The Most Important Skill

Before the new school year starts, I try to think through a theme for the year--something that I want my students to carry with them long after the work of reading and writing essays and stories has finished for 7th grade. After reading article after article about the lack of empathy--and seeing such proof displayed, tragically, on the national stage all through the summer--I decided that this year we would try and work on what I believe is the most essential skill of all.

Growing up, I was very close with my oldest brother, Christopher, who is deaf. He lost his hearing at age two due to meningitis. Once I got to high school, Chris began to open up to me and vulnerably share what school had been like for him--the ways in which others did not view him or treat him with kindness and dignity, but rather with disdain and disregard.

His is not my story to tell: his journey belongs to him, and I do not want to speak on his behalf. Chris has a powerful, beautiful, and dignified voice all his own.

But I do want to share that after teaching for 13 years in a variety of contexts--at the high school, college, middle school, and Adult Ed levels--I am convinced that the most important skill we can help our students learn is empathy. It is more important than every single test score, every college essay, every other result or attribute.

And empathy is severely lacking.

The recent news out of Omaha, Nebraska, about Alex Hernandez is deeply disheartening. Watching Alex talk about his experiences of ongoing bullying (particularly the most recent instance when two male students stole his backpack and threw it into the toilet), and showing the clip to my current 7th graders, I cannot keep from crying.

But in the CNN article about Alex, in light of the wave of support and solidarity from people who heard about the disturbing incident and then connected with Alex, he shares a profoundly moving statement: "It made me very happy. It made me feel like I am not alone." This is the power of empathy. For a student who has traveled years feeling like he is alone, that his battles are his alone, and the cruelty of others is his alone to face (with little support, it would seem, from the school community in which he spent years), Alex finally feels like others see him for who he is. They are seeing the injustice that has been done to him repeatedly--not just in a single instance--and they are voicing their support of Alex and their righteous anger at those who attack.

One of the questions my 7th graders and I are exploring is why students who attack feel like they have the license to do so. In other words, why did those two male students who stole Alex's backpack think it was okay to do so? Why did they have a sense they would get away with it (as, by all accounts, they have. A mere mention that they didn't know Alex seems to have convinced the school that it was all a big misunderstanding--something that is often told to people who are systematically and consistently oppressed)?

One of the most insightful responses from my students is that students who bully and demean others do so because they do not have a deep, experiential, and intimate understanding of others who look, act, or think differently than they do. In other words: the segregation which plagues our school systems across this country is a massive culprit in the absence of empathy.

Our schools are woefully segregated according to race, class, gender, abilities, and many other attributes, aptitudes, and attitudes.

Instead of remedying this injustice, many of us seem to accept that this is the way schooling has been done, or that it would be too hard to change, or that it would impose upon principles of freedom. But when we allow segregation and misunderstanding to fester, anything else we teach or learn is meaningless.

What could have been done to prevent the tragic act of Alex's backpack being thrown in the toilet (and the thousand other cruelties Alex endured along his years as a student)?

Giving students experiences connecting with others who look, think, and act in ways that may be new to them. We need to invite speakers into our schools to talk about deafness, race relations, gender inequality, and more. We need to create experiential activities whereby our students journey outside the walls of their own schools and into others. We need to create new ways of fostering communities in our schools, and building schools that depend not only on zip codes but on justice codes: commitments to equalize housing costs and access to our public schools.

We can continue to pretend that standardized test scores are what matter, and that fighting for better scores for all is the work of justice. But that would be to deceive ourselves. What matters most is creating schools that model the kind of what in which we want to live: diverse, understanding, connected, and full of that most important skill of all: empathy.

One True Thing from Dr. Donna Robinson: There Are Always Two Sides to a Story

As a college student, one of the activities I remember enjoying most was an assignment I had in Dr. Donna Robinson's Methods of Teaching Secondary English course. In a group with three other students, we were charged with reading Parker Palmer's highly inspiring and deeply vulnerable book The Courage to Teach and then creating a presentation which entailed a highly interactive, engaging, and instructive approach. My group members and I tried to do what Dr. Robinson had always encouraged us to do--to think of how we'd fare with what we shared inside the corridors of a real high school. What would engage our students? What would interest and instruct them?

And so, we decided upon sock puppets. And a song in rhyming couplets set to the rhythm of a highly popular Billboard chart-topper of the time. We sang our song (or, more precisely, the sock puppets sang and we merely orchestrated) and I remember looking up at Dr. Robinson and seeing the seed of a smile grow. After many courses with Dr. Robinson more than a decade ago, and teaching myself in three different school settings, I have continued to remember her great zeal for making learning active, engaging, and rigorous for students. The mantra that comes to mind when I think of Dr. Robinson is, undoubtedly, the resolve to practice what one preaches. In every one of Dr. Robinson's lessons and lectures, she consistently embodied that ideal--she modeled for us what effective, engaged, and inspired teaching looks like. And I am deeply grateful for her passion, her enthusiasm, and her wisdom.

So I am very happy to share Dr. Robinson's One True Thing today.

There Are Always Two Sides to a Story
Donna Robinson, Ed.D

Growing up in a small rural town in Maine I had to make my own excitement. It was the only way it was likely to happen. When I was eight, one of my favorite positions for doing this was lying on the floor with my ear to the cold, linoleum floor.

My Dad was a revered Baptist pastor who was known throughout the little town for his compassionate counseling abilities.  Many an evening those in need of his countrified wisdom sat crouched close together in his crowded study - directly below my bedroom.

The ones I liked best were the couples that came in screaming at the outset – I didn’t have to strain to hear as much as with the quiet folks. Inevitably, Dad made a firm and unequivocal pronouncement to the loud combatants. “We are going to hear each of you thoroughly and without interruption. That means that first one of you will explain your journey to my doorstep and then the other will do so – without interruption! We are going to hear both sides of the story.”

Over numerous years I listened to some pretty interesting stories and I learned a great deal about human nature – and, no, I was never caught, nor did I ever speak of what I had ascertained. I knew the gig would be up if I did.

One solidified observation of those counseling sessions stood out above all others. There really were two sides to every story. Just when I finished hearing a woman tell her side of the perceived argument and I was certain her husband was at fault, my Dad would calmly turn to the man and say, “OK, let’s start at the beginning and hear your perspective.”  And then an ever-expanding web of complexity began to grow.

As a wife, mother, friend, middle school teacher and professor I have found that learning to not rush to judgment has been the outgrowth of those days spent listening on the floor.

Both children and adults deserve the respect of being heard completely – with no interruptions or hasty conclusions.  One true thing that has permeated my many days in the company of my human companions on this journey is that there are always two sides to a story. An honest writer always remembers this when portraying characters and experiences and outside the realm of fiction, I see the need to act on this as I intersect with those around me.

The Darkest Day of the Year

Today in England, the sun set at about 11:25 am. Okay, seriously: the sun set at 3:30 in the afternoon. (Though it sure felt like 11:25 in the morning.) But it rose at about nine o' clock, and for those six and a half hours, we looked up at a sky that drizzled us with mocking rain and then laughed through a thick layer of clouds.

For other reasons than the fact of absolute minimal sunlight, today--and this past week--has been very dark. I grew up in Connecticut, and hearing the news about Sandy Hook rattled me. Like many people, I found myself weeping.

In the flurry of articles that have come out in this past week, none is able to articulate exactly why this kind of tragedy is pepetuating itself over and over again. But one area that continues to go unexamined by most social theorists and also those in the media is the area of gender. Jackson Katz and Byron Hurt are doing their part to discuss why of the 62 mass killings on American soil, 61 of them have been commited by men. Katz powerfully reasons that if the opposite were true, and 61 of the 62 mass killings had been perpetrated by women, all we would hear and read would be about the gendered nature of the crimes.

As a society, the way we socialize men is dangerous and we see this over and over again. The 61 mass murders are the highest form of the tragedy, but every day we see lesser versions--no less horrendous to the victims, however--of gendered violence: we see men killing men in gang warfare; we see men fighting men for pride, revenge, or to prove their masculinity.

In essence, we see men learning repeatedly--from father, from film, from heroes and mentors--that the only way to be a man is to be tough, violent, and aggressive. Men are not revered for their compassion, gentleness, empathy, and their tears.

I think one reason why Harper Lee's Atticus Finch stands so tall after all these years is that Lee artciluated through fiction an idea of what genuine strength in masculinity could look like.

It could look like going against the bullying culture so many men are bred into and indoctrinated towards. It could look like self-reflection rather than blame. It could look like an end to attacks and harassment (whether through words or actions) and a commencement of authentic listening--asking what it's really like to walk in the shoes of other people, whether minorities, females, homosexuals, or transgendered people.

Until we come face to face with a fraction like 61/62, we are going to be missing an underlying cause of the violence we continue to see in every city of every state of our country. Masculinity does not have to be defined by aggression, violence, tough-talk, and lack of empathy.

After the sun had set today, Jennifer and I watched Tyler run back and forth through our kitchen and hallway as we blasted Enya's Winterland CD. He was laughing, running, laughing, running, giggling.

Tyler is four years old.

He is my son.

The question I am faced with as a father, and the question we are all faced with as members of an American society, is this: How we can we teach boys that to grow into men does not mean to lose one's ability to giggle, to weep, to show compassion, empathy, tenderness, and vulnerability?

It is time we make heroes not only of those who hold a gun--whether in films or in real life--but also of those who hold a hand. If we can learn, as men, to move forward hand in hand--vulnerable, honest, authentically strong--rather than as aggressive lone rangers, I think American society will see massive shifts. Our darkest days--no matter when the sun sets--may yet transmogrify into our brightest possibilities.