Episode 1: Summer

An overwhelmed teacher acts out on a resistant student and makes an illuminating repair.

Transcript

Summer is a physics teacher in an independent school. She is one of those people who is naturally attuned to her students, picking up on individual moods, responding to the collective vibe, solving problems by activating her vast social network, being in touch with parents, making special arrangements to accommodate everyone’s every need. Always saying “yes” and always making it work. At the highest possible level of quality.

As a result – no surprise here! – she is popular and successful.

And she’s emotionally absorbent.

So when what she called “the honeymoon period” of the first few weeks of the new academic year seemed to be over, she found herself feeling a little overwhelmed. One of her students had just told her he was deeply depressed; another shared a rumor about a disturbing incident at a party over the weekend. She had just heard one of her colleagues yelling at his class.

Yep. The honeymoon period was over.

As if all this wasn’t enough, the students in her directed study filed in on this particular day just radiating angst. Absorbent as she was, Summer found herself filled with sadness and anxiety, a big bubble of emotion that she had no idea how to manage.

But manage it she did. In a totally unhelpful way.

It happened when Clarisse, a student in one of Summer’s classes, showed up for some extra help on a physics assignment that was already a week late. Clarisse sat down, opened her computer, and stared at the screen. Summer asked her to talk her way through the first problem. Silence. Summer prompted Clarisse with a concept that was supposed to get her started. Silence and a confused look. The bubble of emotion inside Summer began to expand, threatening to pop. Feeling a spike of anxiety that she might actually lose it just like her colleague down the hall, Summer clamped down. “OK,” she thought to herself. “Time to get aggressive.”

To Clarisse she said with undisguised impatience, “This problem is not that hard, Clarisse. I expect you to finish it before the end of directed study. If you don’t, I’m going to have to give you a zero for the entire assignment. Which won’t help your overall grade. Obviously.”

Mike drop. Summer returned to her work and her bubble of barely containable emotion.

As for Clarisse? She sat silently with the computer open in front of her. When the bell marking the end of the period finally rang, Clarisse closed her computer and left without a word. The physics problem remained unsolved.

[break]

Oh boy. Standoff. Summer threatened Clarisse with a consequence she (Summer) did not want to mete out – a zero for an assignment Summer really wanted Clarisse to complete and get credit for – and Clarisse called her bluff. Imagine how Summer, who is accustomed to understanding her students, to aligning with them, to being liked, respected, and successful, felt that night after work.

Terrible.

Like she had failed. Like she was at the end of her rope – and there were still countless weeks to go in the school year! Like she couldn’t go on. Like she was a terrible teacher. Like Clarisse was a terrible student. Like she, Summer, was so dragged down by others’ (and her own) emotions that she couldn’t bob up to the surface of the ocean of her life. What the heck had gone wrong? How did it happen? “What is wrong with me?” Summer asked herself.

Such good questions! Well, the first two: What had gone wrong? How did it happen? Those are great questions. The last question – “What is wrong with me?” – is NOT a good question. Why? Because it’s a leading question. It assumes an answer from the start: that something was, quote, “wrong” with Summer. This is not a good place to begin doing what I call emotion work, which is the work of figuring out what our interactions and negative emotions might mean. Emotion work entails looking at emotional and relational data without judgment, without blame, and with curiosity. Because you know there are good reasons for every behavior and every emotion. You just have to figure out what the reasons are.

So let’s dive in. 

What had gone wrong? How did it happen?

Remember that Summer is absorbent – that is, she is an “empath.” (Interesting: I looked up “empath” online to make sure it was a word, and I discovered that it tends to be used in science fiction. It describes people with the supernatural power of sensing other people’s emotions and mental states. HAHA!! A characteristic of fantastic alien life forms!! Not teachers!! Not regular human beings!! But of course, teachers and other regular human beings do have this superpower.)

Having this superpower can be super difficult. That’s because empathy ignores boundaries. It allows other people’s emotions in. It allows, to be blunt, a type of emotional merging that makes it hard to separate yourself from someone else AND adds other people’s emotional burdens to your own. Result? A fantastic ability to relate to other people. And, potentially, an all-too-human experience of overwhelmedness.

So here are the emotions Summer might have taken in on this particular day: Depression. Anxiety, horror, and helplessness about a disturbing incident at a party. Uncontrollable anger. Angst. From Clarisse, confusion and impotence. And, topping it all off, Summer’s own anxiety about keeping it all together.

Did I miss anything?

Now, as an empath, Summer had a way of managing her emotions: Whatever problems she took on from other people, she went right to work solving. A depressed student? She’d find him a therapist. Disclosure of misbehavior at a party? She’d activate her network of teachers and parents and get to the bottom of it. That kind of thing. Seems as though, through the honeymoon period, Summer was just humming along, taking in emotions, taking on problems, and offloading those emotions by solving the problems. Efficiently and effectively and quite satisfyingly.

But today, for some reason, she hit a wall. It was like, up until now, her system had been able to process the lactic acid building up in her empathy muscles. Heart and liver, humming away, taking care of the excess emotions Summer routinely took in. But today? Today the lactic acid buildup became toxic. She couldn’t go on. 

And the focus of her attention was the frustrating interaction with Clarisse.

Of course, the threat to give Clarisse a zero just made matters worse. Summer’s decision to get “aggressive,” to play hard ball with Clarisse, clearly didn’t work. Clarisse was having none of it. Classic power struggle, escalated by a threat that Summer did not want to carry out, meaning it was basically an empty threat, which, if you’re going to threaten someone, is the worst kind.

And it backfired. Clarisse’s response to Summer’s aggression was passive aggression. She sent the anger and frustration in Summer’s threat right back at Summer. By doing nothing. By letting Summer know through her own inaction and indifference who was actually boss just then. Hint: It was not Summer.

I’m guessing Summer was hoping that “getting aggressive” in directed study would cow Clarisse into just complying. Which would have made everything so much easier. For Summer, at least. Instead, Summer brought this interaction home with her. And it just exhausted her more, as she couldn’t sleep that night for fuming about it.

[break]

Fortunately for Summer, her Teacher Support Group met the very next day. She was sleep deprived and overwhelmed and worried. And still pretty darned raw about her interaction with Clarisse. We could tell by her frustrated check-in.

“It’s not enough that there are students who are depressed and endangering themselves!” she complained. “I have to deal with someone who just doesn’t feel like doing the work? Really?!? What is Clarisse doing in directed study if she doesn’t want to do the work? I do not have the ENERGY for this!”

Good question, Summer. That is, the question about what Clarisse was doing in directed study if she wasn’t willing to do physics. What I love about this – about students who go to school and just fold their arms and refuse to participate – is that they’re drawing attention to an important reality: they understand they need to be at school and they don’t want to be there. That is, they’re conflicted.

And conflicted students are very interesting people!

In the Teacher Support Group, we decided to start with Clarisse’s resistance, her conflict. The teachers in the support group wanted to know, What might Clarisse be conflicted about? That is, why did she voluntarily walk into directed study for help from Summer on a physics problem and then refuse to work on the problem?

A word about the connection between resistance and conflict. There’s a psychoanalyst and author whom I just love named Martha Stark who writes about resistance in therapy. She points out about therapy patients the same thing I just pointed out about students (and that is because I poached her idea): that when patients make the effort to go to the therapy office and then spend their time (and money) resisting the therapist, something interesting is going on. Stark claims it’s conflict.

Not necessarily conflict with the therapist – or, in our case, the teacher – although of course it could be. But it could also be internal conflict. Commitment to this and that, to two opposite goals or feelings or desires that have each other in such a chokehold that the patient – or the student – simply cannot make a move. Their resistance in the room – the therapist’s office or the classroom – is evidence of this internal impasse. And the emotions that arise in the therapist – or the teacher – are similar to the emotions that the patient or student herself has.

So, in order to make guesses about a student’s internal conflict, a teacher can always start with her own emotions. And then make the flip. What I mean by making the flip is that the teacher, once she has labeled the feelings she has about a classroom incident, can then wonder, “Might my student have these same feelings? If so, why might she?”

Of course, Summer’s Teacher Support Group asked her these questions. What was Summer feeling? Exhausted. Very anxious. Helpless. Frustrated. Could Clarisse have been feeling the same way? Yes. Of course. What might have been making her feel exhausted, very anxious, helpless, and frustrated?

Summer realized she didn’t know. The group asked questions about Clarisse: Is she a good physics student? What is she “normally” like in physics class? Is her resistance surprising? In the past, when Summer asked Clarisse to work out a physics problem, what did Clarisse do?

Summer told us that Clarisse seems to be an average physics student who tends to be quiet in class. She doesn’t normally volunteer, and Summer could not remember having called on Clarisse at all so far this school year. “It’s only been a few weeks,” Summer reminded us, “so I don’t actually know much about Clarisse.”

And then a light bulb went off. “I need more data!” Summer exclaimed.

There’s backstory here. That is, there’s a crucial concept that Summer and her Teacher Support Group colleagues know well and apply often: the concept of what I call emotional and relational data.

You might think I’m just piggybacking on the popular trend these days of “data-driven instruction” – and I am. I mean, why stop at numbers and graphs? Why not gather in other sorts of data that will help you figure out what your students need and whether or not your teaching aligns with those needs? These other sorts of data, as I see them, are emotions and behaviors – the evidence people everywhere all the time offer on how they manage their emotions and relationships, their lives, their learning.

These data – emotions and behaviors – can be extraordinarily accurate if you know how to frame and organize them. That’s what the emotion work that’s done in Teacher Support Groups is all about.

As you might remember, Summer’s support group already asked about emotional data. Summer shared how she felt about the incident with Clarisse – exhausted, anxious, helpless, and frustrated – and the group surmised that Clarisse might very well feel the same way. And Clarisse’s stark refusal to even start working the problem Summer had assigned to her, even though she herself came to Summer’s classroom for help, is nothing if not resistance. So Summer had emotional data and behavioral data, and she had the beginning of a guess about what might have been going on inside Clarisse – conflict. But she needed more.

How did Summer want to go about collecting more emotional and relational data? the group asked her. Summer said she wanted to meet with Clarisse, maybe during lunch, maybe during directed study – whenever it was convenient for Clarisse – to ask her a few questions. What would those questions be? the group asked.

“I want to know what it’s like for Clarisse in physics class,” Summer said. “I want to know if she likes physics or hates it or is just ‘enh.’ I want to ask her, ‘What happened when I asked you to work that problem during directed study?’

“I want to interview her!” Summer exclaimed. “But I don’t want to just interrogate her. I want to try to ‘get’ her. And then, if I can make a good guess about her resistance during directed study, about the internal conflict she might feel, I can genuinely apologize about my incredibly uninformed and unhelpful response to her.”

Nice!! I love it that Summer didn’t decide to just apologize and be done with it. I love it that she wanted to contextualize her apology, wrap it in evidence that she actually understood and cared about Clarisse. There’s an apology that will land in all the right ways.

Before we ended the group meeting, we talked about how best to characterize internal conflict. This is Martha Stark again: She recommends making “conflict statements.” Conflict statements follow a bit of a formula that’s super simple: You say to someone, “You want X but you don’t want X.” Or “You want X yet you don’t want Y” (a natural consequence of X). Or “You want X and you want Y” (which is the opposite of X).

Got that? (haha!!) It’s sounding a little like physics now, isn’t it?

So, for example: “You want to be alone but you don’t want to be alone.” (You want X but you don’t want X.)

Or “You want to get the job, yet you don’t want to do the job.” (You want X yet you don’t want Y, which is the natural consequence of X.)

Or “You want to be seen as independent and nonconformist and you want to go to the prom, which you see as the most conformist thing in the world.” (You want X and you want Y, which is the opposite of X.)

Basically you figure out what the two warring factions inside someone might be and put them next to each other in a sentence connected by “but,” “and,” or “yet.” You share that statement and see what the person says. They might agree with you and feel immediately enlightened! Or at least inclined to talk a little bit about what that internal conflict is like for them.

Or the person might disagree with you. Which is fantastic, because, by correcting you, they get closer to understanding their own conflict. And you get more accurate data about them.

Bottom line is you make a good guess based on the data you’ve managed to gather. The hope is that your good guess will yield more conversation, more data, and more understanding as well as a closer connection and more attuned teaching and learning. Eureka!

So Summer did. Talk with Clarisse, that is. The next week, when the Teacher Support Group reconvened, Summer updated us. “I sat down with Clarisse and the first thing I did was to say, ‘I’d love to interview you!’”

Summer told us that Clarisse was a little cautious at first. “Clarisse admitted that she used to like physics, that she was good at it, but she doesn’t like it anymore. She told me” (said Summer) “that she’s a really good writer, that she loves writing because it’s private and personal. Physics, she said, is too right-and-wrong, and liking it is too nerdy. She did admit that she’s conflicted about it.”

“What’s the nature of her conflict?” I asked Summer.

“The conflict statement I tried with her was something like ‘You’re good at physics but don’t want to be good at it.’ She revised it to something like ‘I’m good at physics but don’t want to be seen as a geek.’ I wondered out loud – blurted out, really – if she wanted to be seen at all. That’s when she started to cry.”

Gasps all around the table. 

Summer continued, “Turns out Clarisse is having a hard time at home. She’s been fighting a lot with her parents – and actually got kicked out of the house the night before our incident in directed study.”

Oh.

So it’s not just about physics. It’s about attachment. About parent figures. About being seen inaccurately and the desperate need to be seen accurately. About independence and dependence. About sadness and anxiety, about angst. And exhaustion. And helplessness. And frustration.

These problems did not go away for Clarisse just because she met with Summer. But the resistance, at least for a minute, did go away. Clarisse was able to open up to an empathic adult, to tell her truth, and to be seen accurately and caringly. I’m guessing that was really important for Clarisse.

And for Summer? Summer was psyched. She was all ready to take on Clarisse’s problems. She told us she contacted Clarisse’s school counselor and checked in with some of her teachers. She wanted to get in touch with Clarisse’s parents but hadn’t had time to figure out how to do that yet.

In short, Summer went into Superhero mode, which, as we know, is Summer’s preferred method for managing her empathy and the feelings it brings to her. 

Fortunately, the group swooped in. “If you want to avoid getting overwhelmed again,” one of the group members said, “you’d better get back into your own garden, Summer.” Meaning Summer needed to get out of Clarisse’s business and stick with her own: teaching physics in a way that Clarisse could make use of, advising Clarisse if and when Clarisse came to her for advice, letting Clarisse manage her own life. If only to let Clarisse develop the self-management skills she’ll need when high school and Summer (her teacher, not the season) are well behind her.

But also to make teaching sustainable for Summer. By setting boundaries and honoring them.

Here’s the deal: When Summer steps out of her garden, her business, and into Clarisse’s, she definitely makes herself feel better. She manages her anxiety by taking action. That’s good, right? For Summer and for Clarisse? Nah. Well, OK. It can feel good in the short-term. Summer can feel empowered and Clarisse might feel cared for.

But by taking on all the power, by being a Superhero, Summer tilts the relational balance. When she’s über-competent, someone else has to be incompetent. In this case, that would be Clarisse. And Clarisse cannot afford to be incompetent. She needs help and support, surely, and asking what help and support Clarisse might need is important for Summer to do. But Clarisse also needs to be competent so she can manage her life now and going forward. As a developmental partner, Summer is obligated to find that balance between her own competence and the development of Clarisse’s. 

That is not easy for a problem-solver, a fixer, a – might as well say it – a savior. The group knew that. So did Summer. We talked about Summer’s need to process the emotions she took in as an empath and encouraged her to step up the self-care AND to continue leaning on us to care for her. (Cuz sometimes self-care is not enough.) We also agreed that one of the best ways to manage empathy is to respect boundaries – to feel, yes, but to remember where you end and another begins, to notice when you’re “helping” others really just to help yourself, to stop and look at another and ask about her in order to support her processing of her own emotions.

Again. Not necessarily easy. But essential.

[break]

A lot went on in this story of Summer’s. Empathy went on, and boundary violations went on, and resistance went on, and repair went on. And, in trying to understand Summer’s story, I used a few different frames and metaphors:

·      One is resistance and the good possibility that resistant behavior is evidence of internal conflict

·      Another is making the flip (or labeling your own emotions and then wondering if and why your student – or anybody else – might have those same emotions)

·      Another is the garden (your personal space that is encircled by a garden wall, or your own personal boundaries)

·      Another is teachers as developmental partners, or people who are charged with balancing between their own competence and the cultivation of their students’ competence

·      And, finally: empathy as a superpower that requires especially strong boundaries and a healthy emotional processing system

Any of these frames would make a good axiom for this story. But I’m going to go with yet another one. The concept of emotional and relational data. A concept that is fundamental to emotion work because you can’t do the work without the data.

And it’s the frame Summer herself chose. Because there’s a tiny twist to this story: It is NOT what happened to Summer. It is what Summer kept from happening. When Summer told us this story, what she actually said was “So there was Clarisse sitting in front of me in directed study, staring at her computer screen. In the past I would have thought, ‘I’ll just get more aggressive.’ But this time I thought, ‘I need more data!’ So I interviewed her right then and there.”

An important little insertion here: Summer was a multi-year veteran of Teacher Support Groups. She would tell you, if you could ask her, that she would never have pivoted with Clarisse in this way if she hadn’t spent so much time thinking psychodynamically about her students. This was excellent work.

So that’s our axiom for today: Look for the emotional and relational data. Notice your own and others’ behaviors. Look inside yourself at your emotions. Label them. Lay all this out on a table – metaphorically speaking – so you can scrutinize it. And wonder about it. On your own, with someone else who has a psychodynamic mindset, or, if you’re lucky, with an astute and caring – and psychodynamically minded – group of colleagues. What do your emotions and behaviors suggest about you? What do they suggest about your student? What do they suggest you do next?

And, if you determine that you simply do not have enough data to understand a disturbing experience, get more. Ask. With curiosity and openness and faith that all people, even resistant students, want and need to be seen and heard. Accurately.