The Student-Teacher Fit

As you my dear readers know, I am

laser focused

on teachers. I believe that, if we care for the caregivers, then the caregivers will be best equipped to care for their students.

And by “care for” I mean teach, support in learning and growing, raise up.

By “care for” I mean fit with in a way that works for students.

My focus tends to be on the teacher-student fit — that is, how teachers can alter their relationships with students who are acting out, who offer emotional and relational data that teachers can use to shift their fits and promote desirable learning.

It’s the student-teacher fit that I don’t think that explicitly about.

Like this

horrifying story

told by a very good friend of mine. (OK, my husband.)

Once upon a time, my husband was in high school. In an English class. Where he was supposed to read a book and write a paper on it.

Only he didn’t read the book. He just listened to what his English teacher said about the book. Then he wrote his paper, feeding back to the teacher what the teacher had said about the book.

And my husband got an A+.

Brilliant. My husband fitted perfectly with his English teacher! My husband gave this teacher exactly what she was looking for!

Herself.

My husband fitted with his teacher in a way that worked for the teacher.

Well, the fit worked for my husband, too. In that he didn’t have to learn anything. He just regurgitated and moved on.

How often does this happen in school? That students devote the bulk of their energy and attention to figuring out what their teachers are looking for? To simply giving their teachers what they want? To contorting themselves in order to fit with their teachers? Not with the content?

How do we teachers support — or suppress — our students’ quirky developmental trajectories as they lurch their way towards becoming thinkers, questioners, knowers of their own bodies and minds?

I’m so laser focused on teachers and how they fit with students that I can forget

how much contorting

students have to do to fit with their teachers.

And how normal this state of affairs is. How difficult it is for teachers to see each and every student accurately, to put themselves and what they know on the back burner so as to put students and what students know (and don’t know) front and center. How resistant students can be to de-contorting, to taking charge of their own learning, to leaning in, engaging, growing, becoming.

How can schools and teachers and administrators minimize contorting that is anti-learning, anti-being? In their students and in each other?

Mantra: Thank god summer vacation is almost here!!! (A great time to contemplate these questions.)