Onward -Elena Aguilar
“Between stimulus and
response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Wait for it...think about it
before responding ...never, in my vet teacher opinion, has there been a truer
statement. And this is where Ms. Aguiliar believes we build resilience in this
space. Do you agree? She goes on to state as educators, this moment between
stimulus and response is our most important opportunity. How do we react to the
multitude of exchanges, incidents, and interactions we have every day with
students, colleagues, and administrators?
Shared definitions
encourage clarity, according to our author, resilience is how we weather the
storms in our lives and rebound after something difficult. My definition is
similar but different- resilience is the strength to endure the suffering of
life while simultaneously savoring those moments of joys and connection. How we
respond. How we interpret. How we perceive an interaction-this is our source of
power, our source of resilience.
How do we build
resilience? One way is to understand ourselves better. It has taken me a
lifetime to know myself, just a bit. I had an open-minded, justice- fighting,
emotionally voracious, radically loving, and aware mother, but we are still
products of our setting, of our time and place. I grew up in a trying to be
integrated Chicago of the late ’60s and ’70s. A place where white women
were still expected to be nice and non-confrontational at all costs.
Knowing oneself was not the be-all or end-all of that era. But what was clear
to me after a childhood of privilege and with a mother of action was that if I
didn’t find my purpose, I would flounder. Being aware of these cultural
constructs helps me feel proud- patriotic about my sociopolitical identity and
values, but also helps steer me away from being a nationalist where I place my
beliefs and values above others.
Another obstacle to
knowing ourselves can be the dominant culture; it can be difficult to
distinguish between the ways the DC is influencing you and the influences from
parents, friends, teachers, etc. which you wish to absorb. Because of the
inequities, I saw all around me between women and men, between rich and poor,
between black and white, between home-owners and the homeless- I determined
that I needed to serve- as ridiculous as that sounds this is me being
vulnerable. This is why I am a teacher-oh, yeah and I like teenagers.
Knowing oneself is a
lifetime journey, and I do agree with the author that getting to know oneself
is the key to determining your purpose, your why. “ Purposefulness is a key
trait of the resilient.” Another way of building resiliency is understanding
emotions- knowing how to name and harness the energy of your own emotions and
other’s emotions. There are so many layers to analyze when talking about
emotions and building resiliency through emotional knowledge. Understanding the
cycle of emotions is helpful. Also, certain basic emotions could be examined in
detail, so as to gain a greater understanding. The author uses anger as
an example, “Befriend anger so we can understand it and use it.” When
considering anger or sadness, one may look at both and sometimes choose not to
be vulnerable and embrace the anger instead of the sadness that is just below
the surface. The author makes a plea for us to reclaim our emotions and use
them in our classrooms to empower students ourselves. How will we do this?
Thanks for posting this, Jane!
ReplyDeleteI responded a little bit to this reading in my blog this week too: https://breatheinbreathoutteach.blogspot.com/2020/02/self-care-february.html
I have noticed that this school year has been vastly different for me in terms of my patience and anxiety, and among the many lifestyle changes I've made this year, daily yoga is one. I really believe that this act of slowing down and breathing every morning on my mat has translated into my ability to stop and take a breath before responding to students or parents or colleagues in a moment of anger or frustration. Of course, this doesn't happen 100% of the time, but I've definitely noticed more of a change this year, while I've been practicing yoga more regularly. I believe this has been hugely instrumental in my controlling my emotions more in my classroom. This doesn't mean hiding my emotions by any means. I think in fact that showing students our honest emotions is what can help students relate to us more (I've had students say this to me directly--that they connect more with their teachers who are more "human").
-Natalie
Jane, thank you for your vulnerability; your story is beautiful and I enjoyed getting to know that part of you better. But first, can we just stop and take a moment to talk about your definition of resilience – “Resilience is the strength to endure the suffering of life while simultaneously savoring those moments of joys and connection.” That is so powerful and exactly how I feel but was unable to put in words.
ReplyDeleteFor me, these chapters were priceless in providing me with tools for the hard moments both in the classroom and in life. Although I have a lifetime ahead of knowing myself, one truth I already know is my hot-headedness. No doubt a product of my childhood, I am quick to lose my temper, raise my voice, and let my anger control me both mentally and physically. Therefore, my biggest takeaways are knowing, “[I am] not [my] emotions,” and I have the power to shift and control my emotional responses at any time during their cycle. Immediately after reading this, I was reminded of an incident last week where a student began an argument with me regarding the rules of an assignment. I recall speaking rapidly, my heart rate rising, my face reddening, and no longer listening to understand, rather simply listening to respond. It was not my finest moment, and I walked away from it flustered for the next hour. If I only I had read these chapters a week ago.
When I was teaching high school in a low-income community, everyday felt like that moment on repeat. Every task, instruction, activity, moment was a battle both internally and with my students. These struggles left me feeling drained, powerless and often hopeless, and no doubt left my students feeling, for lack of better words, “some type of way.” Therefore, when you ask what reclaiming our emotions will look like in the class, I can’t help but picture this tool being utilized by myself, but also by my students. As far as the age-old debate of teachers’ responsibility to teach social emotional skills in addition to the curriculum, I completely concur. Therefore, I believe the core emotions and the cycle of emotions should have a place in our classroom to be explicitly taught and discussed, and heck, maybe even displayed on a poster. We can teach our children to name their emotions, identify their responses, and provide tools for coping just as Elena teaches us. If we do not, it is undoubtedly an injustice to them.
Forgot to sign my name... Oops!
ReplyDelete-Kristen
Jane, thank you for sharing your insight as a veteran teacher and individual. I enjoyed reading your post and your journey through the profession with the lens of emotion and resilience. I 100% agree that the moments in between stimulus and response are teachers' (really anyone's) greatest opportunity. I think in these moments, not only are we recognizing our emotions but also regulating our emotional actions. This helps our sanity and well-being but I also think it models a form of behavior that is often missing from our students' lives. Considering that emotions are privately expressed and operate under a dominant hegemony, students might not be exposed to these forms of response on a normal basis.
ReplyDeleteAguilar speaks about the dominant culture and how this culture can reinforce behaviors of oppression, suppression, repression, etc. In the position of a teacher, I think that emotions and the breakdown of our emotions into the classroom is the first step in breaking down these dominant culture norms. The classroom (especially elementary) is where students are the most impressionable. I guess the difficulty with this is that sometimes things are operating under some forms of power and control that leave no room for breakdown. For example, LBGTQ+ curriculum is not supported in some schools. Anti-racist pedagogy is only implemented in "areas with large populations of color". The power of control to limit our student's knowledge of societal systems is a dangerous place to be considering that these kids are our future. If we want to end these dominant power relations, we have to be willing to explore them in our curriculum. I realize that Aguilar is saying that you don't have to participate under these powers, but in a sense, as an American worker, you do.
I found it REALLY interesting when Aguilar was talking about working conditions. She states, "I fantasize about organizations that account for the biological needs and rhythms of our bodies". The sad thing is, these organizations usually only exist in America. It is no secret that the American teacher is overworked, underappreciated, and underpaid. I wonder if Aguilar has had the opportunity to travel abroad or experience other ways of teaching. For instance in China, they get a two hour lunch break each day to rest the mind and body. I wonder if this can be the challenge, then, to break down the dominant culture norms in America around teaching.The problem is that our schools are so focused on money, scores, and reputation. All around, the staffs' well-being tends to get lost among the fury of administrative duties. I don't know the answer in solving this, but Aguliar does provide a good start for modeling positive behaviors in emotional recognition and regulation. I will be interested to see how she pairs this with other positive behaviors to get any bit closer to a solution for systemic change.
-Alexis
Hi Jane,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your thoughtful post. I completely agree with your first statement. I have been told many times in my life to take a moment to think, to pause, and then to respond. I am glad that I have been reminded of this so many times but I also know that acknowledge the phrase and acting on it are very different things. It is an understatement to say that I need practice with this. I think what you say about finding and getting to know oneself is very important. I agree with your statement that we are products of our time and space. For myself, I believe I have found out who I am the most after experiencing the sudden passing of my father in a car accident in March of last year. I am a product of that tragic event but also a product of how I have moved forward from that and a product of the person I will be 5 years from now or ten years from now.
One of the tips my counselor has given me that echos what is being said in the book is naming and getting to know your emotions is one of the first steps to understanding who you are and how you act or react. I appreciate that these ideas keep showing up in our readings as well as in my own life. It sounds like these things also are being echoed through our peers life as well. Thank you for leading the post this week and for a really thoughtful read.
Lauren
Hi Jane! Thanks so much for your post. It's so interesting to hear about your own background and experience, and you did a marvelous job of synthesizing the reading!
ReplyDeleteI do agree that we build resilience in the space between stimulus and response, but I also think that the reading about the processes of emotion opened me up to another way of thinking as well. By breaking the experience into stages, the author recognizes that the first step is the prompting event or stimulus, and your interpretation of it. Of course, the space between that stimulus and your response is still the space where you can cultivate thinking and choice, but it struck me that being able to recognize that something IS a prompting event is, in itself, a space that helps build resilience. Just as Aguilar stresses that naming/recognizing our emotions is critical to our acceptance of them, recognizing the events that trigger our emotional responses is also a place where we can grow and maybe even anticipate stimuli (like in the example on pg. 57 of recognizing that a certain person can be triggering for you and so focusing on awareness of your body and response). So for me the reading expanded my view of resilience from just the space between stimulus and response to the whole process: recognition of stimuli, taking that pause to curate an intentional response, and reflection on the emotional experience that can lead to improvement or repetition.
I think, also, that this could be a crucial answer to your parting question. Thinking of our own emotions as guests in our mind who come knocking for certain reasons and who have things to teach us, but then will move along can help us be more patient and accepting of our students' "guests" as well. Working with my students, I respect their emotions, but I've often had that old familiar impulse to say "no don't feel bad! Don't feel scared! It's going to be okay!" While it's important to reassure our students, I think it's also crucial that we give them space to have emotions, because to "deny them is to cut off a part of who we are" (67). For students with valid reasons for having their emotions and who might struggle (just like we do) to move past them, being told "let it go" isn't going to help, and in fact it's likely to spawn new negative emotions of frustration and helplessness. I have begun to recognize that chain reaction in myself when people try to help by denying what I'm feeling, and this reading gave me a framework to embrace my emotions in a way that isn't unhealthy. I need to remember the USE IT part of the process: before kicking them out, we need to find out why our guests have come calling and what they have to say. When someone says "let it go" I can feel validated in not being able to let it go right away, but also try to examine and USE it rather than just stewing, inviting it to camp out in my life and make a mess. Practicing that thinking will help me acknowledge my students' lived experience and invite them to make that experience more productive and aware.
-Carla
Hey, it's Cindy here, with the embarrassing news that you'll have to go to my blog to read my comments. They exceeded the number of allowed characters. Gulp.
ReplyDeleteHere's the link: https://blogessor.wordpress.com/?p=3425
Jane,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for being so vulnerable and open in your post! I love that you centered your post around the idea of "resilience." That is one of my favorite words, ever! Of course, on the topic of teaching, it's mandatory that our characters are BUILT upon resilience. There's no way a teacher could make it in this field without attributes of resilience.
When you referenced Aguilar's quote, "“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom," I thought of teaching-- most definitely! Particularly, I thought of how students are ALWAYS looking towards us for a reaction. This could be good or bad; sometimes students set out to bring a good or bad side in us because they are simply always looking to see a reaction. It's exhausting that as teachers, we must always remain neutral and "keep it together" at all times, in order to be deemed as "professional." I personally see this everyday as a substitute teacher and it's no surprise. Students love to test boundaries, especially with teachers they do not know, and who do not know them. I would say that resilience, in this sense, is all about standing your ground and remaining as centered as possible for the greater good of our students.
The discovering of self aspect in the reading was interesting. I love your take on this topic as a veteran teacher! Do we ever truly learn who we are? How long does it take? How do we know when we meet this version of ourselves? How do we stay within the identity that we are most happy with, or WANT to stay within?
I am looking forward to our in-class discussion on this, thanks for sharing!
~Angelia
Jane,
ReplyDeleteI so appreciate your perspective as a career and "vet teacher". Sometimes, I feel I get so caught up in the theory of various practices, it's difficult for me to ground those theories in reality. I definitely want to know more about how you challenge dominant cultures in your classroom if you feel comfortable sharing with us!
I definitely struggle with what Aguilar covers regarding the reclamation of emotions and reclamation of our ability to be in our classrooms. I'm someone who likes to pack my emotions away and maybe think about unpacking them later. I certainly don't enjoy expressing strong emotions--particularly strong "negative" emotions--in front of my students. As a marginalized body, I feel like those emotions are often so politicized in my classroom that they can leave me vulnerable in some real ways. I've experienced some of this already teaching CO150.
However, this is one of the reasons why I think Aguilar's discussion on how "these aspects of ourselves want to be understood, and they also need boundaries" (53) is helpful for me. I think I need to figure out where those boundaries are. Sometimes I wish that marginalized folks were allowed to find boundaries that were healthy and not just boundaries that preserve our safety. I think that's the world I really want to move toward.
I'm curious to hear about how other folks walk this line. How do you express or not express your emotions? Where do you find yourself compromising that key element of your humanity for comfort or safety? What are both the benefits and dangers of expressing this kind of vulnerability to your students?
~Theo