Resignation Letter to Learners from Dramatic Arts Teacher

Dear Learners,

RE: My resignation

Firstly, I would like to apologise for stepping into your classroom with my own agenda – to see if I would like / could teach within the private school system. I left the state syllabus as I had taught it for so long, I desired something new. I wanted to teach in a new environment and make sure I was accurate in my decision of where to settle for my last set of pension earning decades. I made the decision and accepted the post because I believed that God had firmly positioned everything, literally everything, for me to move over and be of service in a new school, with a new group of learners.

Now I sit in major doubt as to how I can serve.

I am well aware of your ability to adapt and adjust and get on with living and doing your tasks. I am sure that you would understand my situation and can carry on fairly unscathed by my actions. After all, I have taught you – in my brief few months here – not to let people who do so little for you, control so many of your emotions (courtesy of Mr Will Smith). And that is where I now find myself – as someone who can do very little for you in your context.

You see, your educative environment is purely ‘mark’ directed. All of you place your worth and your level of esteem and ability in the hands of your teachers and strangers who apply a letter to your efforts. I hate that. I hate that your efforts are compared and categorised when you are SUCH unique individuals with so many strengths and abilities that cannot and will never be ‘markable’; yet you don’t see it that way. You haven’t been trained to see it that way. You have been trained to take that chronological number that has been assigned to someone’s categories of worth, and you make that assumptive value your personal value. I hate that. You are not the value of some other human’s assessment and judgment of you. Your value is that of gold and silver, refined in THE Refiner’s Fire. Sculpted by THE Potter’s Hands and sealed in The Kiln of The Most Awesome Creator. Your abilities are limitless. Your talents span the width of your imagination, but therein lies the rub: educators, often people who don’t even believe in themselves, people who have suffered under the same marking system that you are suffering, are in control. I hate that. I hate that people who are not called to teaching, are teaching. They are inflicting their insecurities on you, and contorting you to bend to their whims and their rules and comfort zones by squashing you into the boxes created by random numbers, otherwise known as: Percentages. And you, in your innocence and ignorance as children, accept it. You accept the forces of control and irrationality, and the confines and restrictions the syllabus and system impose on you and brand into you. I hate it.

I sit in this moral conundrum. Who am I to judge? Isn’t it only God who should judge? Who am I to say this is worth an “A” when the learner has been lazy and then just uses God’s Given Talent at the last minute on stage? Who am I to say that the learner who has worked so hard, given everything and stretched themselves into empathy, passion and courage at the highest level, is only worth a “C” because she doesn’t have the acting technique that I prefer? A for Ass, C for Courageous… A for Arrogant, C for Committed… A for Algebra, C for Calculus? The marks assigned by strangers in Drama, for an Exam are meaningless to me, for such reasons. Yet, for you, for my learners, they mean everything. I find it absurd, absolutely absurd.

I find myself now in turmoil over what you expect, what your requirements are for a teacher – someone who will get you an “A”, when some of you are just not in possession of the “X-Factor”, you are not categorically, by the piece of paper and the blocks I have to tick, an “A”… but your parents, your family, your friends, your teachers who have you as their ‘pet’, are telling you that you are an “A”. Why do they say that? Because they love you and that is what they see, that is what they know. Because they don’t have assigned tick boxes. Because they have no idea what vocal characterisation is, or what it entails. They don’t have a clue about projection and body dynamic and the technical “have to have’s” for an “A” in a Drama Exam. They are right, God has created you as a potential “A” candidate, but that “A” is not in Dramatic Arts in the private school system. In the state system – yes, there you can get an “A” because your interpretation, your ability to stand cold on a stage and use only yourself to engage with an audience is considered “A” material. It is not so in the private system… and this is where the private system clashes with ME.

It clashes with my belief in all of you and your incredibly hard work being worth that “A”. It clashes with my belief in the examiner being open to everything s/he sees on stage. It clashes with my belief that an actor with nothing on stage is more powerful than an actor who needs the prop of a prop… I can see your soul, your integrity, your truth in the character when it is only you up there, when I am not distracted by a tea-towel in your hand or an item that you throw across the stage. I am not cut off from you when you have a table in front of you. I am not subjected to being an observer of your conversation with a statue on stage. I engage with you, you move my soul, I see your soul has moved, when you interact with me, the soul in the audience who is listening to your message, hearing your words and forming a soulful bond with the character you have taken on in order to take me on a journey. I cannot watch you giving soul on stage and place it in boxes. I cannot tell you that your everything is worth so little, when it is not. I cannot train you in my way, I cannot ask you to act to my style of laying your soul open on stage, when your external examiners want props, want set, want pure type-cast, stereotypical, by-the-book, copy-and-paste, done the same over and over, performances. I am not made that way. I can’t expect every 17/18 year old to contort their body into the assumption that a 50 year old has no strength and must change their body to be ‘old’! I can’t force you to assume that you know exactly what a playwright ‘made’ a character to be, and that anyone on the planet could recreate a stereotype of something someone else thinks. You are not parrots or monkeys. You are not made to ‘fakely’ copy another director’s perceptions or preferences. You are you, with your own ideas, your own interpretations, your own directorial perceptions, I cannot and will not force you to lose integrity with yourself to copy and paste your work to be that of someone else.

I am not made to follow man and fit into the whims of mans’ insecurities. I walk in the knowing, the absolute conviction, that God has placed me where He has in order to touch souls. In order to awaken the inner light that is so dull inside you, so that you can believe in yourselves, so that you can know the truth of what eternal is. So that you can walk away having experienced something ‘out of this world’, something that has allowed you a moment of ‘touching God’; and then gone a step further by giving you a stage, a platform, an audience, to help them touch a moment with God, with themselves and their truths and insecurities, to open their hearts and know that ‘it is ok’, ‘you are not alone’…

The problem comes in – I cannot get you the marks set by this system, this syllabus, purely because I don’t believe in the system or the syllabus. I don’t know how to dance to the tune of materialism and worldly judgment. I only want to dance to the tune of truth, of praise and worship, of love, honesty, sincerity, authenticity and all that is so hard to achieve in our current society.

I sit, disturbed at a very deep level. I sit and type this letter to you in confusion with regards to the rigidity and conformism that I have found is dictated into ART, into an EXPRESSIVE and PERSONAL TO THE CREATOR subject. I am not made in a capacity that can serve you in this ‘private school’ context. Its non-transparency, for very real reasons I am sure, as I have had to personally deal with you annihilating me for ticking boxes that you disagreed with. I have had your parents annihilate me for not giving you the “A” they “know” you deserve. I have seen teachers with unhealthy “preferences” and completely subjective “reasoning” sway examiners with nonsense to get marks “improved”. I know firsthand why non-transparency would be chosen… even so, non-transparency with only ONE examiner is not right or healthy. It is secretive and beyond subjective. The State system, with its full transparency, will have a minimum of two external examiners and then open discussions with teachers, thus often having four examiners deciding on a mark. This is healthy, this is objective, this eliminates personal preference and personal subjectivity. One examiner, on a bad day, could skew an entire set of marks. One examiner who does not like a particular style, or has his/her own agenda can completely whitewash a year to poor marks because s/he ‘didn’t like it’, or has ‘seen it done better’, ‘or preferred the movie’ or ‘was raped herself and that is not what it looks or feels like’, or ‘I haven’t studied dance, or danced myself (I’m not that talented) but I wouldn’t say that was good’… Sub-conscious jealousies, personal agendas, self-righteousness, lack of understanding of a piece; all of those can factor into a single ‘examiner’ and how s/he allocates his/her personal choice of marks… I don’t believe it is right or fair to have one solo adjudicator who bears the burden of allocating marks without confirmation from another, and who gets sole control over setting a judgment over another human being’s creative work.

I find myself despondent, at my wits end trying to work through this, trying to fathom how I can work in such an unfair and distorted system. This is why I am resigning my dear children. I don’t want to be aligning you with my dreams and goals and lighting your souls, when your goals are the marks given by one person, in one moment, making one judgment call on you. I am not in the business of teaching for marks, of teaching to make some single other person able to put you in a box, ‘the best box’; because I don’t believe in ‘boxing’ anyone’s creative efforts…

I have also now encountered a horror of truth in the examination assessment that I have had to live through. In the feedback I asked for help, because I had been told that I had to tell you what to do. . . a.k.a. “Direct you.” Me? That if you aren’t working, if you aren’t getting the interpretation that the examiner wants from you (bearing in mind that I am not even told what that interpretation or expectation is with regards to what marks they assign – so I am expected to orientate myself around some invisible ‘standard’ / ‘expectation’); then it is my ‘fault’ – so … this means that your exam mark, your ticked box has nothing to do with your performance and everything to do with MY directing! Who is the most important part of any play? “The Director”. Who is the cog in any show? “The Director”. Who gets nailed with the criticism and torn to pieces if a play is ‘bad’ (as dictated by some person ticking their own random preference boxes)? “The Director”.  It’s so completely twisted that I would be required to tell you how to act on stage and then MARK MYSELF! I am not into teaching practical Dramatic Arts to have myself come in and tell other people what to do. I did not go to University to become a Director; I studied my second qualification to TEACH. The goal of this teacher is to create INDEPENDENT, self-aware, capable to handle the real world learners, not DEPENDENT on me human beings… Yes, there are wiser people than ourselves out there, yes, we go to others for advice, yes, input from others is always advisable, but telling others what to do and how to do it? Surely not… What happens when my poor direction then reduces a learner to have lower marks because I didn’t notice something? Then, what about when you refuse to listen to my direction? When you do what you feel like and then I get slammed for it? Not fair, not ‘right’.

On top of all this, apparently, if learners don’t type up their programmes, then I must do it for them? What the? What on earth is that teaching any child? If you don’t do your work, it’s ok, someone else will do it for you and because that other person does it so well, you can get a great mark and call it “my mark”? How is that healthy? Helpful? Truthful? I am not employed to be a slave, or someone who is going to take on all responsibility for people who are apathetic and couldn’t care… I am not made to hide mistakes and flaws, I want them revealed, I want consequences for actions and behaviour to happen. I want learners to learn to be responsible for their own work, their own future, their own lives.

This in totality means, I do not fit the private school system. It means my values; my ethic and my purpose do not align with the methodology and learning system that you (and your parents) have chosen for your education. It means I am not fit to provide the service you are expecting or the mark alignment and mark affirmations that you crave and build your lives around. It means I am not fit to be your Dramatic Arts teacher.

You are amazing learners and the potential within you to become awesome adults is great. I truly wish and pray that you know it, see it, believe it and become proud of yourselves; and that you achieve in fabulous ways in all the years ahead… how you gauge and assess your level of achievement… well, I hope it is not by some tick box or the ratings of some “Body” that some humans have declared “important”. I hope that your assessment of yourselves lies purely in the depth of your Souls and how you engage with YOUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. In the darkest part of the night may you be able to say: “It is well”, “It is good”, “I am content, I am at peace, I have served a mighty purpose, and an amazing God in a loving, kind, true and eternally pleasing way today”. Amen.

Stay blessed and know you are Loved,

Sir.

17-18year olds answers to: Revenge, justice, reconciliation &/or forgiveness; with which do you agree and why?

17-18year olds answers to: Revenge, justice, reconciliation &/or forgiveness; with which do you agree and why? (Linked to Characters in a play)

One of our grade 12 set-works in Dramatic Arts is “Nothing But The Truth” by John Kani. I was blown away at the maturity and insight shown by my learners in their answers. They are mixed race, but the majority is Black-African. It is WONDERFUL to see that there is a generation coming up who understand how to move on from the past and build a better future. In the context of some Black-African students currently wanting to ‘erase’ South African History due to their personal agendas and inability to forgive and learn and grow and move on, these answers from my learners were a true blessing to read. Finally, some sense in the context of “Our Country”. Enjoy the read. (I have left them mostly unedited from the exam scripts; they are in no prescribed ‘order’ at all)

• I am a firm believer in forgiveness. If the oppressed got up and started to do the same thing that was done to them it would just be a never-ending cycle and we would all just feed on hate.
• Reconciliation, because how do you expect to get over something if you always hold a grudge about it? How will violence make anything better, because you are just as bad as the other person? Take the information and truth you have and forgive that person and try to move on with your life now, knowing the full story.
• Revenge is no use, because it doesn’t make you a good person either, because you won’t be different from the other people who killed other humans.
• When you understand what has happened and how you feel about that exposed truth, then you are able to accept the truth, acknowledge it and thereafter move on, knowing that it has happened and it is time to move on from that point.
• It is always good to forgive, people shouldn’t be judged for what they did in the past.
• Confessing things takes courage. It isn’t easy trying to move on, but knowing that all is forgiven will make your journey seem clearer because then your conscience is clean. It also gives other people closure to have the real truth.
• In the play Thando says, “We could have gone for revenge…but how would that have made us different from them?” I agree with this because getting revenge could not satisfy your feelings and emotions. It just makes you more angry and it shows others that you are weak mentally.
• Confess and speak nothing but the truth. Revenge is not always the solution to every problem, that is why you have to be a better person.
• It’s about African Humanity / Ubuntu. We are one, no matter the colour of our skin, we need to be kind to each other as one nation.
• Everything deserves justice, truth and forgiveness. I believe that you can’t get anywhere in life if you hold grudges and you can’t get anywhere if you aren’t being real with certain situations in your life, you won’t go anywhere if you’re still holding on.
• Our country wouldn’t have achieved our democracy if it wasn’t for reconciliation, truth, amnesty and forgiveness, and also peace.
• Forgiveness is the key to a clear start and moving on. Forgiveness should come from within in order to create the capability to move on. If we carry out heavy burden of pains from the past with us in the present and the future, then we will always be influenced negatively by those burdens and this won’t assist anyone in any way. There will be no change in societies; there will be no better outcomes. But truth be told, forgiveness doesn’t come easily or quickly, but it is needed for a brighter future.
• What happened, happened in the past, now it’s the present with its new generation and people need to be united as one and live for tomorrow.
• Throwing back the bad to the bad is like throwing petrol on to a fire – it only makes it worse. In any situation, not only apartheid, one has to be the bigger person, and by that I mean stop showing others that you are fighting back and make them feel bad by calming down. That brings peace.

 

New Knowledge, Future Idea merging… Who’s going to be able to?

Where is the new knowledge going to come from?

According to a 2006 article: “Today’s academic and professional workforce is more diverse than at any [other] time in history. For the first time, four generations function together in the work environment.” Weick & Landrum. The writers connect this to increased stress, conflicting values and a need to build resilience in the workplace. It was frightening to read just how different the four generations are in their work ethic, approach to life and the ways in which they handle things; no wonder the stress is so high when people naturally see challenges and solutions so differently.

I’m a “Gen X” myself, and we apparently seek “balance and perspective” along with career mobility and dynamic work and learning environments. We take courses and enjoy “just-in-time learning”. With this stance on work, the write up on the “Millennials” scared me: They are more “laidback”. They are more interested in doing than “knowing” because knowledge has a half-life with the pace of information-technology today. “Therefore reading copious chapters about a topic is a total waste of time to them”. “Because their learning more closely resembles Nintendo than logic, with a focus on trial and error, they need close supervision in a clinical setting {the article focused on training nurses in the medical field}. They are accustomed to spell-check, so they do not waste time on learning how to spell correctly. They have zero-tolerance for delays, and because the Internet is available 24/7, they have an expectation of instant attention from faculty and peers.”

Where are the future brain-surgeons, nurses, lawyers and the like going to come from? Where will the researchers and academics appear from? How will society function if it is run by a bunch of Millennials who are interested in ‘trial and error’? I’m totally drained by the learners in my class this year who have taken the notion of “sapping me of all I have, whilst doing the bare minimum for themselves and giving no thanks to anyone for anything”, to a whole new, exhausting level. They want attention all the time and throw tantrums if they don’t get it, at 18 years of age!

I approached a colleague with the article and she said to me that knowledge is created when two different ideas merge. You learn and get idea one, and then learn some more and get idea two, then a light-bulb turns on as you put the ideas together and new information, theories, ideas and developments are created. If there is no learning of the former or the latter, then what? How can new knowledge be created if there is nothing there to start with?

Point in example: in my learning I have combined sources of knowledge to create my own theories. I.e. Knowledge 1: In 1998 I studied psychology and was introduced to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: the lower base of the pyramid hosting the ‘Physiological’ (immediate survival and comfort; shelter, food, sleep, sex). Second tier: Safety. Third: Love and Belonging (acceptance). Fourth: Esteem (achievement). Fifth: Self-Actualisation and finally, right at the top: Transcendence (finding an identity beyond the self and experiencing the world in awe).

Then I throw in Knowledge 2: In teaching Dramatic Arts and Medieval Theatre I was reminded of my school learning of the Feudal System and the hierarchy consisting of the lowest, biggest part of the triangle belonging to Peasants, then up to Knights, then Nobles and the peak of the pyramid hosts the King.

Knowledge 3: Various interactions with Body-Mind-Soul writings and practicings, mainly “Conversations with God” in this example of merging knowledge and ideas together… so I put these “Knowledges” alongside each other and get the following concept…

It’s living a life of action, knowledge-retention and experience-gathering that moves one up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I’m currently sitting in the Self-actualisation and Transcendence tiers for the most part. When I attend a Body-Mind practice, I am feeding into the lower, first base, foundational tier. This lower tier is the biggest segment in the pyramid and it holds everything else up, so it is vitally important. When I parallel that to the Feudal System, My Soul and Transcendence pairs with the “King” tier, and my Body with the “Peasant” tier. Thus “getting in tune and healthy with my Body” is not so much about “balance” as the King/Soul can never be at the same level as the Peasant/Body, but instead it is more about understanding and compromise between each tier.

Like the Feudal System Hierarchy (this analogy possibly being the only useful thing for the ‘System’) where the Peasants are the foundation of the well-being of a kingdom, the Body is the foundation of the well-being of each human being. Yet, even though the King/Soul appears to be in the minority, it is the source of peace, or lack thereof. The King has to work with Peasants who live by the minimum, doing only the work they have to, so that it is not too ‘difficult’ for them; and the eternal Soul has to fight against a Body that has to degenerate and doesn’t want to reach Transcendence because that is too ‘difficult’ and it prefers focusing on food and sex. The easiest tier for the bottom to forget is the top, so the Soul is neglected; and the King is kept at a distance.

Now, this is where my example ties in all three ideas… Yet, like the King, the Soul holds the power. The Soul will make the final decision of: life or death. The Soul will decide on the direction of the Body’s journey. If the Body doesn’t like the Soul’s decision, then the lower forces will respond. The Body will adopt depression; the ego will choose vanity, gossip, propaganda, nastiness and manipulation. Thus the Soul becomes despondent because the Body, which is made to follow in the carefully chosen and created way, doesn’t. There is no cohesion, no compromise. There is discontent. It could also be that the Body knows the Soul has made an unhealthy decision, but the Soul is not listening in the System either.

The only way for the hierarchy to be a well-functioning system, as every tier exists, is for all levels to receive: attention, help and appreciation from all other levels. Body, must be looked after, Mind must be fed, and Soul must be allowed to move into Transcendence without the Body refusing the movement. The instruments, lyrics and voice must come together for a human being to achieve all s/he was created to achieve in harmony.

I realise this is a totally random example, but, if I had forgotten the Maslow I learnt in 1998, the Feudal System imparted to me around 1995 and again in 2006, along with the Body-Mind-Soul information 2005-2014, then I would never have come up with any ideas or understandings at all. The Soul must Transcend, the Body will degenerate and the Mind is the bridge between the two fighting forces; it’s the arbitrator that needs information to keep the peace and reconcile the polar opposites. What happens when it stops storing information? What happens when the Mind gives up? Sodom? Is that when humanity officially hands itself over to artificial intelligence? Is that when we have to trust computers because humans chose apathy and disinterest instead of learning? Lord, Help Us!

14.4.14 – “Class”… upper or lower? Where’s my fit?

I have long pondered the realms of my existence and how much it differs with others and their existence. I have pondered class difference, and how this word ‘class’ can / should be defined, and how people use it to stereotype and box other human beings. I have worked with cleaners, C.E.O.s, managers, labour force and such a wide variety of ‘class’, ‘intelligence’, ‘social’ and ‘political’ mix-ups and combinations in my short life. Now it appears to me that the options for ‘being a human being’ are truly expansive and extend beyond the realms of what most people see in their limited vision, restricted space and ritualistic lifestyles.

I fall into a ‘middle-class’ monetary bracket and have reached a highish level in the academic echelons. I interact with many who are on anti-depressants, many who are not happy with life and are searching for more. Outside of private conversation, around the dinner table, conversations often revolve around booze, sport, sexual innuendo, work and travel. I am there, I can contribute, but mostly I just listen and wonder what is going on with their souls. I feel like I do not fit because my focus in life is not, nor has it ever been about, pleasing my body alone, or this world I live in. I don’t have ‘sex’ stories or enough “we were so drunk…” stories to contribute anything that would interest many people. So I sit and listen and hear my own inner voice saying: “surely this isn’t it?” Then the night will wear on as I sit. Somehow souls end up next to me and in one evening I’ll go from a philosophical conversation on acceptance, even though the person doesn’t have the words to tell me what they mean, but give me a: “you get what I’m saying…”. A second topic on relationships and affairs and whether or not it is worth getting married, which couples appear to be working, which not: “I think they are working, but I can’t put my finger on why, but you know what I mean…” “He’s having affairs, but if his wife doesn’t find out it’s ok, I won’t tell her, know what I mean…” Third, “I only have one tot in a long glass, so I always have litres of water every night, it’s good, you know what I mean…” The examples are endless… but similar, without being able to say what they mean – you know what I mean…

No, I don’t know what they mean. I don’t understand why they would play sport to keep their bodies fit and young, but feed themselves alcohol (a.k.a. hospital wound disinfectant) which destroys their bodies. I don’t know why you would promote marriage, enter marriage, but have affairs and forthrightly act to destroy that marriage. Why be out to please every single person, get accepted by everyone, but you cannot accept yourself? You cannot love yourself? Contradiction after contradiction after contradiction. This is great skin cream / make up for staying young, so why are you smoking to cause aging?

I reflect on this and know that the response to faith is similar too, “I don’t quite… but you know what I mean…” Do the ‘upper’ circles passing judgments and comments all over the place really know what they mean? Do they know they live in permanent contradiction? If they did, surely they would correct themselves and have the words to express it and leave nothing open to “whatever you are interpreting it to be” or “I believe ‘a’ and practice ‘b’, get my drift, nudge nudge…”. I hear no solid answers, no concrete: “This is what I mean, and this is what I’m standing for and living by.” Is it a polite thing? Is it an “I don’t want to be excluded” thing? Is it an “I want to accepted” thing? Or is it a genuine: “I have no idea” thing? Is it a coping method? It appears to me as a polite nothingness in the upper middle arena, whereas the lower arena of people, as crude as they often seem to be, seem to know what they mean, and seem to contradict themselves less. They are also more forthcoming with gratitude and awe and stories of faith and life where hands have gotten dirty and life has been lived in its rawness, no politeness about it… I ponder on my observations and experiences. The lower classes, and those where each day is seen as a blessing, and words are seldom minced, versus those where each day is a labour, something not achieved, something left unsettled… there are so many mixes, so many purposes and none can be seen as ‘the best’ or ‘the right’ way, they all just are. Where do I fit? Is still the question that looms before me, it’s not in the upper, the middle or the lower arenas that are like foreign planets to each other, nor is it alone or exclusively with other ‘mis’fits…

Once again God stepped in. I returned from another ‘upper-middle-class’ function once again tossing questions in my mind and
God took me back to Tolstoy, a book I own by ‘chance’. “Confessions” 1879, pg 56: “The whole life of believers in our circle {upper class} was a contradiction of their faith, but the whole life of the working-folk believers was a confirmation of the meaning of life which their faith gave them.”

Page 56, “In contrast with what I had seen in our circle {upper class}, where the whole of life is passed in idleness, amusement and dissatisfaction, I saw that the whole life of these people {lower class} was passed in heavy labour, and that they were content with life.”

Page 57, “And I began to look well into the life and faith of these people {working class}, and the more I considered it the more I became convinced that they have a real faith which is a necessity to them and alone gives their life a meaning and makes it possible from them to live.”

Page 58, “It came about that the life of our circle, the rich and learned, not merely became distasteful to me, but lost all meaning in my eyes. All our actions, discussions, science and art, presented itself to me in a new light. I understood that it is all self-indulgence, and that to find meaning in it is impossible; while the life of the labouring people, the whole of mankind who produce life, appeared to me in its true significance.”

Having finished ‘The Artist’s Way’ now and yesterday, Palm Sunday, I began ‘The Purpose Driven Life’ once again, I continue to pursue these ideas of the meaning of life, no, the meaning of my life, the way in which I’m meant to leave my mark in some way on this planet, and how I am traveling towards the core of my purpose and my desire to be true to myself and live in love through it all… and I wonder if maybe a little of Tolstoy’s, Cameron’s, Warren’s, Walsch’s and other such souls chatted to mine before mine found its way into this body…

28.2.14 Empathetic Listening

Maybe this is another blog I shouldn’t type… but that won’t erase my observations…

Every year schools meet up in my area to listen to a unified motivational speech. There was a different approach this year as we met up at a school and had a speech on leadership which was followed by team-building exercises of the mentally challenging kind. The initial speech was by a previously high up employee of Alexander Forbes, before that he was in combat with the army. He shared some of his life experiences with us as the parables for his objectives. He opened with a brief intro and then asked the large group of us our ideas on the meaning of leadership. We had some great answers: humility, being inspirational, being motivational, having followers, being a role model, setting the example and so on… He didn’t scribe our points as he had pre-written his definitions on the next page of the flip-chart positioned on the stage: “Aligning people and vision, setting an example, developing, resolving conflict, motivating, maintaining discipline, focusing on results and developing other leaders”. My guess would be that these are the summarised textbook meanings. He emphasised that the most important thing for a leader to do is to develop themselves (life-long learning) and to “trust yourself”, not to host fears of success, failure and/or ridicule and/or the like. His second emphasis was on “respecting and appreciating people’s differences”; and his final emphasis was on listening. Not ‘pretended listening’ or ‘selective listening’, or ‘attentive listening’, but on ‘empathetic listening’. In other words, the listening where you do not use yourself as the reference point, but, instead, you ask lots of questions and build up the real truth the other person holds, not your own truth.

Once the Q&A was done we were all broken into various groups and sent off to competitively win as many tokens as we could. At the end of the afternoon the group with the most tokens would win. Then came the ‘rub’. One of the organising leaders stood up and told the teachers that they could “earn” tokens through seducing the men running each task. I stood there thinking “how odd”, that’s a strange thing to say, never mind discriminatory against the male teachers. I knew I wouldn’t be ‘seducing’ anyone, it’s just not in my character scope, I’ve never been bothered with all that. Anyway, we moved along. In the end, however, it turned out that other teachers did not possess the same inhibitions that I possess!

By the end (completing 4 tasks where we could win a maximum of 2 tokens per task) one group had won 11 tokens! That’s 4 wins and 3 seductions! I was in awe. How on earth could anyone manage to have the self-confidence to go ahead and follow the optional instruction of seducing the task leaders? At the token announcement session they asked for any confessions and the teachers who had flirted away openly laughed and joked about it. It sounded like they had had a lot of fun enjoying the optional flirting task. I had a good giggle and enjoyed their energy and that they were able to stand out in front of all those people and be true to themselves. That takes guts, or audacity, or self-confidence, or however you frame it, it’s quite something, and of course they had the most tokens, so they won.

Then Shannan steps out of lala land and into reality. The fun team-building exercise morphed into a session of moaning that the results were “corrupt like the country”, that the winners were “unfairly and unethically” chosen, that the flirts were xyz (no need to get into details here) and they degraded the exercise. My mind wasn’t computing it all… the instructors told them they could flirt; the whole point was to have fun; how else were they going to have a tie-break between all the teams that got 7 or 8 tokens because we are all highly intelligent… My brain baffled.

At the social function afterwards the battering of the flirts continued over their appearance and how they should be excluded, or repelled for their behaviour… I went silent and didn’t respond to the judgments and harsh criticisms of the people I was in awe of. I had been bleak with the instructors for bringing in the ‘seduction’ option. I thought THAT was unprofessional and unethical. The idea of the task leaders wanting their ego’s brushed up wasn’t something I was happy with. The idea DID NOT come from the teachers. Then my mind went to the hypocrisy of it: If we as teachers give our learners instructions, we expect them to follow them. If we put suggestive ideas in their minds on a different way to do a task, we hope they will follow them. In this scenario we were the learners and the ‘flirts’ were being the learners who take the teacher’s instructions to try a different way as another ‘safe’ option in the ‘controlled’ environment. How can you expect learners to do as you instruct for a task, but adults must do differently to their task instruction? It did not sit well with me… or am I the “unacceptable” teacher for seeing it “incorrectly”?

I sat their in my observational silence. I sat there with this feeling inside that was totally supporting the flirts, totally chuffed that they had fun and enjoyed themselves. I sat there listening to people who had taken the focus off the exercise and placed it on the people who were being true to themselves. . . I sat there wondering if I was the only one with an inner child who was saying: “If I wasn’t going to be judged like those ladies are being judged and ostracized, then maybe I would have had enough self-confidence, self-love, spunk, pizzazz and non-stuffy, non-conservative-social-system-locked-and-imprisoned guts to flirt myself. It would’ve been fun”… I sat there wondering if any of the people so openly raging their opinions had read the quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character”… I sat there thinking that maybe it’s not only empathetic listening “to others” that people should practice, but maybe they should practice empathetic listening “to themselves” too… never mind the: “respect and appreciate people’s differences” part of the talk…

Of course these are only the thoughts in my head… but they ran very deeply for me… I’m not advocating affairs or sexual misconduct by any means. I’m exclusively referring to the exercise and how people responded to what was essentially supposed to be innocent ‘fun’… or do we distrust ourselves so much that we must never have ‘fun’?