Unconditional Acceptance
Today I am working on my yearly " prove you're a good teacher by showing evidence through narrative"
As I was considering today how I "establish an environment that promotes a positive social and emotional learning environment for all learners" i started thinking about something: Acceptance.
One of the things I have stolen from all of my best teachers and try to practice now is the ability to form meaningful relationships with students.
Practically speaking, the act of communicating to students an interest in them as people broader than your own subject and developing a relationship of mutual respect allows you to offer an emotional safe space to grow as well as separates behavior/work habits from the students themselves and hopefully circumvents any adversarial perceptions that can crop up when addressing behaviors.
Its a behavior that is unacceptable, not a student. If you can make a student see that they are valuable to you as a person that distinction becomes clearer. Hopefully they see that you care enough to help them do better.
In a more abstract way it feels more like a form of unconditional acceptance.
Maybe even a more moderated form of unconditional love.
One of the reasons we (who are fortunate enough to experience unconditional love at home) all are able to grow effectively is that mistakes don't effect the perception of how our parents feel about us and we know that.
We know that even if we mess up, break a bone, or knock a ball through a window. Our parents will still be by our side providing the support we need, driving us to urgent care, or getting us some time in the batting cages so we can try again and again.
This unconditional love is the underpinning of one of the primary relationships we experience in our lives. There is a reason that there are a LOT of MOM tattoos out there.
That unconditional love means a lot.
Unconditional love is concerned with the success of someone over the course of a lifetime, and against that scale the small failures shrink to vanishing in terms of the effects on the relationships with parents (this is reductionist and idealized. not everyone has good parental relationships.).
In my teaching an approach of unconditional acceptance is trying to communicate many of these same things, people learn best when they feel like they have the security to try even if they may fail.
That can only come from acceptance of the whole person as a person and the intentional building of effective relationships to foster those environments.
One of the biggest parts of being the ADULT (tm) is realizing that you can choose to do these things as a practice, that supportive communities don't just happen, and that creating good relationships is work.
I am not a particularly warm person. I tend to be pretty emotionally reserved outside my immediate circle of family and friends. Fostering these kinds of relationships of acceptance is something I have to work at. I may feel internally that I accept my students without reservation but I sometimes struggle with effectively conveying that to my students because my natural affect tends to be cooler rather than warmer.
I have to develop specific tools and strategies to communicate in ways that do not feel organic to me because the way I communicate isn't the way everyone communicates.
The same way great teachers have a deep and varied toolbox to illustrate concepts, all of my best teachers have another deep well of ways to communicate their care and acceptance.
While I can't point to a single lesson, concept or class that solidified my best teachers in my mind as my best teachers, i can point to how they made me feel: Valuable, Important, Cared for, Accepted.
I think that essentially the best way to establish an environment that promotes a positive social and emotional learning environment for all learners. Is to do your best to try to engage in intentional practice ( and it is a practice ) of unconditional acceptance.
What does that look like for you? How have you felt it? How can you pass on that feeling?