Investment!

The first of three steps to becoming an ‘enlightened teacher’

The invested teacher is the teacher who looks at a child and sees the child, unfiltered by any hang ups or triggers that the teacher may have acquired as they have grown up.  This means not taking a dislike to a child, not being resentful of a child, because they have a more privileged life than we had, for example, or because they have a particular skill or talent which we wished we had.  It means not being dismissive of a child because they do not know how to behave properly, or they cannot grasp simple ideas, or how they dress, or how they hold themselves.

The invested teacher is not resentful, jealous, indifferent, dismissive, superior nor inferior, not boastful, malicious, nor easily provoked.  The invested teacher sees each child as subject with a rich interior life and potential for growth rather than as an object – a task to be completed or a problem to be solved by the teacher.

The invested teacher is as happy for the child’s success as if it were their own.  Happy that they have advantages the teacher never had, happy for the simple things that make the child joyful.  In short, the teacher is fully invested in the child, as child, as subject not object, and all the potential and joy that comes with that.

Becoming invested requires the teacher to attain a degree of self-awareness, to look at a child and ask themselves, “why do I not love this child as much as some others?  What must I change in myself so that I can love them fully as much?”   This is not a trivial step and takes some time but fortunately is progressive, we can extinguish triggers little by little increasing the range of children in whom we can be fully invested.

My book Red Brain Blue Brain lays out ways to do this.

John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation.  At the core of this work is the concept and practice of providing psychological safety and unfeigned lover through operating from the Constructive Mutualist rather than the Behaviourist paradigm.  Earlier blogs can be found here.