Dear teacher, vulnerability is not weakness

I spent my winter break reading some good CPD books, and one of them was Brené Brown and her Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone. If you haven’t watched her TED talk – which is in the top five of most watched TED videos – you should stop reading and listen to the person who shows you how important shame, empathy, courage and bravery are.

I remember when I got my first job in a public school and I went there on the first day of school, just like a first grader. I was nervous and stressed, and curious, and excited. I didn’t know anyone there, so I felt quite lonely, but I was sure I would meet new friends, colleagues and people who would hopefully help me start my work according to school rules, someone who would take care of me – an inexperienced girl who had just got her BA.

Guess what – I didn’t meet anyone like this. For the next months I struggled with a class of six graders with the only help from my fellow teachers being condescending “you’re a teacher, you should know how to deal with this”. Fortunately I met a classmate from my university and although we had never talked before, we became friends, simply because we were equally lonely, inexperienced and scared.

None of us had a mentor, or simply a more experienced teacher, who would tell us not only how to actually teach, but who would show us how to basically deal with kids, their parents – and, unfortunately, other teachers. I am lucky because my parents are teachers, so I, more or less, knew how to deal with my work. However, it ended up with me quitting two years later, never to truly return to a public school.

Mind, the pupils were great, after a while I got the hang of the ancient magic of dealing with kids and I had a lot of fun with my students – in fact, I still keep in touch with some of them. I also enjoyed “my” parents, as they usually were quite helpful and understanding. What I couldn’t, and didn’t, accept was the lack of understanding from other teachers.

I don’t want to go into details, but I know I am not the only one, that most of us share my experience of being thrown in at the deep end. I am a good teacher – that’s a fact – but I think I might have become a good teacher earlier, had I been taken care of, shown the ropes and guided properly. However, there were the things I had to learn by myself, which took a while and even now it makes me cringe slightly whenever I think of my teaching approach those fifteen years ago.

Fast forward to me working in Ireland. It was the first time I met a person called a Director of Studies who actually talked me through the school rules, observed my classes and (gasp!) gave me feedback, then observed me again and kept track of my progress. And when I had a problem, I could go and see her and she would listen to me and actually talk about it and help me find a solution without (gasp again!) judging me! That was amazing!

Ever since I came back, I worked in private language schools with various DoSes, and I used to ask for help… until I became a DoS myself (which is a funny story to be told another time). And I recruited my “own” teachers, and sometimes I saw my own reflection – people who had this huge question in their eyes “Sweet Cthulhu and his blasphemous tentacles, what am I doing here?”.

And I remember discussing lesson plans. Talking about the class discipline. Recommending books. Going for coffee, or for a pint, just to talk some things through. And now I’m DoSsing on a larger scale and I still see how many of us, teachers, have questions and issues and way too many reservations to express them, share them and ask for help.

And what I think, what I deeply believe in, is that we all should listen to Brené Brown and accept the simple fact that we aren’t perfect. We all struggle. We all have issues. There is no reason we should be afraid to share our insecurities. If you are an experienced teacher you probably remember when you asked someone to help only to be patronised – and this exactly is the reason we should be more open to our younger colleagues. Once we stop the vicious circle of judgement, we have an opportunity to create a system where vulnerability is not a weakness, and asking for help is an act of courage to be supported and enjoyed.

Imagine an educational system where it’s OK for teachers to openly admit their issues and share them with colleagues in atmosphere of mutual understanding. Imagine teachers carrying this attitude to the classroom and teaching it by showing – making the students believe that it’s OK to feel insecure, that everyone has issues once in a while and that there are people who are willing to help instead of judging.

We can’t change the whole system, but we can do our part, bit by bit, open up ourselves, allow ourselves for vulnerabilities, and then approach others with empathy rather than criticism. And at the end of this rather lengthy post I want to quote Brené Brown:

And we perfect, most dangerously, our children. Let me tell you what we think about children. They’re hardwired for struggle when they get here. And when you hold those perfect little babies in your hand, our job is not to say, “Look at her, she’s perfect. My job is just to keep her perfect — make sure she makes the tennis team by fifth grade and Yale by seventh.” That’s not our job. Our job is to look and say, “You know what? You’re imperfect, and you’re wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.” That’s our job. Show me a generation of kids raised like that, and we’ll end the problems, I think, that we see today.

Brené Brown, The power of vulnerability
TEDxHouston