Enlightened teachers!

We know what they do so let’s encourage others to do it too

We now know that enlightened teachers – who cause all their students to willingly do their best work and self-regulate to avoid disruptions – achieve this by providing psychological (and of course, physical) safety to their students.

We know how they do this. They offer unfeigned love.

This means that they are unconditionally accepting of their students, they are fully invested in their students’ successes and joys, they are attuned to how students might be “stuck” and they act proactively to help these students change their perceptions and become “unstuck”.

Alignment of what teachers offer and what students experience when unfeigned love is present

“Stuckness” may be in a myriad of different ways: not getting the work, lack of belief in their abilities, uncertainty about future directions, beliefs that adults are not to be trusted, that they themselves deserve the poor outcomes they keep choosing, and so on.

Finally, each new experience of “stuckness” and each new way that a student manages to get themselves “unstuck”, modifies the enlightened teacher’s world view, their compassion for their students and their sheer capacity to be effective.  They are sharpening the axe.

We are beginning to see these as four phases of development: Relational, Invested, Mentoring and Learning.

Soon, such teachers act intuitively and effectively, and students may only need to interact once or twice to know, with certainty, this is someone to pay full attention to – with whom to enter a relationship of teacherly authority – and reap the lifelong benefits that will ensue.

This is the pathway towards full student engagement.

Such teachers are currently created despite the system.  It is past time to have a system that supports their growth and development, from selection and pre-service training onwards.

We owe it to our children.

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.