Get Perspective!

“Well hold on now,” you might be thinking. “I have perspective.”

Yes you do.

Your own perspective.

Your view of the world from your own personal garden.

Very very valuable to be familiar with your own perspective.

But your perspective, sad to say, is inherently

biased and limited.

No blame here. Just facts.

Given the inevitability of bias and blind spots in each particular partial perspective, it makes sense that seeking other perspectives could be of use. To everyone engaged in relationships. To teachers. To school administrators.

Obvious?

Perhaps.

But in case it isn’t: I recently read a couple articles advocating perspective-taking by teachers. This one describes a perspective-taking intervention that researchers discovered positively affected teacher-student relationships. (If you don’t feel like reading a dry research report, this article is written for regular people like you and me.)

This one is about

love languages.

And who doesn’t love them?

Point being:

If we dwell in our own particular perspective all the time, we will

see what we want to see.

And we will have a hard time seeing anything else.

Like someone else’s perspective.

Which is, of course, just as important as our own.

Opening up to other perspectives — breaking out of our COVID-inspired isolation, getting curious, acknowledging difference, making way for the Third — is a teacher’s job. Isn’t it what makes teaching so interesting and engrossing?

Mantra (they’re back!): How am I going to get perspective today? From whom?