Perhaps this is even more true when speaking of a paradigm shift in its more technically accurate sense--certainly a genuine openness to a transformation of one's worldview would facilitate an honest inquiry after knowledge characteristic of such model teachers as Socrates. However, at the moment I am most interested in the smaller paradigm shifts--not really changes in paradigm at all, but changes in the way in which we view individuals and circumstances we encounter, changes that allow us to show greater mercy, greater compassion, to those we serve and those with whom we work.
I feel like I experience this every day in the classroom--or nearly everyday--as I learn more about the lives of my students. I had the experience just this evening, as I was taking some student autobiographies off the wall to make room for other samples of student work. As I looked at the "Snapshot Autobiographies" my students had written in the opening days of the school year, which had been proudly displayed on my wall for some time now, I realized that my initial cursory reading three weeks ago had not been at all sufficient. Or perhaps now that I knew something about my students, I was more prepared to receive information about their pasts. At any rate, I discovered things that had been before my eyes that I had never guessed about my students. I felt, among other things, a new respect for them. Tonight wasn't the first time, either. It seems that in the last three to four weeks, hardly a day has gone by in which I have not learned some story of hardship or suffering in the private life of one of my students--everything from divorce, domestic strife, and legal problems to gang involvement, drugs, and homelessness.
The more I learn about my students as individuals whose lives are so often filled with suffering, the easier it is for me to see myself as a servant rather than as a taskmaster--and that is a paradigm shift that is a key to effective teaching, I believe. This is not to say that I lower my expectations for my students out of pity--far from it; but I am more mindful of how my demands on them must appear, and of which demands are realistic, and which are simply asking too much of that particular student at this particular moment.
I have one student, though, who has seemed to defy this compassion-inducing paradigm shift. A chip on his shoulder from the first day of school, he was sarcastic, disrespectful, filled with negativity, dismissive of school work, cruel to other students--especially those who look, talk, behave, or believe differently from him--and generally unresponsive to my preferred methods of discipline. I wanted to have one of those paradigm shifts in relation to this student; I wanted to understand him better: I went to his other teachers, but found little more than the fact that they had similar problems with him (even teachers from previous years). I checked his permanent record, but learned little from it, other than that he was no stranger to suspension and other forms of school discipline. Finally, another teacher and I met with his parents--and saw him being just as rude and disrespectful to his parents as he was to us. I left the conference disappointed, unsure if we would ever be able to reach this student. Usually, (in my limited experience, anyway) even the most obnoxious students are meek and penitent when suddenly the authority of parents and teachers converge at some point in time and space. Not so with this child, apparently.
Yet in the few days since the conference, I have sensed the slightest hint of change; a suggestion of the early stages of thawing the icy barricade he has built between himself and authority. I want to see him differently--I want to recognize him for who he really is. Perhaps if I wait quietly enough--if I hold very still like one in the woods, watching a doe take those first timid steps into the clearing--he will give me that chance...
...In the meantime, I can comfort myself with these tokens of appreciation from two of my sixth grade students, passed forward to me during zero period this morning:
It's nice to know that some students feel this way about my class, even if the sentiments aren't exactly universal. These students make it that much easier to be patient with those who require the paradigm shifts I spoke of.
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