls team,
which struggled last year, is having a much more successful season thus far
this year; I have to wonder if it’s partly because, as they say about their coach,
“She’s good, but she’s hard,” and they feel a strong connection to both their coach
and athletic director.
One of our students had a major
disappointment last week, so I sent an email to let her know that we
were sorry for her and that she was in our thoughts. Her response to me said volumes about the
power of school relationships to help adolescents be successful in school and
life: “Thank you so much, Mr. Handmaker. I'm really bummed. I've
been sitting here crying for the past hour and a half. But I'll get over it! ...
Thank you so much for your kind words. I can't tell you how much it has helped
me throughout my high school years to know that I can always find love and
support in the Bosque community.”
Being in a community of caring adults and compassionate
peers has taught her several lessons; most importantly, that people are there
for her and that she will survive disappointment. At a time when there is talk about the need
to teach children resilience or grit, perhaps one of the most important lessons
for them to learn is the value of being in relationships with concerned adults
and supportive schoolmates. They may fail, but life goes on.
As with the connections that doctors make with their
patients, the relationships we create with our students take time and
energy. Just like patients who never
fully heal, adolescents may not achieve their potential unless they believe that
the adults in their lives truly care about them as fully rounded individuals with
active minds and lives that extend beyond the classroom. Like the doctors, teachers may feel
disheartened that their hopes of changing lives are being sacrificed because
they cannot find the time to connect fully with their students.
Making this change is more easily said than done. It may
require re-thinking our curriculum and pedagogy, or how we spend our time during
and after school hours; these are things that are not done easily or taken
lightly. However, if we remember that
much of what we teach our students, if not all of it, can best be learned if students
feel connected to us in supportive relationships, then the worth of these
endeavors is apparent. It is at this point
that they can learn the Pythagorean theorem, they can sink the winning shot, they
can play a violin concerto, or even if they don’t, they will do their best. And
maybe the next time they will succeed
because they know that the adults in their lives are there for them.
