Tag Archives: Communication

On My Mind

Are you okay?

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I didn’t think much about the interaction after it took place, but I’ve never forgotten the email I received years later. It’s an important reminder of what it means to be part of social groups and what it means to look out for one another. I believe in the possibility for a peaceful world through the purposeful, intentional building of peaceful societies and communities. And I believe this requires us to step outside of ourselves and care for those who share our communities with us.

After reading and rereading an email that I was surprised to receive, I thought back to the interaction that had taken place one afternoon. I saw a student sitting in the hall in front of the lockers, a completely normal thing for a student to do, and something about facial expression or body language prompted me to follow up my greeting with, “Are you okay?” The student reassured me that all was fine, and we went our separate ways.

But, the student wrote in an email years later, all wasn’t fine and I had noticed. This student was now older, wiser, happier, and more confident in themselves and was writing to thank me for noticing them. I appreciated the email not just because of its contents, but because it indicated that the student remembered something I had forgotten, something that was more significant than I had recognized.

And this led me to think about other interactions, other moments in which we catch something in others that is, perhaps, not quite right. And then we make a choice. We can make the choice to dismiss what we see, to assume that people will come to us if they need to. Or, we make the choice to engage. This can be as simple as asking that question, “Are you okay?” or opening a conversation that we find challenging. It can be hard to share our impressions of others with them, to ask people really big questions about their lives or their choices. Sometimes we don’t realize (or won’t admit) something is wrong until somebody stops us to ask.

Even if we don’t want to have the conversation, or if the automatic, “Yes, why?” remains the response, I think there’s something really important in having been asked how you are. Like my student, I’ve never forgotten the Italian night class professor who took one look at me and asked if I was okay. I remember blaming whatever “it” was on having had a long day at work, and I don’t remember what was actually wrong. I just remember that she noticed something and she asked. On another occasion, I remember the relief I felt at someone else noticing a situation that I had tried to brush aside. “Are you okay?” meant that I didn’t have to be, meant that someone else saw what I saw.

One might argue that a simple “Are you okay?” is only good enough if the response is then acknowledged. What do we do, for example, when we were secretly hoping the person would simply reply, “Yes, why?” or when we realize that the ten minutes we’re available to talk might not be enough? I don’t want to say that there’s an art to asking this question because I don’t think there is. I think people understand when a question is genuinely meant. There is then a respect in interaction that opens an invitation when an immediate response is not possible. “Are you okay?” could indeed arrest a moment of crisis, but I don’t know how commonly that is the case.

I don’t think it has to be complicated to be a good person or to live as part of a social society. Rather, I think it is the aspect of acknowledging one another’s humanity in a natural, real way that creates such societies. There’s no harm in pausing for the moment it takes to ask someone how they are, and the ask itself might make all the difference.

Bikovo Nature Park, Croatia – October 2022
On My Mind

Old Friends

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Upon receiving the invitation, my first instinct was to say I couldn’t go. It was too far, I don’t have a job that allows me to choose my holidays, and it would cost a small fortune considering how long I’d be away. So I couldn’t go.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about it, either, which meant I wanted to go. It meant the too far/no holidays/too expensive reasons were not reason enough.

So I spoke to my principal, steeled myself for days of jet lag, cashed in all of my credit cards points, and went to celebrate the wedding of my best high school girlfriend. We met on the first day of school in grade nine in our first period class when she turned to me and observed, “You’re new” and introduced herself. And that was pretty much that.

When I mentioned the trip to my grade twelve students, one asked who my closest friends are and how we keep in touch. I understand this. International school students scatter after completing high school and there is understandable uncertainty over who they will and will not see again, normal for all young people at this age. I admitted that my old friends and I aren’t really in touch, an arrangement that we all understand and that works for us. The beginning of Covid saw us on multiple video calls, which had never happened before and has not happened since. But when we’re together, it’s like nothing has changed. We slot into each others’ lives like no time has passed even though years of space can lie between each meeting. We are comfortable around each other in ways that simply come from years of shared experiences, shared stories, a shared history that fits us all into a place where we understand the intricacies of our relationships to each other.

But, my student pressed on, are my relationships with old friends superficial because we aren’t in regular contact? This was perceptive and gave me pause, but the honest answer is no. No, these relationships are not superficial. They are instead deeply genuine because we remain friends because we want to, not because we have been thrown into a space together; rather, we actively choose to create that space. These friendships are intimate because we don’t need to explain ourselves since we understand one another due to so many years of knowing each other and watching as we all change and evolve. I don’t need to explain my darkest moments and how they have led me to today because these people were there back then.

Similarly, I can ask difficult questions because we’ve done it all before. I can be confronting because these are the people who are still with me, who have chosen to remain part of my life despite all the reasons people lose track of one another. And I can answer difficult questions honestly because old friends are not looking for casual, convenient relationships. It’s okay if times are tough or if the road is rocky. They are asking because they care about me, because they have cared for years about me. These are true friendships not because they are old friendships, but they are old friendships because they stem from deep roots.

I do not have very many old friends, rather many old acquaintances. I reintroduced myself to a few people I had known casually in the past and it was a pleasure to see where they are now, so many years later. But to spend a weekend with old friends, celebrating a beautiful moment in the life of someone we all love, was a truly special experience. The last time we were all together was at another wedding, in another place, in another life. And it was a joy to come together with these people and recognize that, despite the years and the time and the space, we still know each other. We still care about each other. And for that, I still call these people my friends. It is an honour to do so.

The road to the house of a friend is never long. – Danish proverb

Warnemünde, Germany – June 2022
Education

What Students Want

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Recently I wrote a piece about asking students for feedback, which I have since discussed with several friends who are also educators. Subsequently, I had a conversation with a teacher assistant who is working towards teacher certification. She had a few questions that made me smile because they were questions that I first had in her shoes many years ago, questions that I grapple with often. In light of this, I thought it would be helpful to outline a few themes that came through in the DP Psychology course evaluations from my grade 12 students. As their words suggest, students appreciate the following:

Opportunities to learn from each other

I believe that the world needs good people, and I believe that good people work together. They support one another, they work towards shared goals, and they do what is right for the benefit of the group. Schools are phenomenal places of socialization and I’ve learned that these are the lessons that carry outside of the classroom and into the real world. Therefore, one strategy I often use in class is “jigsaw” learning. Divide a task into pieces, share the pieces among the group, conclude the task in a way that requires all pieces to come together. For example, if an essay question contains three parts and then requires an overall evaluation, all three parts must be complete before the group can work together on the evaluation.

But what if he doesn’t do his part, or she completes hers to a much higher degree than they do?

Certainly, this happens. But this is where the framing comes in. When this is framed as an opportunity for students to learn from each other rather than just to complete a task, interaction is more positive. When jigsaw activities provide a means of sharing a range of examples and information in circumstances where there is choice in what students ultimately decide to study, sharing knowledge means that a student might find what a peer has to say more interesting than what they themselves had prepared. In this case, the student has some background knowledge when it comes to making the choice to study a different example than the one they were originally assigned. A student’s overall success does not depend on peers, but working as a group gives everyone a clearer point from which to start.

Real deadlines

I am a stickler for deadlines and have always been. Normal classroom interactions, regardless of grade level, are as follows:

  • “I didn’t finish this.” –> “Submit what you have now.”
  • “Can I have more time?” –> “Submit what you have now and if you’d like to make changes, you have until X time. At that point, I’ll mark whatever is submitted.”
  • “I’m not ready for this test.” –> “Give it a try and if it’s a disaster, we’ll talk about it.”
  • “Do we have to turn this in today?” –> “Yes.”

(Full disclosure: There are exceptions, but they are rare.)

When students ask, as they always do, why deadlines matter, the answer is straightforward:

Deadlines matter because everything operates within the context of a bigger picture. If the problem is procrastination (this is very often the case, and the issue of distraction due to technology grows more alarming with every passing year) postponing a deadline will not solve the problem. Instead, it will exacerbate the problem by creating a domino effect with other deadlines.

Deadlines matter because they allow teachers to catch significant errors when there is still a chance to fix them.

Deadlines matter because unlike the students I work with, who are going through the IB Diploma Programme for the first time, I actually do know how the two-year program works, where the areas of difficulty are likely to be, what to watch out for, and the fluctuations in work ethic that occur throughout. It is not my first time guiding students through this program and that expertise counts.

The easiest example of maintaining real deadlines is with the submission of my students’ replication of a psychology experiment, an internal coursework component that makes up 20-25% of their final official psychology grade. Many students complain about the deadline and protest that we are months ahead of the IB required submission date. Yes we are, I tell them, and you will have plenty to do between now and then. Invariably, every single year, we laugh at this before students go off on study leave. They are always glad that this task was one more thing off the to-do list that never ends.

Organization

A number of years ago, when I moved into a school system that was fully integrated with technology, I started keeping daily plans for my students on blogs and websites with links to all of the resources we would need for that day. This evolved to include search functions, folders of resources, calendars, key words tags, and useful external links. Parents love it because class becomes transparent, and students love it because they know exactly what to do when they’re out and they know where to find everything we’ve ever done in class. When revising for an exam that covers two years of coursework, knowing where to find materials is especially useful. If I am organized, it takes that cognitive load away from my students and allows them to focus on the aspects of learning that require their individualized attention.

My students also wrote about how helpful it was to learn how exam questions are constructed, to begin every unit with a revision document that we filled out in sections throughout the unit, and to follow the same patterns and procedures over and over again. By the end of the course, our psychology key ideas organisers should contain absolutely everything students need to study. And I have heard from students over and over that while there is a lot in these documents, they work.

Thoughtful use of time

I think that one of the reasons students complain about school is similar to one of the reasons adults complain about meetings – they feel that their time is being wasted. I am all for teachers developing a rapport with students. This is critical to creating environments conducive to learning and and to getting to know one another as people, which is essential for working together. However, there is a time and a place. There is a time to laugh and joke, a time to tell a quick story, and a time to spend a few extra minutes on one topic over another.

On the other hand, classroom time is limited and there is a lot that is important to do during that time. It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture and get caught up in tangentially related ideas, or to spend too much time sharing an interesting story and not enough time following the plan for the day.

We all know that it can be fun to get distracted in class, for teachers as well as students, and I have learned that students appreciate when teachers have an eye on this. There is always a lot to do and it is the responsibility of the teacher to make sure that it gets done and to make sure that limited time is used well.

A general sense of security

Overall, I think this comes down to the message that students appreciate actions demonstrating that teachers know what they’re doing and are working to help students achieve their goals. They want to know that teachers make decisions based on what works for students, that teachers are consistent, and that their time in school is valuable. They want to be treated with dignity and respect – and don’t we all?

Shortly after I wrote the first outline for this blog post at the beginning of April, this article came out. It says in better words, backed up with research rather than anecdotes, what I am trying to say here. “Calm, clear, and kind” are the themes that come through. And again, isn’t that what we all want in our interactions?

“Education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to make them think.” – Hanna Holborn Gray