Episode 13: Betsy

A Teacher Support Group facilitator tries a crazy experiment.

Transcript

This story is a little different from many of the others I’ve told in the Teachers’ Lounge. Because in this story, the teacher is me.

So that’s weird. But here we go.

I had been running this particular Teacher Support Group for a couple years. Every week during the academic year we had gathered for an hour and a quarter to talk about tough teaching experiences. I loved the teachers in this group; I was amazed at how effective our meetings were and how psychodynamically smart these teachers were becoming.

But I also noticed what I can only describe as dread before each meeting.

I mean, why? Once the meetings began, I felt fine. Well, I generally felt fine about the teachers. As I dug deeper into my feeling of dread (what’s that called again? Oh yeah: emotion work), I realized I didn’t feel fine about myself all the time.

For one thing, I regularly fell into what I call exhortation. I exhorted the teachers. Gave them pep talks. Got vehement. Waxed dramatic about the virtues of psychodynamics or the evils of traditional educational assumptions. I can’t stand it when I “exhort” but have the hardest time holding my tongue when I have something to say – and I always always always have something to say.

And I worried. I worried that I took up too much space. That I was overbearing. That the teachers didn’t like me. I worried that I didn’t know what was going on inside their heads. Was this work useful? Was I completely missing the mark? Why did I say that thing that time? Why did that teacher make that face?

And then it hit me: [gasp!] Running Teacher Support Groups is like teaching!!!

Teacher Support Groups are public, they’re improvisational, they’re discussions. They’re impossible to predict or prepare for. They’re high stakes. They’re collective, precarious, chancy, completely out of my control. Hell, as a compulsive exhorter, I don’t even feel as though I’m always in my control! 

That did it. I decided to try something different. I decided to wuwei.

Wuwei, which is Chinese for “do nothing.” But wuwei is a very special kind of doing nothing. It is, according to a website I just read, “strategic passivity.” It is, according to this website, much like “the best aspects of being drunk,” which was, I can tell you as someone who majored in East Asian Studies and classical Chinese back in the day, a cherished state for ancient Taoist sages. (I would revise this, though, to “being buzzed,” as being drunk is not something I can in good conscience advocate.) Wuwei is the state of being relaxed enough to be flexible, to see clearly and to respond appropriately, to trust yourself, the world around you, and your fit in it, to be both alert and receptive.

To not exhort. To let process unfold. To trust in the students (I mean the teachers).

Let’s see how that went.

[break]

Uh-oh. During check-in on this particular day, a couple of the teachers expressed acute distress. Not the easiest conditions under which to let go as the group’s facilitator. But deep breath, Betsy. Wuwei.

David had a student who would not stop using the word “fag” in his classroom. He had warned the student repeatedly, explaining how offensive the word is to him, and had laid down the law in front of the entire class that such words were forbidden. But still the student – let’s call him Ricky – threw the word around at will. David reported that he had reprimanded Ricky so often that one of the other students in the class actually said to Ricky at one point, “Come on, dude, can’t you hear? He doesn’t want you to say that word!”

David was at his wit’s end.

Bonnie, inspired by David’s story of frustration and insensitivity, shared her own experience of student insensitivity. Bonnie told us that one of her students, Aparna, whom Bonnie called a “friend,” reported to Bonnie that another student, James, had not invited Aparna to a party he was throwing. James and Aparna were friends; Bonnie could not understand why James wouldn’t invite his friend to one of his parties. She told us that this revelation made her “mad.” “I know James is a good person,” she said, “even if he has been goofing off in class lately.” So Bonnie asked Aparna if she could talk to James; Aparna gave her permission. “I haven’t spoken to him yet,” Bonnie told us, “but I’m going to.”

Susannah reported that she’d recently been called into the assistant principal’s office about a complaint that had been unofficially made about her. “Apparently,” Susannah said, “I am argumentative.” A number of her departmental colleagues had told her chair that they found her discourse style offensive, and her chair had told the assistant principal. Susannah said, while she admired the assistant principal for having the courage to tell her about the complaint, the way he did it was offensive to Susannah. “He treated the complaint as though it were fact and told me that I’d better stop arguing,” Susannah said. “If I didn’t, I’d be put on a Professional Improvement Plan.”

The group was concerned about all of the issues that were raised, but they decided to focus on Susannah’s because she was hurting.

“I’m not hurting!” she disagreed. “I was just stunned. And I’m angry.”

Hunh. Possible evidence that Susannah was hurting. Definite evidence that she is argumentative.

[break]

Which of these check-ins do you suppose made me want to break my resolve and resort to exhort – ing? Oho! Now I’m playing the guess-what-I’m-thinking game. I hate it when teachers play this game, just as I hate it when they exhort. So I’ll tell you: I was alarmed by Bonnie’s check-in.

First of all, I was alarmed that Bonnie called Aparna a “friend.” Unh-unh. Teachers are not friends with their students. Not, at least, while they are still evaluating those students. Grading those students. Teachers are interested observers and witnesses; they are holders of knowledge, plans, standards, limits, expectations, and hope; they guide; they care; they are developmental partners. But they are not friends.

And I was alarmed by Bonnie’s urge to intervene. Because she cared about Aparna – which is, of course, admirable – and felt influential over James – precisely because of her teacher status – Bonnie took what I would call a grandiose position in relation to both students. She would fix this problem. She would mend the hurt. She had the power to make things better. Again, admirable, stemming from deep empathy and kindness. But totally inappropriate. Why? Because Aparna and James had to work this out for themselves. It was their relationship, their mishap, their repair. Bonnie had nothing to do with any of it. She was a teacher, not a mediator. Not a parent. Not a friend.

But then there was me. How grandiose was I going to be? I was sitting there during Bonnie’s check-in with loud alarm bells going off in my head. I was just itching to say my piece, stop her in her tracks, fix her. I knew what was right and could say it o so eloquently. HA!!!

So what did I do?

Nothing.

I let myself let go. Actually, I made myself let go. And it was not easy. But I had resolved to try this experiment.

And, to be honest, my decision at that moment was also strategic. How so? Well, I knew that calling Bonnie out – “Whoa! Bad plan, Bonnie” – would undoubtedly shame her. Would Bonnie be able to change or even think if she were suffused with shame? No. Would she be more likely to get defensive? Yes. Shame and defensiveness? Great conditions for rigidity. For anti-learning. Not good for anyone.

So, against all odds, I wuwei’ed. I waited.

I waited on my alarm, that is. I didn’t wait to do my job, which was to summarize the topics on the TSG table. I suggested that David’s issue with the homophobic student, Bonnie’s issue with her two students, and Susannah’s experience with the assistant principal could be combined under the umbrella of “difficult conversations and how to have them.” (Note that there’s a book called Difficult Conversations that takes this general topic on quite well.) What interested me was the completely coincidental juxtaposition in this TSG of a person – David (and, obliquely, Bonnie) – who had to initiate a difficult conversation – and a person – Susannah – who was on the receiving end of a difficult conversation. How often does this happen?

So I asked the teachers: What might Susannah’s experience of having been told something difficult teach David – and, OK, Bonnie, for now – about how to have such a conversation?

The teachers immediately started asking Susannah questions. “How did you feel after the meeting?” Stunned and hurt. “What did you do?” Susannah talked to each member of her department individually, which made her feel less disconnected and misunderstood, at least for a moment. Susannah told us she knew her colleagues were not being “malicious,” but she still felt “disheartened.”

Despite her feeling of discouragement, Susannah also met with the assistant principal to discuss the manner in which the complaint had been shared with her. The assistant principal admitted that Susannah’s department chair was uncomfortable having this “difficult conversation” and so asked the assistant principal to do it for her. “My chair is really conflict-averse,” Susannah said.

Do you see me in this TSG leaning forward and opening my mouth to say, “Yeah, who isn’t? Don’t even get me started about conflict aversion”? I did lean forward; I did open my mouth. But then I shut it again. And said nothing. 

But that doesn’t mean I won’t say anything here! That’s why we make podcasts, right? So we can talk and you can listen. OK, a few words on conflict-aversion: I propose that few people are conflict-loving. I can’t think of anyone who has ever said to me, “I love conflict! I can’t get enough of it!” Whereas a ton of people have told me, “I’m conflict-averse,” as if it’s an actual identity that justifies their total avoidance of anything that smacks of confrontation.

Sorry, conflict-averse people. There’s another response. It’s called “show up and engage.” Which is a way to actually defuse conflict and get good work done.

This is what Susannah’s assistant principal did. He engaged with Susannah. He might not have done it well, at least according to Susannah, but he did do it. Kudos to him for trying what the department chair refused to do.

So now the question is how does someone show up and engage effectively in the face of potential conflict?

A question I could have asked in this Teacher Support Group. But I didn’t. And, lo and behold: David did instead. He asked Susannah, “How could the assistant principal have addressed you? How would you have liked him to have told you this information?” thinking, undoubtedly, of his coming conversation with Ricky.

Susannah didn’t know. She listed the stressors that made the assistant principal’s communication particularly hurtful: the fact that the meeting took place in the assistant principal’s office, not Susannah’s classroom, making her feel like a “bad girl” being called on the carpet; the fact that the assistant principal automatically assumed a Professional Improvement Plan was an appropriate response to this second-hand complaint; and the fact that it was the assistant principal – the second in command at the school, basically Susannah’s boss – and not her department chair who had chastised her.

Good advice here for what David could not do: He could not make Ricky feel like a “bad boy”; he could not be punitive; he could not lead with his own assumptions. 

But the basic question remained: How does someone have a difficult conversation effectively? As the teachers wrestled with this question together, it came out that David’s troubling student, Ricky, came from a very conservative family, one in which the word “fag” was used freely. Well that explained why Ricky used the word so thoughtlessly in David’s classroom. But it didn’t explain why he kept using the word despite David’s repeated demands that he stop.

We wondered about this. I say “we” cuz I was there. But I was, for the most part, silent. Except when I decided to drop a thought on the table. Maybe, I suggested, the issue was less about the actual word and more about Ricky’s relentless need to agitate and push away. That is, the consistent, reliable effect of Ricky’s use of this word in David’s classroom was alienation – from David and even from the other students. As one of them had said with impatience, “Come on, dude!”

Why would Ricky need to do this? How would it serve him? The teachers’ guess was that, for whatever reason, he expected to be abhorred and condemned. To be pushed away in turn. Somehow, David’s consistent, predictable responses to Ricky’s crude and aggressive behavior reinforced Ricky’s expectations of the world – possibly that he was alone in his conservative beliefs, that he would not fit in, that teachers could not, would not, understand him. Something like that?

Of course, we weren’t sure, but we could agree on two things: Ricky seemed committed to alienating David and other students in the class. And David’s approach, to chastise Ricky over and over again, simply wasn’t working. Ricky wasn’t changing his behavior. 

All through this part of our meeting, the teachers were talking to each other. Bonnie was particularly active, suggesting ways David could address Ricky, modeling what David could say. One of my favorite suggestions Bonnie made was to ask Ricky, “What’s going to help you stop breaking the rule about offensive language in this classroom?”

I love this tactic: Asking students for their advice on how they can do what you want them to do – or, more accurately, what they actually have to do as members of a classroom community, as learners. Because, at some level, they know. I think some students need to know that you know that they know. They need that sign of trust and respect.

BTW? This is one way to show up and engage in the face of conflict. Ask for advice on the issue rather than unilaterally imposing a solution that you know will provoke pushback and resistance.

Back in the TSG, which the teachers were running so well, I decided to put in my oar again, to ask another question. I asked Susannah what it felt like to argue, to do what her colleagues found so reprehensible. Why did I ask this? Because I wanted to highlight the rare opportunity of this TSG: that is, the opportunity to hear from both sides of a difficult conversation.

Picking up on my question to Susannah, David wondered aloud what it might be like for Ricky to use the word “fag.” Because he really had no idea, David thought he might actually ask Ricky this question.

The beauty of David’s plan to ask Ricky about his experience of saying “fag” in the classroom – and of getting slammed by David – is that David would be turning his attention and curiosity on Ricky. He wouldn’t just be asking Ricky how he could conform to classroom rules, as Bonnie recommended earlier in the TSG (which is a fine idea); he would be asking Ricky about Ricky, his impulses, his needs, his peculiar relationship with the word “fag.” He would be getting at Ricky’s emotional bedrock that off-gassed in the form of this hateful word. 

Just as the same question invited Susannah to reflect on her impulse to argue. Because that impulse worked for Susannah. Or else she wouldn’t do it. If she hoped to change her argumentative behavior – and she really did want to; she is very reflective and brave and committed to self-improvement – she’d have to get to know that impulse, the off-gassing from her own emotional bedrock, the purposes her arguing accomplished for her. 

So here’s another way to show up and engage: ask “What is it like for you?” Not to assume you know what it’s like to be another person; not to project what it’s like to be you onto the other person; not to lay your priorities over another’s. Rather, to be genuinely curious, respectful, and receptive. Knowing you won’t have to agree with the other person – after all, asking about someone else’s experience makes agreement and disagreement irrelevant, since you simply cannot argue with someone else’s reality. I repeat: you cannot argue with someone else’s reality. You can try to grasp that reality and understand the other person through their lens. And, if you do it right, listening, asking authentic questions, and staying open will give you data that will help you and that person resolve, together, the issue that looked so much like a conflict before you asked your question.

OK so good work, team! Time for me to take the floor and say something awesome. Maybe turn to Bonnie and lay it out for her.  

But she beat me to it.

“I should probably not talk to James about the party,” she volunteered as I drew a dramatic breath, having completely forgotten my resolution to wuwei. “It’s none of my business. But I can talk to him about his goofing off in my class.” 

WHAT?!?!! Google-eyed, I let my breath out. I was able to agree calmly with Bonnie’s plan even though my inner Betsy was doing an ecstatic leprechaun jig.

How Bonnie came to this conclusion, how she recognized her boundary-breaching impulse, how she pulled herself back from the brink of grandiosity, I do not know. But she did it. Holy. Moly.

Maybe she just decided to let go.

But we’re not done yet. As our meeting wound down, Susannah told us that, in her family, if anyone was going to be heard, they had to be aggressive. “Mine was the type of family that yelled, interrupted, and refused to listen to each other,” she said.

Oh. Wow. This is an amazing bit of information. Here’s what I make of it: Susannah is doing to others what was done to her. Under conditions of high excitement or stress, she can’t help it: she automatically replicates those argumentative familial behaviors. She raises her voice, interrupts, refuses to listen, and holds the floor so no one can get a word in edgewise. That’s just the culture in which she was raised. Survival behavior.

But there’s a flip side to this survival behavior. One side of the coin is the doing. The other side of the coin is the being-done-to.

But uhh!! Dilemma!! Do I say this? Or do I stay silent?

In this case, I decided to speak. Not to exhort. But to frame. Because I knew the teachers couldn’t provide this frame themselves, as it’s not a super-intuitive way to think.

So I said, “Growing up in the family that you did, you’ve had to spend a lot of time expecting not to be heard. You need to feel heard, but you’ve been taught that you won’t be. So I’m guessing you don’t know what it feels like to be heard. And I’m guessing that, given how you’ve described your department colleagues as benevolent, not malicious, people, you sometimes are heard by them but don’t really notice it.” 

Susannah’s eyes filled with tears. “Wow,” she said quietly. “I had never thought of it that way before.” 

[break]

I said at the beginning of this episode that this story was about me the teacher. And it is in this way: I feel best as a teacher when I step back and let the students know and think and ask and wonder. And figure out. And learn.

And that is precisely what happened in this TSG. Which felt so fantastic! So very different from the dread and self-recrimination I feel when I fail to discipline myself as a teacher or facilitator. 

I’m going to briefly summarize what-all I think happened in this remarkable TSG.

First, we made super good use of each teacher’s knowledge and experience. What a crazy coincidence that the issues the teachers brought to the table dovetailed so precisely! How fortuitous that exploring Susannah’s experience of being on the receiving end of a difficult conversation could inform David’s experience of being on the giving end of a difficult conversation! In my world, this is called “parallel process” – the opportunity to learn about others by examining ourselves. I hope you see how verrry relevant this concept is for classrooms, where teachers’ difficulties with learning something new, for example, might illuminate their students’ difficulties with learning something new. Hunh.

Second, we uncovered a super-important psychological defense called “turning the passive into the active.” Also called “identifying with the aggressor.” Also called – at least by me – “the flip side of the same coin.”

That is, if behavior is a coin – and obviously it is – then one side of the coin is doing and the other side is being done-to. When someone has been done-to all their lives, they are quite likely to flip over the coin and become someone who does. Was I bullied as a kid? I’m more likely to be a bully myself. Were people all around me arguing, interrupting, and using foul language while I was growing up? I’m more likely to be a person who argues, interrupts, and uses foul language. As a passive observer and recipient of repeated behaviors, I’m more likely to become the active perpetrator of those behaviors. It’s just how we human beings can roll.

Makes you think: Maybe wondering about “aggressors” rather than judging, shaming, or punishing them can help us – and them – understand their motives and help them work towards changing the behavior. And it can lead us straight to compassion and a calm willingness to engage rather than confront.

And by “engage” I mean, at the very least, asking for advice and asking what it’s like to be you. Being genuinely curious. Listening. Without judgment.

Third, we witnessed an amazing retreat from grandiosity, from messing in other people’s business, to respectful acceptance of personal limits. It was thrilling to see Bonnie re-boundary herself, pull away from Aparna’s and James’s relationship and engage with the relationship she had every right to influence: James’s relationship with her class. Why was he goofing off? Great question to ask. Done!

Everything that happened in this TSG thrilled me. But the most important thing for me (since this podcast episode is, after all, about me, and, hell! I’m not sure there will ever be an episode where it will happen again, because I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do it – or not do it wink wink – again) is today’s axiom: 

Wuwei. Do nothing.

Wuwei is such a cool concept, one of so many that come to us from Chinese traditions. I know I already shared a translation of the term from a website, but, as I think about the term from my undergraduate language-learning days, I remember it to mean something more like “without doing.” In Chinese, as I recall, wu means “without” and “wei” means “do.” OK, I might be splitting hairs here, but I like this alternative definition because I think it captures better what it means to “do nothing.” Really, it means “(getting something accomplished) without doing” – without pushing the river; without forcing the issue; without exhorting or lambasting or attacking or accusing or shaming; without controlling and dominating. But with being. You’re still present and sentient and seeing and thinking and caring and relating. You’re just stepped back. And stepping lightly. And participating only when you need to. Letting others do their good work. And doing a secret celebratory jig when they nail it.