Episode 11: Jenny

A student hurts a teacher’s feelings, giving the teacher AFGO.

Transcript

Jenny is an English teacher who is known to be quite effective with “CP,” or College Prep, or less academically rigorous, students. She is friendly, accepting, and genuinely caring, and students tend to work hard with her and, at times, confide in her. She loves trying new approaches to her teaching and feels confident in her ability to pull them off, in large part because she trusts that her students will go along with her.

Well. Not today.

One of Jenny’s CP English classes had 20 students in it, most of them with strong, “different” – as Jenny put it – personalities. The class was working on a play, one of Jenny’s favorite and, frankly, most successful genres to teach because she loved getting students up, moving, and laughing. And the students in this CP class seemed especially suited to being dramatic.

On this particular day, Jenny was encouraging students to read their lines with verve, to convey through their voices emotion and personality. As she normally did, she demonstrated by reading a few lines of dialogue herself. As she normally did, she hammed it up.

She was having a great time.

All of a sudden a student – let’s call him Ben – asked her, “Ms. J, do you drink a lot?” Jenny was taken aback, as were the other students in the class (evidently), as they chastised Ben for asking such a rude question. He persisted, though, implying that Jenny could only be that “crazy” if she drank a lot.

Jenny felt “crushed.” She felt “violated.” And she was stunned that Ben, as she said, “didn’t know when to stop.” She and the students finally succeeded in tamping him down – mostly by simply telling him to stop – but when it was time for Jenny to return to her reading, she “couldn’t get back in the spirit.” The class became lackluster; the students couldn’t get back in the spirit, either.

Jenny lost sleep that night over this hurt.

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It’s important to note that Jenny, even before this encounter with Ben, was struggling with a lot of worry and pain in her private life. Her mother was at an assisted living facility, which made Jenny really sad. She visited her mother daily, but keeping company with so many unhappy people brought Jenny down. And her mother-in-law had recently taken a fall and hurt herself. Jenny was worried about her, too.

So Jenny went to sleep that night with a lot on her mind. I’m guessing her insomnia – if it’s anything like mine – started as a jarring thought that started looping everything she could think of into a tight ball of helplessness whose lifeblood depended on the complete loss of perspective that nighttime somehow brings on. Have you experienced this? Weird fear and panicked certainty at night that in the morning feel completely innocuous? Jenny isn’t the first teacher to experience insomnia; I imagine many teachers do, given the stories they hear and experiences they have with students – and others – every day.

But what was it about Ben’s accusation that hurt Jenny so? She said it was the “hurt” that kept her up that night. What had hurt her? Was it the feeling that a student had turned on her? Had seen her so inaccurately? It’s interesting to note how quickly Jenny’s students – everybody but Ben, that is – jumped to defend and protect her! What were her students picking up on in their teacher? Is it possible that Jenny, whose mother was no longer able to offer her much love and recognition, took Ben’s comment so personally because she relied on her students to know and accept her?

These guesses, which of course could be wildly inaccurate, are aimed at what I call the emotional bedrock of Jenny’s experience with Ben, the feelings, the emotions she had that somehow contributed to her insomnia. Emotional bedrock is often overlooked because – well, why? Because we tend to overlook and dismiss our emotions, I guess. Because we prefer that they stay invisible to us because we consider them useless or extraneous or because we don’t know what to do with them or because they can be so bloody bothersome. So we either deny our emotions or push them away. Which is, in my view, a very bad idea.

It’s also possible that the content of Ben’s accusation, his belief that Jenny was drunk or had been drinking, also struck a chord in Jenny. What was her relationship with drinking? Was her sense of having been “violated” by Ben’s comments evidence that, rather than feeling seen inaccurately, she felt accurately seen? Did his fear of drinking mirror a similar fear in herself?

I don’t know. But Jenny does. These are questions she could have asked herself as she unpacked her upsetting experience in class with Ben. Gosh, I want to underline that I don’t know the answers and, in fact, don’t need to know. The reason I bring these questions up is not to sound nosy or all-knowing or hyper-dramatic but to point out something very important: When an experience hits us hard, hurts us, and keeps us up at night, something is going on in there. The hurt and insomnia point to something one can afford to learn about oneself. Not just to protect against future such hurts but also to deepen self-understanding and to build up psychic strength. These are really good things – self-understanding and psychic strength – that surprising and disturbing experiences can help us develop in ourselves.

This makes me think of an acronym that a good friend of mine coined many years ago. The acronym is AFGO. If you don’t want to hear swear words, cover your ears right now. Cuz here’s the phrase behind the acronym: Another Fucking Growth Opportunity.

AFGO. That’s what Ben handed Jenny. Wondering what her own response to his comment meant about her, about her needs – her legitimate needs, I want to add, because it’s a rare need that isn’t legitimate – was good work Jenny could have done on her own or with a therapist or some other devoted carer with a psychodynamic bent. Whatever understanding about herself Jenny came to would have pointed her towards really targeted self-care, and moves or changes she could make to be cared for. Which would be super-helpful short-term, of course. But, as she continued to apply her self-understanding going forward, it would be super-helpful long-term as well.

Thank god for AFGOs.

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So the work I just described that Jenny could have done is not the work of a Teacher Support Group. TSGs are not group therapy; we don’t want to know about your mother (except for how she’s doing in the nursing home) or how you’re re-enacting the Oedipal Complex or whatever. TSGs are about helping teachers analyze the data they bring to the group and then make plans for what they’re going to do in the morning, when they walk back into the classroom.

But the work of TSGs is unabashedly, unapologetically, exclusively psychodynamic. It’s about understanding emotions and relationships. It’s about wondering about content – what Ben said – as well as the emotional bedrock – what Jenny’s hurt was all about. So what did Jenny’s TSG do to help crack open this case?

One teacher, we’ll call her Margot, shared a similar experience to Jenny’s. The way she handled the accusation of being a drinker (amazingly, this appears to be a common allegation by students!) was to turn the question back on the student by saying, “Usually, when people accuse others of drinking too much, it’s because they’re especially interested in that behavior themselves.” Margot’s suggestion was that Jenny talk to Ben about alcohol and drinking. But Jenny rebuffed the idea because she didn’t feel she could revisit his accusation at this late date.

Another teacher, Celia, took on the role of “amateur psychologist” (as she put it) – a role that is welcome in these groups because that’s what psychodynamic analysis requires – not “psychotherapist,” note, or “psychoanalyst,” but “amateur psychologist” – Celia took on the role of “amateur psychologist” and wondered if Ben was “out of his comfort zone” because he had encountered drinking-inspired “craziness” before. Maybe, Celia suggested, he associates craziness, even if it’s innocent hamming-it-up, with drinking. The teachers in the group, especially Jenny, thought this sounded right.

Margot brought up Jenny’s mother and mother-in-law. “You’re feeling a lot of stress,” Margot said. “And you’re being exposed to a lot of sadness and loss.” Feeling vulnerable in their private lives makes it a whole lot more likely that teachers will take students’ thoughtlessness personally, the group agreed. So did Jenny.

I was thinking about anxiety. When it comes to enactments, or people’s acting out, it can be really helpful to ask, “Where’s the anxiety?” Because one way of understanding acting out is as discharge, a way of getting rid of overflowing bad feelings. And anxiety is a useful synonym for “overflowing bad feelings.”

So I piggybacked on Celia’s interpretation – that Ben somehow associated “craziness” with drinking – by suggesting that Jenny was bucking the norm by being so “crazy” in class. In stark contrast to the sadness Margot mentioned, Jenny was having fun for a minute! But his teacher’s going out on a behavioral limb might have made Ben anxious (for whatever reason, possibly those suggested by Margot and Celia). One way people deal with anxiety, those “overflowing bad feelings,” is to clamp down, to exert control. To defend against their anxiety by, in Ben’s case, ridiculing the source of the anxiety. That is, it appears that Ben deployed a defense against his anxiety, a defense called omnipotent control.

Omnipotent control is a very common defense. Teachers use it all the time, right? When things start getting out of hand, when we start worrying that chaos is about to erupt, we tighten the reins. We contain. That’s what I suggested to the group that Ben needed. To contain Jenny. For whatever reason. We don’t need to know. We just need to make a good guess based on the data.

So: containment. For me, this is a crucial concept. Another way of saying “holding,” which, for those of you who know me, is one of my favorite concepts. But let’s stick with “containment” for this story, as I think it might work best. Here’s why:

One of the first things to think about when trauma has occurred is containment. That is, staking out a space within which the person who has been traumatized – the person whose physical and/or emotional membranes have been invaded, violated, punctured – can feel completely safe. A father’s arms. A cozy kitchen. A therapist’s office. A family. Maybe a classroom.

If, as Margot and Celia both wondered, Ben had a pre-existing bad relationship with alcohol, one or more traumatizing experiences, let’s say, it would make sense that he would, first, interpret Jenny’s behavior as dangerous – because it was re-traumatizing – and, second, try to contain it. To return the classroom to safety. To stop the crazy behavior. Because he thinks – or probably more accurately feels – he knows where crazy behavior like that ends up. And, by the way, this might be a role he has played before.

Now that I think of it, in a way Ben’s attempt to control Jenny could be seen as a compliment to her: that is, he might have been returning her classroom to the safe zone he expected it to be, trusting that Jenny would accommodate his needs, needing Jenny to be someone who was not traumatizing, not crazy. I’m not saying he was conscious of this, but it’s kind of a lovely possibility.

The problem, of course, is that Ben’s attempt to manage his anxiety – and possibly his re-traumatization – came at Jenny’s expense. As Jenny told us, having her happy bubble popped so insistently felt “crushing.” She felt “violated.” Interesting that this word Jenny used to describe her feeling – “violated” – is the same word that often describes trauma.

Of course, the bad news for Jenny and for every teacher is that being used by students for their own good at the teacher’s expense is part of the job description. Right? If teachers are developmental partners, adults who foster students’ growth and development – and, in my book, teachers are developmental partners; that is part of the job description, even if it’s never written down – then teachers are going to be used by their students. They are going to be turned into objects that the students can use for that very growth and development. Like emotional furniture that students pull themselves up on as they learn to cruise academically and relationally.

I call this bad news for Jenny not because being a developmental partner is bad. It’s not! It’s awesome! It’s where the hope for education lies, I believe! What’s bad about being a developmental partner is when a student chooses to discharge his anxiety on you. As Ben did on Jenny. That can actually suck. Especially when it keeps you up at night.

The good news for Jenny is that she had a very supportive Teacher Support Group to turn to. What did the group do? First, we acknowledged Jenny’s particularly difficult personal reality. Her sadness about her mother and mother-in-law. Her shock and horror at Ben’s relentless poking. And we made some guesses about Ben’s possibly difficult personal reality – scary and destabilizing – traumatizing – experiences with alcohol, perhaps. Next, we tackled the solution: not taking Ben personally.

Meaning that Jenny had a choice. She could grab onto Ben’s self-protective action – his ridicule of her – as well as the underlying anxiety and possibly trauma – and continue to feel hurt. She could make his move in the classroom all about her.

Or she could push Ben’s feelings out of her and wonder instead what they meant about him.

In truth, she didn’t actually have a choice. As we have seen, the Teacher Support Group members, including Jenny, automatically began wondering about Ben. After they had empathized whole-heartedly with Jenny. Because that is just how they roll.

Jenny found the possibility that Ben needed the class to be “contained” very helpful. It felt right to her. Not because she knew all the facts about Ben, but because she felt him. And trusted that feeling. These things are super-important, this self-trust and this “felt sense,” as it’s called.

A moment for a public service announcement. This “felt sense” really is a thing. It’s been studied and written about by a guy named Eugene Gendlin. His claim is that felt sense is a way of knowing. Reliable. Accurate. Crucial. It’s the knowledge we access when we define a word we know really well. Or the knowledge we use to make a decision that flies in the face of the facts on hand but turns out to be absolutely correct because it relies on what we know in our guts.

Weirdly, felt sense can be more accurate than brain knowledge precisely because felt sense is centered in our bodies, in our guts. Brain knowledge is nice, don’t get me wrong! But body-centered knowledge – intuition, felt sense – is very very very important.

For our purposes, Jenny’s felt sense about Ben – her suspicion that he was feeling anxiety in the face of her “craziness” and did need to contain the situation so it didn’t fulfill his expectations and spin out of control – was merely a guess. I repeat: She didn’t know the facts about Ben. And she may not have consciously known all the facts about herself. But she did feel confident in her guess. And guessing is very often the best we can do in relationships. If we’re right, eureka! Problem solved. And improved. If we’re wrong, we get more data and can make an even better guess. Win-win.

Jenny’s plan going forward, then, was to be very deliberate about her “craziness” in class. Not to abandon it. Because another definition of “craziness” could be, simply, “fun”! But for Ben, she said, she was going to “warn him before we do anything crazy in class.” So he could prepare for it and maybe deliberately move what would otherwise seem “crazy” to him into the “fun” category. A safe category.

Good experiment.

How does this story end? Jenny reported back to us the following week that she had shared her “craziness” policy with Ben. She hadn’t talked to Ben about alcohol or how he felt about drinking. She didn’t take this direct route. Instead she told him she wouldn’t be “crazy” in class without telling him beforehand.

And, she told us, he had “really opened up” to her. He revealed some things about his family that confirmed our guesses.

On the one hand, this makes me so sad, right? Cuz you don’t want these guesses to be true. You don’t want kids to be dealing with alcohol-induced craziness. My god.

On the other hand, Jenny’s report thrilled me. Because we helped Jenny make a difference in a student’s life. By making a good guess. Based on data, including body-based data, or felt sense. Based on looking inside herself at her emotions and also outside herself, at a student, and wondering about that student rather than taking him personally. Ben sensed the difference. And he opened up to this dependable developmental partner.

Geez. That’s just one day in the life of a Teacher Support Group.

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I have a confession to make. One of my least favorite sentences is “you hurt my feelings.” I mean, if I have done something malicious, something that is meant to hurt your feelings, then OK. Say it. That way I’ll know I have succeeded in my dastardly goal.

But what does that sentence even mean? Other than this loose translation: “I have just now deemed you responsible for my current feeling, which I am under no obligation to be any more specific or curious about.”

But if I – your relational partner – haven’t intended to hurt your feelings, what next? I can certainly say, “I’m sorry,” but that wouldn’t necessarily be true, would it? Not if I don’t actually know why your feelings are hurt and what role I inadvertently played in activating them. Saying “I’m sorry” actually closes down the possibilities. It means there will be no more discussion. And you might just decide not to accept my forced apology. Which turns the whole thing into a weird power play that no one, not you, not me, ultimately gains anything from.

But what if I, your relational partner, said to you, “Really? Why?” and worked with you to figure out what’s underneath the hurt? What meanings you attributed to my actions? What unhelpful and possibly inaccurate interpretations you made? Or what accurate interpretations you made of my actions, which I could then own and genuinely, powerfully, truly apologize for? And learn from?

This is what it means for me to not take things personally: to turn the sentence “you hurt my feelings” into curiosity, into the very good possibility that my hurt can be defined more succinctly, which can then teach me good stuff about myself and about the person who gave me the great gift of feeling hurt! The great gift of AFGO!! Haha!!!

So a great axiom for this story is Don’t take students personally. Taking students personally is just too distracting. It hurts. It drains your energy and keeps you up at night when you of all people need your sleep.

(If you’re thinking, “Hunh. I feel like I’ve heard this axiom before,” you are correct! You get a gold star!!! Cuz you have heard it before. In episode 6, the story about Robin and the students who blew – and therefore pissed – her off.) 

In this same vein, another good axiom for this story is this one, which you heard in episode 5, the story about Sally and her “squirrely” class: Classrooms are containers.

But this story introduces an interesting dimension to this axiom, because this story introduces the element of trauma. That is, Ben’s trauma, which he revealed to Jenny after she had shared her policy on craziness with him. He totally needed Jenny’s classroom to be a safe, reliable, reassuring, non-retraumatizing container for him. 

Thing is, Jenny had no way of knowing that! Right? She didn’t know about Ben’s trauma when she was acting all crazy in class. The way she found out about the trauma was through Ben’s acting out. His behavior that hurt her. The hurt she then examined with her wise and wonderful Teacher Support Group. Which then led her to craft a policy about craziness that she then shared with Ben. At which time he talked about his trauma.

See how that works? It’s not a step-by-step approach to trauma-sensitive teaching; it’s an embodied approach to trauma-sensitive teaching, one that relies on felt sense and emotional and relational data. One that leads to collaboration with the students who need your understanding and strong, safe, containing limits in their classroom. 

OK so that’s another axiom I could use for today’s episode. But I’m not. Here’s the one I’m going to use: Do take your feelings seriously.

Don’t take your students personally. But do take your feelings seriously. Honor your felt sense. Honor your instincts. Shout “Hooray!” at every AFGO!! Welcome your feelings as data. Notice them, wonder about them, interpret them. Working through emotional and relational data towards clarity and understanding is both immensely relieving and fortifying. This work makes you stronger. Better. Contrary to what so many people seem to believe about feelings and emotions which are, apparently, to them, better left unseen and unexamined. Wrong! Rather, consider this emotion work, the work of taking your feelings seriously, data-driven instruction. Emotional and relational data-driven instruction. Just as important and possibly more edifying than the other kind.