Pineapple!

Pineapple-22

What can classrooms and BDSM have in common? Safe words! I was recently talking to some teachers and students about emotions in the classroom. The teachers and the students wanted to talk about ways to manage difficult conversations in class, particularly conversations that trigger or offend one or more participants. Examples came up: when a white person uses the "n-word"; when someone states a homophobic belief; when someone reveals hurtful cultural ignorance.

The beauty of having this conversation with teachers AND students was that we could hear from both sides. Some teachers expressed their intense discomfort at being squeezed between a feeling of offense -- "I can't believe you just said that!" -- and a desire to protect the offender -- "If I call you out, I'll shame you -- and I don't want to do that." Students shared their experience of feeling unsafe when teachers let these uncomfortable moments pass. When they feel unsafe, even for a moment, these students confirmed, their long-term response is to shut down, which makes learning very difficult and, of course, can reinforce all-too-familiar shame in them.

We talked about the importance of laying ground rules for all conversations at the beginning of the school year. We talked about the importance of maintaining a safe place for all students to express themselves, what I call "holding" or "containing," and what I consider to be the teacher's job. (It's nice when the students in a class cooperate with keeping the classroom a safe place, but it's when this cooperation breaks down that the intense discomfort floods in and teachers have to step up.) We talked about teachers as developmental partners and the good possibility that at least one student will "act out" in class, making it essential for the teacher to set a limit that the student might resist but that all students need. And we talked about "safe words."

"Safe words," I discovered, are words used in the BDSM world, in Bondage and Discipline, Sadism and Masochism enactments. While I don't want to compare teaching with BDSM scenarios, I do want to share the value of using "safe words" in classroom conversations that could get scary for the participants.

One "safe word" that a teacher came up with was "pineapple" -- a word that probably wouldn't be used in class conversations so would stand out if anyone uttered it. The idea is that, if anyone in a class said "pineapple," all conversation would stop and care would be taken to ensure everyone's safety. This care could involve a few seconds of silence; it could involve a description, stripped of bias and judgment, of what just happened; it could involve psychoeducation about the possible effects of certain words or acts on others; it could require some disclosure from the teacher: "This just happened, and I'm not sure what to do about it"; it could involve individual writing: "Please write down words that describe how you're feeling right now"; "Please write down what you would like to have happen right now."

In short, "pineapple" would break the classroom frame. It would stop the regular performing that makes up a day in the life of a classroom and ask everyone to pay attention to each other and the impact, intentional or not, of their words and behaviors. "Pineapple" would invite the teacher and students to peer at the innards of their learning, which would give them a chance to adjust their process so the surface learning could continue.

A normal response at this point in my blog post might be something like "Good LORD!!! Why would any teacher let discussions get to the point where a safe word would be necessary?!?"

One answer is that some teachers are comfortable with "disrupting" students' safe, often unquestioned assumptions about the world. These teachers might argue that discomfort in the classroom is a useful sign that students are actually learning something, that they're integrating new ideas and changing their world views, their thoughts, their behaviors.

Another answer is that teachers have no actual control over when or how a classroom environment might become unsafe for one or more students. The occurrence of bullying in schools and on-line between classmates testifies to this fact. A bedrock reality of classrooms is that relationships and emotions happen there, whether anyone likes it or not. Teachers who are unprepared for eruptions of emotion, whether in the guise of an offensive comment or in a student's withdrawal from all class participation, handicap themselves. And they curtail their students' education.

What role might a pineapple have to play in your classroom?