Thanks again to the inquisitive and life-long learning folk at Child Care Exchange Magazine. I really enjoyed their daily email today about some of the writings of Lilian Katz from Intellectual Emergencies: Some Reflections on Mothering and Teaching. I was struck by a comment she made about this frequently used comment: “We don’t do that at this school.” and “Why should a teacher say to a child who just grabbed a stapler from another one, ‘We don’t do that in this class!’ when the child just did it?” I remember the teacher on my first teaching practice using this strategy and I have on occasion used it myself. But of course it doesn’t make sense! We are also denying and devaluing the child’s experience or the strategies they have used to of cope or deal with an experience.
She comments that this creates a “phony classroom culture”. What really struck me was her comment this “fails to involve children in making good sense of their experience and environment.” She also talked about a teacher who had used a cardboard tiger and when she got annoyed with the children she would say “the tigers getting grumpy with you”. Ms. Katz asked why the children were asked to respond to the feelings of a tiger and not the feelings of their teacher. I tried this this morning (feeling like a cardboard teacher with my cold!). Some boys were having a chat while I was talking about were going to do in the library and I said “I feel really bad when you talk over me, when I’m talking to the whole class. Did you realise that?” I got a pair of saucer eyes and “Nope!”. He stopped talking, bless him.
In the middle of writing this blog I had the opportunity to practice a conversation with a child to help the child make more sense of their experience and their environment. I kept that phrase as the running framework for what I wanted to say, with care and intention. During this child’s break time this child had a fight with a “friend”. How could I help her see how her behaviour was aggravating the problem? How could I help to use more positive strategies to communicate with someone? How could I help her be more aware that righteous ideas of “getting back at someone” to cause them pain was unhealthy and wouldn’t help her in the long run?
These ideas sit comfortably with Wilson McCaskill’s theories of relationship building, building empathy and the language of strong and weak choices (through game playing). I’m especially interested in the language of “What is the little voice in your head saying? What is it telling you to do?”. I think this strategy of helping children to be in touch with their inner-voice helps them to act with more empathy. If they can be more in touch and understand their inner-voice then they can develop their ability to imagine what someone else’s inner voice would be saying, someone else’s internal experience, which is the basis for developing empathy.
So what are these ways of interacting with children doing? Enabling them to be more empathic, aware and humane in their relationships with other people and the world. The teachers job is to be intentional with language choices and to be aware of thing we say that may not be helpful in developing relationships and empathy. I even think that some things we say are “developing relationships” actually aren’t. If our goal is to develop empathy and the children’s ability to make good sense of the world then this needs to be the basis of our relationship building.
Thanks for being with me on this journey. Please comment and add to this conversation in your own way with your own thoughts!
