Whose Side Am I On?

Leadership vs Collaboration

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Whose side are we on? This question resonates with teachers (I originally wrote about this topic for a music teachers’ blog) but really, this is not just for teachers. It is a useful question to ask ourselves as colleagues, supervisors, parents, and as learners.

In fact, it can be pretty tricky to distinguish teaching from learning. Ultimately, even if we have a teacher to guide us, we teach ourselves. Sometimes, deliberately thinking from a teacher’s point of view can help us learn. After all, teachers cannot force students to learn; the best teachers can only take us on the best path for us, helping with the right perspectives at the right times, introducing the next needed technique and providing opportunities to practice what we’re learning. The teacher’s job (and therefore the learner’s as well) is to clear obstacles in our path (see my article about New Year’s resolutions that actually work).

Teaching is like healing. Doctors can’t magically impose health; they can only give the body a chance to heal itself. They can remove pain, help our bodies attack invading bacteria, give acupuncture, herbs or massage, remove obstructing lumps or readjust body parts — all efforts to clear a path for our body to heal itself.

So the big question today is: whose side are we on? If we teach, are we on the student’s side? If we are learning, are we on our own side, or are we imposing something from the outside? If we’re parents, are we on our kids’ side? If a supervisor, on the side of the employee?

The “other” side is what we could call the administrative side. In teaching, as in many other activities, the administrative part involves lecturing, prodding, judging, and testing. These activities are an important part of teaching — they involve laying out the road map, giving directions, setting standards, and measuring progress.

But teachers who think that the administrative side of things is what teaching is all about tend to focus primarily on control, sometimes at the expense of learning. At worst, they keep everyone’s nose to the grindstone until both student and teacher run out of steam. (Again, this applies if we are teaching ourselves and imposing too much judgment or forced willpower, and of course, applies to supervisors, parents, etc.) Every task from the administrative point of view is part of a to-do list and is measurable — minutes practiced, minutes taught, exercises done, pieces learned. Students become afraid of making a mistake or getting a wrong answer. When the student accomplishes something, the administrative teacher only wishes it had been done sooner (or in the case of a learner, “why am I so dumb, why didn’t I see this before?”), and moves straight to the next task. Discipline in this context is external — students either follow directions or suffer consequences. Much of this process is fear-based.

Being on the side of the student involves collaborating, appreciating, and supporting the student, aiming toward goals that both student and teacher hold in common. This means having the empathy to understand the student's experience, to perceive and help remove obstacles to learning, rather than simply demanding that they be overcome. When a task is accomplished, informed appreciation (as opposed to generic praise) is real nourishment for both student and teacher. Discipline in this context is internal — students develop a desire to work harder towards their goals.

In the end, we need a balance. A teacher who is only on the student's side is one who shies away from setting goals and standards, and waits to be directed by the student's interests, even though the student may not know enough to have a reasonable road map in mind.

The most experienced teachers have “seen it all,” meaning they have a sense of how differently students might process things in terms of pace, detail, and response to difficulties. These teachers tend to avoid trying to impose wisdom or discipline on a student. If they’ve been paying attention to their students, they can find ways to introduce the next step a student needs to help them improve from where the student is now, not from where they “should” be. Empathy and an understanding of the learning process makes this possible. A mastery of the subject matter alone isn’t enough, which is why a great performer may or may not be a good teacher.

Learners, being their own teachers, can use a good dose of empathy for themselves, and an appreciation of their own learning process. (This does not mean deciding “I’m a visual learner” or “I’m concrete sequential,” etc., which are broad categories that have been shown to be unhelpful and often inaccurate. Here’s a book for you about that!)

Increasingly, our school systems seem to emphasize the administrative side of education, because the results are more measurable and can make the teacher (and school system) appear to be on top of things and improving, at least on paper, as presented to school boards or other administrators. Students often pick up on these attitudes and think that this is how learning is supposed to be.

But many of our most useful skills, such as playing a musical instrument, are not easily measurable, and learning these skills cannot be delegated only to the administrative side of teaching.

At every level, whether thinking of our broader purposes and policies, or at specific lessons as we deal with a student who hasn't practiced (which could be ourselves!), or one who has partially accomplished a task, a most useful question to keep coming back to is: “Whose side am I on? Is this a time to provide leadership or collaboration?”