Teachers are back at it this week, and we’re kicking it off with the known and loved “Week 0” professional development. There’s so much information in these meetings about the school and how it runs, scheduling, changes for the school year, welcoming newcomers, brainstorming ideas for lessons, preparing classrooms and rosters, so on and so forth. Amidst all of this, my school is really focusing in on “teacher caring” and what that looks like in our classrooms and school as a whole. We had some great discussions today about what felt like “teacher caring” to us when we were school-aged (from elementary to high school), and how we can allow those meaningful experiences where we felt seen, heard, valued, and trusted to guide us as teachers now on the other side of the relationship.

This spurred a couple of thoughts for me, and I wanted to capture them here.

1. Empathy has to be genuine. I think every teacher would say that empathy is essential in the classroom, but I think that empathy is a skill someone works on more than a tool to be used. Picking and choosing whether or not to “use” empathy is not genuine empathy. We as humans can feel when someone is saying empty words versus when they say something heartfelt and true, and kids are no different. It’s easy to use an empathy script; for example, “You seem pretty angry right now — is there something you want or need from me to help you calm down?” On paper, this response to a student having emotions seems perfectly fine. It addresses their feelings as you’re perceiving them, giving them a chance to clarify. It communicates that you are there with them and willing to support, even in the form of them telling you there’s nothing they want or need from you and giving them space. However, this response without the true intention to understand their anger and offer support in a form they would like can really harm the relationship you work so hard to nurture. When you operate off of an empathy script, it can feel like manipulation to students to get them to do what you think they should do or feel the way you think they should feel. Genuine empathy means feeling into their anger, not trying to eradicate it immediately. Even if it’s not the support that you think they should request, genuine empathy allows you to dive beneath the content and feel into what they really might be asking for.
2. Give what you can actually give. I love being able to say “yes” to people when they ask me for something. It makes me happy to feel like I’m helping make someone else’s life better or brightening their experience, and I really like the opportunity to connect more deeply with somebody else. If I’m being honest, I also like feeling valued by someone. Sometimes, this leads me to say “yes” to things that I then wish I hadn’t, and I start to feel burned out or resentful as a result of carrying out that “yes” that I committed to. I feel like most people have had this experience — it happens in relationships of all ages and shapes and sizes. As a teacher, this is especially challenging for me; I feel the urge to constantly say “yes” to children in particular. The tough part is that they often don’t immediately understand why you might be saying no, feelings of rejection may follow, and it’s uncomfortable for me to feel like I might have caused those feelings or disappointed them in some way. The more I’ve experienced and thought and read about this, though, the more strongly I believe that we should not be giving something that we don’t want to (or don’t have the capacity to) give, whether it’s time, attention, empathy, materials, etc. When we give in order to avoid someone else’s disappointment, judgment, anger, or even to avoid our own self-judgment or feelings of inadequacy, it’s not genuine giving and will often result in more distance in the relationship. Sometimes, there’s another need inside of us that’s stronger than a need that would be met by giving to this person, and saying “yes” may lead us to see this person as what’s standing in between us and meeting that stronger need (even though we are the ones that gave the “yes” in the first place). In the classroom, this can start to seep into our teacher-student relationships, and we start to classify students as “needy,” “entitled,” or some other label that really stems from our own choices. It’s okay if there’s nothing left to give and you need to figure out what you’re actually feeling and wanting. Although you may feel discomfort in saying, “I’m sad that you’re sad, but I can’t sit with you right now,” or, “No, you can’t come into my room today during lunch, I have stuff I would like to get done,” this will be much better for your relationship than giving when you really don’t want to.
3. What is the purpose of caring? At our school, we have a survey that allows students to answer questions that indicate how cared about they feel at our school and across aspects of their school life. Between last year and this year, “teacher caring” numbers decreased for us, which can be really tough to hear when you’re a teacher that feels like you’re burning the candle at both ends providing rigorous academic instruction for all of your students at various levels, creating a physically and emotionally safe environment, making time to learn about the students and their personal lives, grading assignments and providing meaningful and personal feedback, communicating with families via email and in-person meetings, scheduling time to meet with co-workers to plan and collaborate, and carrying out other random duties included in being a teacher. To me, the question is not that our teachers care about these students, but what the disconnect is between our teachers’ caring and what the students are (or are not) receiving. I think intentionality is important here. If our intention is to raise this score, I’m not confident our scores will increase. I think what truly can raise the score is not caring about the score and instead prioritizing and learning what does make these students feel cared for, even if it doesn’t match our preconceived notions of care or our natural ways of communicating care. Keeping the score front-of-mind may cause us to enact the “empathy script,” driving us farther from the connection we seek. Our students are telling us that they would like to feel more cared for, and to me, that is the only thing that matters. Again, students might communicate care as veiled messages that are difficult for us to hear. If we asked a student to expound upon why they don’t feel cared for, a younger student might say, “Because Mrs. Beasley didn’t let me use the xylophone.” This might be true — maybe I didn’t feel like the student was being safe enough to use the instrument at the time. What they might be saying is, “I value feeling trusted, and when I don’t, I feel like Mrs. Beasley doesn’t care about me.” If that’s the case, although it won’t change my decision to keep a student away from an instrument that they might break or hurt themselves with, I can use that information to entrust them with something else, as they will have communicated that feeling trusted is important to them. An older student may express that, “Mrs. Beasley doesn’t care about me because she gave me a B.” What I might hear here is, “I feel valuable/loved/worthy when I get good grades, and I blame Mrs. Beasley for robbing me of that feeling.” Even when students (or anyone else in our lives, for that matter) don’t communicate as cleanly as that, if we drop our defensiveness and listen for deeper meanings, we can learn what truly does help others feel cared for, and we can try something out. It’s my experience that even if we don’t hit the nail on the head with someone’s need or want that we thought we heard in the underlying message, the effort of listening and trying communicates caring in itself as you both navigate closer to what they’re really asking for.