Just one reflection

“Select the students who are least likely to do well, but in all your communications with them, convey the idea that you have selected them for this special program not because you fear they will fail, but because you are confident they can succeed.” Who Gets to Graduate? by Paul Tough

If the modern American schooling system—or perhaps it is endemic to modern Western educational systems—has a fault, it is that we become so absorbed in logic and rationality that we forget that the other people involved in the system with us have feelings. Every person comes from a particular background, with idiosyncratic influences and unique ideas, but the range of human emotion is not as broad as the profound individualism we are drilled in may make us believe. Thoughts are unique, but emotions are not. Every person has emotions, and while particular responses to triggering events are particular to the individual and influenced by background, everyone is going to respond to, for example, rejection, with a negative spectrum affect. More simply, some people will feel sad, some angry, some hurt, but everyone will in some way feel bad about feeling rejected. As a more concrete example, I felt extremely negative about a certain assignment for a class once, long ago in the dawn of time, which showed up as the particular negative emotion of rebellion, accompanied by the rebellious act of doing the minimum required for the assignment. That is an emotion particular to me, influenced by my background and the particular interpretation I placed on the situation, but the far more common one, which I heard expressed all around me in response to the same assignment, was anxiety about the length and requirements. The same events that inspired anger, frustration and rebellion in me inspired anxiety in others—a different emotion, yes, but similar in being negative.

 In addition to not thinking about other’s feelings, we tend to underestimate their intelligence. Not only do emotions have limited range, humans are very skilled at reading other humans’ emotions, and it is a survival trait that develops at a very young age. In other words, students can see, not what we think of them, but how we feel about them, especially if it is negative. And so I come around to the quote that I began this impression and reflection with—that we teachers must believe in our students. Nor is it a situation of “against all odds, I have faith in your ability to conquer” malarkey—no. Students can succeed, if they are only given the appropriate tools—and the appropriate tools have little to do with ability and much to do with emotional coping. In David Yeager’s interventions, at UT and elsewhere, a mind-bogglingly short intervention is correlated with a spectacular swing in statistic—from 82% of students from the at-risk demographic (at risk of dropping out, or taking more than four years to graduate), up to 86% of them completed at least 12 credits their first semester of college. Those from privileged backgrounds (that is, not African-American, Latino, or first generation college students) complete 12 credit hours in their first semester at a rate of 90%, apparently unaffected by treatment—so the correlation between a sort of flexible mind-set (that everyone encounters difficulty and feels out of place in college, but that does not need to stop you from being successful) and completing those twelve credits, which are statistically correlated with graduating on time and at all, is impressive. In I Corinthians there is a verse which says that nothing “has come upon you except what is common to mankind” (10:13)—but as we teachers forget that students have feelings and can pick up on how we feel about them, students forget or never have known that every feeling which can be felt has been felt, and that they are not alone. This thought, this poisonous “I don’t belong here,” has been thought millions of times by millions of people, and it is all too easy for teachers to reinforce—yet the results of its reinforcement are disastrous.