Alexandra Laing is A Worthy Educator and a Champion for bringing together educators around our common values and mission!
She is currently pursuing her passion as a STEAM Education Specialist with the Belize Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology through the Peace Corps Response program.
I recently sat down and calculated an approximation of the number of students I have had sit in chairs in my classes throughout the course of my career thus far. I have had over 1000 students - 1000 humans who are all trying to grow up into highly functioning adults who are positively contributing to society. Each one had strengths and each one had their own challenges. Some were learning new languages. Some were struggling with a learning disability. Some were high-achievers and figuring how to navigate what that meant for them while they simultaneously sought challenges beyond the expected.
But there is not a single student that has walked into my class with the intention of being difficult. Not a single one. I firmly believe the following three tenets:
kids don’t come into a class hoping to misbehave
teachers intend to be the change they want to see, and
leaders get into leadership to support and not diminish those they are charged to lead.
But everyone walks onto campuses and into classrooms carrying baggage.
Some enter a school hesitant and projecting their past experiences onto the one that is immediately in front of them. Some enter not knowing exactly who they are but knowing how they are perceived in the hallways. Some may be plagued with external circumstances, emotions, or influences that are creating distraction, disengagement, or disillusionment. But bottom line - no kid is hoping to misbehave, no teacher is hoping to harm, and no leader is hoping to be ineffective.
There is one student that I will never forget. Brilliant in their own way, they had overcome a tremendous amount of adversity already in their 11 years of life. And they hated writing.
What this student didn’t know was that they were an insanely good writer. They had an attention to detail that flowed through their work, and they had this uncanny ability to maintain a clear throughline for their reader. What this student didn’t know was that the way they interacted with words and sentence structure drew their reader into an unexpected and magical space. But what this student did know was frustration. They knew ripped out pages. They knew torn up notebooks. They knew tears. They knew running away from the feeling of failure. And they knew chairs thrown to the corners of classrooms. And their frustration poured out onto me.
My student’s frustration was not about ME. But it was directed toward me 99% of the time.
It would have been so much easier to write that student off and to allow them to believe their false narrative that they were not a good writer. It would have been easier to let them sulk in the corner and not write. It would have been even easier to let them avoid the process of writing altogether. I was tempted to direct my energy towards my students who demanded less of my time and less of my attention. But because I believe in every students’ universal right to learn, I had to figure out how to navigate my student’s frustration with writing. Which meant I had to manage my own emotions about their frustration that was directed at me.
“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.” -Lev Tolstoy
How often have we each experienced frustration directed at us and misinterpreted that frustration? As leaders, we are so often on the receiving end of the frustrations of those we support. The new initiative may be unclear or the guidance uninformed or a myriad of any other influences may be fueling the frustration. Leo Tolstoy said, “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.” Why this quote from Tolstoy? Because I think what he's saying is that if we (or those we lead) have already decided a thing that we think or feel, it is incredibly difficult to change that perception.
If we don’t stop to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and look at the challenges from their perspective, we can too easily become reactive, punitive, accusatory, and demeaning without even intending to. We can react harshly, and worse yet, we can develop the worst belief about another human according to renowned psychologist and mathematician, Dr. John Gottman: contempt. It’s often a bitter leadership lesson we wish we never had to learn.
The two-way street of trust is a starting point. It’s a place where we can meet each other at the front door of our educational institutions and agree on universal human rights - that every single individual, be it a student learner or an adult learner, should have the access, support, and freedom to learn. It’s a place where we can recognize that we all have at least one thing that’s hard for us that’s seemingly easy for everyone else. It's a place where we can approach the difficult act of learning as a mutual endeavor in which the goal is growth, self-discovery, and compassion.
As Worthy Educators, let’s lead with empathy. Let’s lead with compassion. Let’s lead with trust. And let’s lead with a drive to uphold the universal human right to learn. Finally, let's acknowledge that all stakeholders bring good intentions to the table and admit to ourselves that what we may be firmly persuaded in just might be misinformed.
Because sometimes, as my student reminded me (almost daily), writing is hard.
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