A blog that re-envisions K-12 teaching and learning through the lens of clumsy, compassionate relationships…because what we put into the relating will be proof of the educating.
Welcome, Educator-Visionary!
…no, there’s no spelling error in the title; this isn’t meant to be a blog about pudding.
Although I do enjoy pudding…that chilled, thick, creamy sweetness.
Especially pistachio pudding–oooo, or butterscotch!
Such delicious detours from the standard chocolate-vanilla swirl pudding.
Which is my intention for this blog: a delicious detour from talk about initiatives and testing and the same old well-intentioned yadda-yadda, etcetera-etcetera about K-12 education. I want this blog to be a rich and textured experience that explores how something so natural as relationships can be central to teaching and learning.
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” meaning a thing can only be deemed effective by actually trying it– not just by guessing or ideating.
It’s true: this blog could easily riff off the idiom, “the proof is in the pudding” since we educators are always testing the effectiveness of lessons, assessments, activities, and classroom management strategies. There is always something to initiate, implement or incorporate, right?
But if you’ve ever made pudding, you know that before you get to taste it, before your palate can decide on its yumminess, the process of putting is required.
Putting in the ingredients.
Cornstarch, heavy cream, eggs, sugar
Putting in the attention.
Combining, making a slurry, pouring, flavoring
Putting in the time.
Stirring slowly, stirring constantly, simmering
Putting in the patience.
Tempering, allowing for thickening, chilling until firm
Putting in the effort.
Activating a willingness to make the pudding
Putting (v.) bringing into a particular state or condition
Proof (n.) evidence that something is true or correct
So it is in the classroom.
Effective teaching and engaged learning begin with putting.
Putting in the time, attention, and willingness to harness the
strengths
challenges
lived experiences
quirks
personalities
gifts
insecurities
values
and beliefs about ability and intelligence—including our own.
Our minds have been institutionalized to believe that adults and groups of children can show up to classrooms five days a week, without the benefit of healthy relationships, eager to teach and ready to learn.
Abracadabra and Ta-DOWWW.
But the proof that emerges from the putting is in the relationships.
Imperfect yet intentional.
Clumsy and compassionate.
…and at times, a little selfish.
(I know: the word selfish seems antithetical to the profession. But rock with me; I’ll make it make sense in future posts. Promise.)
Visit any classroom through a relationship lens and you’ll see, clearly, the values surrounding teaching and learning. Do you sense…
Community-building and creative chaos? Or competitiveness and fear?
Engaged teaching and learning? Or contagious indifference?
Room for grappling and making mistakes with productive feedback? Or rushing, shaming and shutting down?
Opportunities for collaboration and academic conversation? Or class periods full of lectures and directives?
Trust, no classroom dog-and-pony show can obscure a lack of putting and proof.
So, now that we’ve established that this is not a blog about pudding…
Putting & Proof’s WHY
My first teaching contract was at an alternative school, a sort of holding cell for students who’d been expelled from their comprehensive high schools.
My students, whose grade levels ranged from 10th to 12th grade, had been kicked out of traditional school for…
defiance against staff
a history of physical fights
drug transactions
weapons possession
and gang activity.
The contents of their electronic files typically dated back to middle school with an escalation in suspensions over time, which usually led to a zero tolerance behavior. This, in turn, landed them at the district’s expulsion high school.
All but a few students arrived with low expectations– for themselves, as well as for staff.
In turn, most of the adults on campus were armed with low expectations for students and were seldom disappointed. Oftentimes, our students met staff requests with quiet hostility or raging refusal; they were princes and princesses of unfiltered profanity; many of them arrived at school, fresh off a “bowl” of weed; and they resisted classwork (I had been told by the counselor not to bother assigning homework.) as if they were student protesters.
Many a day, I drove home bleary-eyed from tears, asking myself what in the school-to-prison-pipeline-hell, I’d gotten myself into.
But during those 100-minute classes, I also observed that my students were mostly alone, scared and misunderstood.
There were many days when I felt the same.
While the teachers I worked with were veterans in the profession, there was no wisdom or welcoming for this new teacher. I experienced them as bitter, apathetic and even cruel and learned to keep to my bungalow unless there was a staff meeting or some other reason to be out and about on campus.
Alone. Scared. Misunderstood.
Yup: tough crowd, tough year.
And then there was the baggage that I’d brought. I started that school year with a flippant and misguided contention that a teacher and student didn’t have to “like” each other for teaching and learning to happen. My own K-12 education had been largely transactional.
But even in my relational clumsiness, I sensed that my students and I wanted the same thing–mutual respect, trust and dignity. And that year, I learned some hard and fast lessons from these “troubled” youth.
They taught me about the importance of putting humans before institutions.
They taught me that teaching is a privilege, not a right— and that they didn’t have to learn from me just because I was the chick with the degrees in the room.
They taught me that if I didn’t take time to know them and allow myself to be known by them, my subject knowledge was useless.
My students, with their “zero tolerance” behaviors and sometimes questionable survival skills, showed me who I wanted to become as an educator; they showed me that the proof of what and if they’d learned from my teaching was rooted in intentional relationship-building.
I’d been unconsciously holding onto outmoded ideas about the role of the teacher and student, and these closely held values had only weighed me down with shame and trauma.
So, I sort of stumbled upon the relationship-centered classroom.
After a semester of anger, defensiveness, self-righteousness, excuse-making, teary tantrums, and feigned confusion, I realized that while it’s indeed possible to eek out a little teaching and learning under the bleakest of conditions, without relationships, an educator’s teaching can never truly be effective and a child can never genuinely be engaged in learning.
I think about the teachers I learned from and the ones I couldn’t or wouldn’t learn from.
I think about the students who learned from me and the ones who refused to learn from me.
I think about how
shame
prejudice
humiliation
fear
bigotry
limiting beliefs
low expectations
and white supremacy
have institutionalized our understanding of what it means to educate and be educated.
I think about how these elements of poverty-thinking promote outmoded ideas, policies, and practices, keeping critical and fair-minded thinking at bay in too many teaching and learning relationships.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Students and teachers left hanging out to dry.
These swirling and sometimes spiraling thoughts have me curious about how K-12 classroom relationships and communities are nurtured amidst colliding values and blurred visions:
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash
Educators as visionaries in their classrooms, not just managers —this is my why.
Student agency, belonging, and accountability—this is my why.
Classrooms where intentional relationship-putting yields proof of quality teaching and learning—this is my why.
P&P is a blog for new classroom teachers and renewing teachers who want to feel and understand their why in the classroom– even on those yucky days (and there will be yucky days); who recognize that relationships, even in the classroom, require time, attention and willingness; who acknowledge their students’ human frailties—and their own….and can generously forgive both.
P&P is a blog about teaching and learning because both matter. More often than not, teaching and learning are compartmentalized, as if there is no cross-impact. There’s an initiative about the Whole Child yet the wholeness of the educator goes unmentioned.
But in our classrooms, there are no compartments available. One mood, behavior, word, personality, stressor or home situation will inevitably beget another. What makes a classroom a teaching and learning space is the opposite of compartmentalization: connection. In this education equation, both students and teachers matter; the relationships matter.
P&P is not a political blog— though I do recognize that our classrooms are political spaces, now more than ever.
P&P is not a how-to-implement-another-strategy blog; it’s about how to think about teaching and learning through the lens of relationship. Not that strategies don’t have a place in the classroom; they absolutely do and I aim to make every post actionable.
However, outside the context of relationships, incorporating classroom management strategies will inevitably fall flat.
P&P unveils adults and children in the classroom as both teacher and learner. Whatever we put into our classroom relationships will serve as ultimate proof of collective growth and development. It’s not about piling more on the teaching plate; it’s about identifying and activating our values and visions for teaching and learning.
Putting & Proof will use the lens of relationship to examine topics concerning …
- Classroom Management
- Values in the classroom
- Re-envisioning teaching and learning
- Language and communication
- Community-building in the classroom
- Restorative Practices (as an actual practice)
Photo by Rob Martin on Unsplash
There might be an urge to resist and rant back at these posts.
You may not believe that you can relate to the content.
You may not believe that you have any agency in the putting.
You may not be interested in examining the proof. Especially if it means admitting that you’re causing harm in the classroom.
But here’s the thing:
It’s inevitable that if we’re working with and/or parenting children, we’ve caused some harm, just as we’ve likely suffered harm to varying degrees:
An insensitive, unkind, impatient word or act by an adult.
A memory, trigger, or involuntary response as an adult.
We are all clumsy, complex beings, so injury is just part of the package of peopling.
Even in the most loving of households.
Even in classrooms that contain the best of intentions.
There will be wounds.
This is where the putting comes in—the willingness to repair the harm, to make things right. The proof of the putting is in the trust, respect and dignity— the stuff that meaningful teaching and learning experiences are made of; the relationship standards that teachers and students can always return to when those incidences of human clumsiness occur.
That said, it can be easy to confuse clumsy with sloppy in the classroom. But the distinction is important if we want to build healthy and thriving relationships in the classroom.
Teacher Sloppy
Teacher Sloppy tramples upon and minimizes the harm she causes; abuses her power, taking no responsibility for her words, actions, or reactions. If a conflict or harm happens, it happened to her or because of someone else (usually a student, parent, or administrator).
Teacher Sloppy will never support effective, engaged teaching and learning. His experiences and beliefs about what it means to teach and learn, even if outdated and irrational, makes him the adult-expert in the room. He believes that doing time in the classroom is the same as putting in time.
What’s scary about Teacher Sloppy is that he might do damage in the classroom for decades.
Now of course, Teacher Sloppy is the extreme version. I would like to believe that most teachers are just…clumsy.
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash
Teacher Clumsy
Teacher Clumsy doesn’t know what he doesn’t know but is, for the most part, open to learning. He will sometimes make a mess of things by attempting to be witty but ends up being sarcastic or just inappropriate. He may lose his temper or act defensively from shame.
Teacher Clumsy wants to be in relationship but doesn’t always know the best way to go about it. She tries to be her students’ friend in an attempt to be relatable. But when a student inevitably crosses a boundary, she abruptly becomes “the adult in the room” desperately trying to unblur the lines. She’s aware that trust and respect are in question, but fears sacrificing her authority for an apology.
Without acknowledgement and compassion for Teacher Clumsy’s journey, sloppiness could easily ensue.
Compassion is just on the other side of our human clumsiness…if we’ll have it. The willingness is the biggest component of putting. I believe that we can all rock with the inevitability of clumsiness—if compassion is its companion.
Whether you are new to the classroom or renewing your commitment to the classroom, please know that compassion is already written into these posts—even when they seem to be a little in your face or cause some butt-clenching! My aim in Putting & Proof is to harmonize accountability with compassion– for both students and educators.
It can’t be denied that this profession has never been more challenging. Which is why, if you are going to stay awhile, I hope that you’ll consider how you’d like to be in relationship with your students. The resistance you may feel is just part of the journey toward deciding differently.
Choosing a humaning heart over an institutionalized mind.
Once you decide on a clumsy, compassionate classroom, some yummy teaching and learning will be waiting for you and your students…even on bad lesson days and yes, even in those smart-butt-student moments!
Although I am no longer in the classroom, I’m a credentialed teacher for life and I’m grateful to you, Educator-Visionary, for all the putting that you do in your classroom everyday. Besides parenting, I believe there’s no higher contribution to humanity than educating our children.
I’m super-duper excited to grow and learn with you through this blog!
Restoratively and Appreciatively,
Zenani