Spring 1 2021 Teaching and Learning Newsletter

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Empathy Accentuated By Deborah Wright Heart palpitations, sweaty palms, rasping breath: these are just some of the heightened physical emotions that I have felt during this third lockdown. Mix the heady concoction with emotional responses such as anger, despair, agitation, abject feelings of inadequacy and undiluted panic and you get some inkling as to how I felt during most of January. Now that I have taken my rollercoaster ride of emotions and had time to reflect on my turmoil of feelings I can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the most prevalent, acute and dominant emotion I felt was ANGER! Yes I had almost debilitating panic attacks; yes I shed tears of sheer frustration and Yes I wanted to take the less productive choice - caused by this excessive adrenaline - and run for the hills but, and here’s the thing, my obstinate, bloody-mindedness and lifelong passion for teaching would not let me. So, what was the cause of this overt anger? Quite simply the answer was - being pushed out of my comfort zone - regarding my teaching Modus operandi after just shy of 30 years of teaching English in an actual classroom full of living, breathing students and, instead, having to get my head round teaching Zoom lessons online. Psychology professors tell us that anger serves an important purpose. For me, the primary focus of my anger i.e. what had caused this situation was now largely irrelevant; instead, the secondary focus - concentrating on the consequences – was far more important. And I did. It was a swift and uphill struggle but I now feel that I have reached the summit and conquered my largely irrational fears. I now, dare I say, actually get immense pleasure from preparing lessons and teaching them online; despite missing terribly actually having the students in the same room as me but, and I can’t emphasise this point enough, I now have a renewed understanding and accentuated sense of empathy regarding my own students’ plethora of responses when they are faced with a task that they can’t or won’t do. Actually the conjunctions ‘can’t’ and ‘won’t’ are very closely linked, in my experience, when it comes to students accessing learning. ‘Can’t’ denotes a lack of skill whilst ‘won’t’ denotes a lack of will and yet, to me, they are flipsides of the same coin since it much easier NOT to do something that you find difficult, or nigh on impossible, whilst it is infinitely easier to stir up the will to do something that you are skilled at. Thus, faced with a task that you find extremely difficult or impossible to commute, it is easier to actually step back and ignore the task at hand and find distractions to take your mind off how this heinous task is making you feel. Historically this is what has occurred in many classrooms up and down the land, and indeed globally, and was even referenced in Shakespeare’s All the World’s a Stage in Jacque’s melancholy monologue: Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school. You can’t imagine that Shakespeare is speaking autobiographically here since with his scholarly and learned ways you can imagine him practically bouncing to school with much excited enthusiasm, alacrity and aplomb. However, whilst at school, and indeed, as a private tutor as a young man, Shakespeare must have gleaned that not many of his school boy friends or tutees shared his love for learning and that many actively despised school. Moreover, many of them would have loathed the whole process of learning and this would have been for a plethora of reasons but, largely, it would have been because they found the experience of learning, in often draconian circumstances, really difficult and, in some cases, downright impossible.
Empathy Accentuated By Deborah Wright However, even in these more enlightened times, when we are equipped with encyclopaedic knowledge of SEN requirements and how to guide and steer students who struggle with new concepts and skills, it is still sometimes easy to forget exactly how debilitating and frustrating this whole experience can be, and why individuals oftentimes vent their frustrations and anger with tears, aggression and a complete reluctance to engage with tasks. To conclude, the whole experience of this third lockdown - and the prerequisite processes needed to ensure that my online lessons both run smoothly and are user friendly for my students – have taught me three invaluable lessons. Foremost, never lose sight of what our students must experience when they are coping with a completely new area of learning which may trigger a myriad of negative emotions. Secondly, continue to nurture, feed and develop your own empathy since it is a most invaluable tool both in and outside the classroom and finally, despite the adage that features a new trick and an old dog, it is NEVER too late to learn, use and appreciate a new skill.
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Spring 1 2021 Teaching and Learning Newsletter

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