School as a Place of Love (revisited)

There is a Kevin Henkes book, Chrysanthemum, where the title character comes home from school and tells her parents, “School is no place for me”. My eyes fill with tears every time I read it. It seems to me that there are so many ways for school to feel to a child like a place where they don’t belong. Children of every age struggle with peer acceptance and fitting in. Sometimes other kids seem mean or cruel. Sometimes a kid knows that they are the one who is sticking out, awkward, like a cowlick that just won’t lie down. But for me, one of the more terrible reasons for a child to feel that pain, the feeling that school is no place for them, comes from teachers who may not love them.

I think probably most of the teachers in my extensive educational life had no love for me. They had a job to do, and lots of times, that job was to convey State standards, or the material on the syllabus. Seems reasonable enough. But, when I think back on the utter disinterest from so many of those education professionals, for whom I had no particular hard feelings, mostly I feel sort of cold, like there never was a relationship, we may as well have been strangers on the train. I guess I always thought there was nothing wrong with that, and even, that it seemed reasonable that these people, adults in my childhood, should refrain from investing in getting to know me. I mean, that’s a lot of kids to know. I imagine they were busy.

Those of you who know me as a teacher know that that is not the kind of teacher I am. The educational philosophy I learned insists that a child’s relationship with their teacher is of critical importance. The way I was taught to think, learning happens when children and teachers are co-creators of learning, in an environment which recognizes the essential humanity of each of the participants. Each individual child must be known, must be listened to, must be learned, must be loved by their teacher. Each teacher must open their heart up to all their students, to each and every individual. And it is a lot of students, and I am very busy! And this is my most important work, to learn and to love each of these kids. I do it all day, and I go home and read about how I can understand them better, in all their delightful variety. It overflows my life with joy, and I bet that all of those other, probably super tired, and in need of fair pay, and a bathroom break, and a proper vacation, teachers of my childhood have experienced the elation that fills you when you let the kids permeate your soul. Maybe I am just too new a teacher, or have too pleasant of a teaching environment, to know why those teachers of my past were so cold.

I do think the effect of teachers who fail to acknowledge the beautiful and unique humanity of each student has profound and almost irreparable consequences. I think kids can pretty much hear our thoughts about them. They can hear our sighs, see our eye rolls, know that we are talking about them. They internalize our struggle to love them in their fullness. They begin to feel unlovable, or else, they reject our estimation and choose instead what Herbert Kohl calls “creative maladjustment”, purposeful, at least unconsciously purposeful, not-learning. They will not listen to us. They refuse what we ask, in attempt to save face, for capitulating to the will of someone who does not care for them would be humiliating. Bless those teachers of teachers, for the benefit of those of us who think of ourselves as co-learners. I have learned more from those kids, who refused my bland pleasantries, than I ever could from kids who come in ready to please me, an adult with authority over their lives.

The idea of a child not feeling welcome at school feels so serious to me because of the high stakes of that notion taking hold. Some of the smartest, most intellectual adults I have known think of themselves as not very smart, or worse, because of the way that their school experiences shaped their perception of who they are. Incredible people were convinced by authority figures in their lives, by accident or not, that they are less capable than they really are, that they are less valuable than they really are, and less valuable in relation to other people, by virtue of some of those other people having received praise from teachers. But it’s not praise that gives shape to a positive self-image. It’s love. Those two things get conflated but are certainly not the same. Praise gets handed out in schools all the time for things like the skill of sitting still and being quiet, or spitting back the exact answer that the teacher had designated as correct. Lots of teachers no doubt appreciate those skills, but it’s not the same as loving the children who sometimes display them.

Several times this week, in completely different circumstances, outside of our school, I have heard the word, “bully”. I myself don’t ever use that word, when referring to a person. It falls under my commitment to recognize the essential humanness of a person. Judgemental, as opposed to descriptive, language is inherently dehumanizing. It makes the person one dimensional, easier to dismiss, easier to assign to the trash heap. That’s the point of it. It is painful to think about what kinds of things might cause a child to spend all their energy doing terrible things to other children. Probably, for a child to spend so much energy that way, they are experiencing some really serious stresses, internal or external, or both. I want to be one of the people who looks for how we can get that child the support they need, not somebody who stops thinking of them as a child.

And, to be clear, the start of that support might be to ask, has this child eaten? Because it is pretty hard to keep it together if you have not eaten, as any parent of a young child knows. But beyond that, somebody has to love that kid. Somebody has to get close enough to be available to hear the child’s communication, whatever it is. It will seldom be delivered in clear print and good grammar. It might be a series of unspoken messages, body language that has to be interpreted, floated to the child for confirmation, adjustment. It might sound like vitriol, turning to fear. It might be whispered, begging you not to judge, but assuming you will. Kids know when they have done something you think is wrong. It pains them, even when they show this by smiling as they look in your eyes, or running away. They don’t need to be told. They need to be loved.

To steady my own children, I try to inoculate them through empathetic conversation. I want them to know and understand that people don’t just act mean because they are bad people, or because they are jerks or something. They act that way because they are hurt, or scared, or ashamed. I want my own children to respond to a child who is acting in hurtful ways with empathy. My kids, when we talk about this, call me out every time. They point out how I said that somebody who cut me off in traffic was driving like a jerk (I mean, it could have been worse). And they are right. All I can say for myself is that I am still making a distinction between an action someone takes, in a stressful moment, and who that person is. We are not our worst choices. We are not a jumbled collection of our mistakes. We are people, each of us, from the moment we are born and before, learning from everyone around us.

I always say, we are all teaching and learning all the time, even when we don’t mean to be. Get present to yourself as a teacher and a learner, and feel the awe. Each one of us has the potential to be a safe person for someone else, someone who loves them just as they are, with all of their complicated, messy, human qualities. To be a member of a co-op is to accept the gift and responsibility of extending your love to these other people’s children. You are one of those children, and so am I. The point of our school to me is for the children to feel that they are loved. Without that, nothing else works.