Teaching and Mercy

 Last night I had a conversation with my neighbor. She has three kids; one in elementary school, one in middle school, and the last in high school. My neighbor, herself, works as a social worker in schools and in many conversations, while our dogs play with each other, she and I have come back to the topic of mental health in kids today.

Her kids vary in their skills as students. The youngest is not interested in school at all, preferring to go outside and play on his own. The middle schooler is an avid reader, but she struggles in the classroom just to keep up. The high schooler is a self-started and typically succeeds in the classroom. Right now, none of them are doing well in school; all of them are suffering from anxiety.

Adare, County Limerick, Ireland. I just like this picture because it reminds me of a Beautiful place!

Obviously, I worry about the two younger kids. They may have already given up on the classroom component of school even before COVID, but at least they had their friends to offer them comfort and Mercy and, well, Love. But now, all they seem to get from school is negative feedback, emails demanding work to be done, and, if they are really unlucky, parents who pile on the stress. But the really dangerous situation and the student that I am most concerned about is the oldest because she is the one who has been a successful student in the past. There are still a few kids out there who like to learn and actually derive pleasure from learning. Many of them unconsciously apply some sort of game-theory to the learning process, and they equate their self-worth to the grades they receive, just as other students (like the two younger siblings) often associate their personal value to the friendships and relationships they have. Here’s why the current state of learning is dangerous for these high-achieving kids: the minute they do not do as well in a class (which is more likely in this virtual format), their sense of self-worth can decrease. And when teachers do not offer any kind of Mercy or authentic Love and understanding to these kids, things get worse before they get better.

My neighbor Loves her kids, and she sees the stress and anxiety they are forced to bear, and, well, it doesn’t look good.

Is there a solution? I’m not sure if there is a solution within the context of the educational systems we use in the modern world. I have been remote teaching for about five years now, so I have a few ideas, but my thoughts need to be predicated with a few facts about what I teach and who takes these classes. And before I left the real classroom a year ago, I was applying some of the remote methods to real life students. What did I do? I stopped caring about total mastery of knowledge and skills and I completely stopped worrying about grades. Instead, I focused on affirming my students’ value based on the fact that they exist and they have their own natural set of skills and knowledge that can make the world (and especially the classroom) a better and more Loving place. You know what…it ticked off a lot of my coworkers because my students started getting higher grades in my class (though they were actually doing a lot more reading and writing for me than other teachers who taught the same sections). I stopped worrying about what specific knowledge they could memorized for my class, and, instead, I affirmed them for what they could learn and recall especially in terms of how that knowledge or skill applied to their lives.

Maybe we just need to practice Mercy and be a little more creative in how we relate to students. I’d rather teach students who have mastered their relationship with me and each other than to have students who only have an intellectual relationship with facts and figures.