Beliefs...

 flickr photo via shanzy 294

When I was in graduate school one of my assignments was to reflect on and create a set of beliefs about education and leadership. I posted a couple of these a while back. My intent was to roll one out every week or so until I had written about each one of them at KARE Givers. I wanted to compare what I thought of as my personal beliefs back then, to how they may have changed since then. My intentions were good, but other things came up and I didn't follow through.

I came across the list the other day and decided to revisit sharing my beliefs about teaching and learning. As I read through it once again, I realized that my beliefs haven't changed much at all since I wrote them down over the two year period I was in graduate school. I took the reflective assignment very seriously, and I maintain my perspective that teachers must be serious about what they believe.

Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny. -Mahatma Gandhi

In order for teachers to be sincere and purposeful about what they do, they must be grounded in a set of philosophical principles that guide their practice... their practice being the words, actions, habits and values that they choose to articulate every day in the classroom. To this end, I'm including my complete list here in this post. I will follow up over the next while to expand on each one of my beliefs about education and leadership with the intent to elicit conversations that challenge them. I think teachers need to challenge their beliefs perpetually if they are to continue seeking better ways to do what they do.

Those blindly insulting things we say to others...

flickr CC image via jerine

One of the most insulting things we say to each other is "I know how you feel." Not one of us can ever truly know how any other of us feels about anything.

Even those of us who have shared a similar, or perhaps even the exact same experience... people's perspectives are as unique as their fingerprints. The variables at play in an individuals mind relative to the emotions surrounding their experiences are infinite... and different for all of us.

When we say " I know how you feel" to someone, the tacit message we're sending is your emotions aren't so deep and personal that I can't understand them... your emotions aren't complicated. To someone who is experiencing emotional jeopardy, someone who may not even understand their own feelings at the time, this is not a helpful message.

We can be empathic, or even sympathetic when necessary, without implying we know how others feel. It's a matter of how we say it... instead of saying "I know how you feel," why not simply say, "I hear what you're saying, just tell me how I can help." Doing so validates the emotions involved and acknowledges that although people can't truly know how others feel, they can still be completely available to those in distress.

In the complex arena of our human emotions, it is critical that we take responsibility only for our own feelings... we don't need to understand how others feel, we just need to be present and let them know we are completely willing to unconditionally share their feelings without judgement or comment.

Nobody can make us feel anything. Our feelings are only ours, and we alone are responsible for them. Don't take responsibility for the feelings of others... just be there when they're feeling them.