One of my former high school students was nearing the end of his degree in photography and asked me if I would do a yoga photoshoot with him to help him build his portfolio. It took us a while to pin down the date, and a while to ease into the new photographer / model dynamic between us, but when I got the pictures. They were beautiful.
Looking through the photos, I thought, “I look peaceful.”
You wouldn’t think that an hour before this picture was taken I was in a classroom with 26 grade 9 students who could make your head spin. To illustrate the level of head-spinning, a recently retired very experienced substitute teaching in our school pulled me aside in the hallway. She had recently covered for me with this grade 9 class, and with a sense of urgency, she launched in,
“How do you do it? That class is like nothing I’ve seen before. And how many special education students did they put in there, the whole school? And this one kid? He just started taping his face shut. With the tape. His whole face. You just have two weeks left. My advice? Take lots of days off.”
It was a challenging class, so I felt validated, but it also makes me realize the yoga is working! I actually like all my students. I had two weeks where I felt exasperated mid semester, but then I just recalibrated .
With this class, I may not be able to do everything the way I want to, or have my students do anything the way I want them to, but we can make progress bit by bit.
Acceptance is an important part of being skillful. Instead of focusing on how we want things to be, accepting things as they are and letting go brings the necessary stability to act skillfully. Otherwise frustration, desires, and all the negative emotions that come when we do not accept take control, and we react emotionally, often escalating a situation. Sometimes reacting emotionally as a school teacher can mean getting stuck on respect, authority and control. We feel we have a professional/moral obligation not to accept when we disapprove! But the more we disapprove the more we stress ourselves out and create a sense of separation between teacher/student. For me, accepting that some of this behaviour is beyond my control, and possibly beyond theirs at this point in their lives, gives me the flexibility to approach it with humour, and compassion. And I think my classroom and students are better for it. I know I am better for it!