VIPULA MEHTA
I have often wondered what it truly means to learn with children: if it is about absorbing their experiences and delighting in the candour of their unfiltered utterances, if it is being open to the newness of their ideas, if it is about being fully present in their journeys, or if it is something a little more and a little personal perhaps?
I remember when I first started teaching, I was often frustrated by how there were sometimes no obvious solutions for conflicts. To my inherently mathematical brain, it just didn’t make sense; I wanted clear answers. I wanted to know just what to say to a child who had brought chocolates to school, how to respond if a child asked me why something was not allowed, or how to redirect a conversation that didn’t feel right. I remember often feeling uncomfortable about how unconvincing my responses sounded even to me. I did not know then that my discomfort was stemming from a desire to appear sure and knowledgeable— a desire that had been fuelled through years of exposure to a system that valued information and surety above everything else.
I cannot recall when exactly ‘I’m not sure!’ and ‘I don’t know but we could look it up together!’ slipped into my everyday vocabulary in class, but I do remember feeling liberated by this discovery that I did not need to have all the answers.
Something else I discovered almost magically over time was that, as long as I stayed with the questions long enough, the answers would begin to take shape in my head and start easing into conversations with children. With each passing year, I found myself responding to the same situation with a little more patience and a lot more understanding. My ability to deal with conflicts evolved over time too. ‘You know it’s not allowed!’ gradually shifted to ‘I understand but why do you think it’s not ok to do this?’ and sometimes in moments, when I really wanted to understand where children were coming from, it even took the form of a problem-solving exercise: ‘What do you think will work?’ Those discussions, where I may have facilitated a conversation but remained just a listener for the rest of it, remain some of my most favourite as a teacher!
I remember after a particularly frustrating landcare class, in which children had been completely distracted, I asked them what would make them work with more care and involvement the next time. The almost unanimous answer, though it took different forms in different voices, was that a reward would be the most efficient way to achieve this. So, I reminded children that as a space, we did not believe in rewards or punishments and that they would have to come up with something more creative than this. Not surprisingly, the question that followed was why not. Tempted as I was to share all my understanding of Krishnamurti’s teachings with them, I remembered to pause and asked them to think about why rewards might not work. The answers left me surprised, coming as they were from ten-year-olds. One child expressed that if one group got more free time than the other, several children would get really upset. Another child felt that their entire focus would shift to the reward— which in this case was for the free time to begin—and that their involvement would actually suffer in the process. Still another voice chimed in saying that it would stop working as a motivator after some time, because they’d want a little more free time in each landcare class. In that moment I realised that almost everything I had ever thought about rewards, and some more, was already right there in their little heads. I just had to remember to ask the right questions.
Almost ironically, the more convinced I became about some of these ideas, the more my ability to be tentative grew too, perhaps because it was a conviction that came from having stayed with something long enough, and tentativeness that came from knowing that there was still more to discover. What I’d viewed earlier as a lack of clarity became something else, an openness to what I had not learnt yet, along with a growing comfort with uncertainty. I began to be ‘okay’ with conversations not concluding the way I had intended them to go, sometimes even allowing them to flow without a destination in mind. If an answer was at odds with what I was trying to get at, it was still a welcome response. The more I gave students the space to share what they wanted to say instead of what I wanted to hear, the more clearly their distinct voices began to emerge. Occasionally, it even allowed me to see perspectives that I had not discovered in multiple readings of a book. During conversations in civics classes, discussions about freedom, justice and equality took on deeper hues than I had anticipated, often forcing me to question biases I had not even thought I had.
As I saw myself changing and growing, I began to see children as a work in progress too. I learnt to be more patient with the changes they were going through. This is especially helpful in working with adolescents who are a new version of themselves every few weeks! In almost every situation in which they act uncharacteristically or even unkindly, it is useful to remember that it is often just a phase.
Another very precious thing that I discovered along the way is the ability to openly say ‘I made a mistake!’ One year, I had a particularly busy timetable on Mondays. The last class of the day was a combined circle time session in which I was often tired and impatient. During one such session, a child made a witty but slightly misplaced remark. On another day, I would have just smiled at it and moved on, but it threw me off a little then and I reacted quite sharply to it. This bothered me all evening, especially because there was nothing terribly wrong about what the child had said; I had just been too tired to see the humour in it. The next morning, I went in and apologized first thing. I saw blank faces in response. ‘When did you get upset, aunty? We didn’t notice, aunty. Are you sure it was yesterday, aunty? I smiled and said to them: ‘This is the best thing about working with children; they forget easily.’ There was more to come though. That year, I had fixed a day for assignments to be submitted every week. This happened to be the same day. So, a few minutes after this exchange, I asked the children to turn in their work. I saw blank faces in response again. ‘Which assignment, aunty? Are you sure it was due this Tuesday, aunty? Was it for English or Social Studies, aunty?’ I smiled and thought to myself: this is also the worst thing about working with children; they remember nothing.
The interaction was a reminder for me that it is children’s ability to be in the moment that allows them to be both as forgetful and as forgiving as they are. Through it, I learnt to be a little more forgiving too, to give them the same space to make mistakes as well. Conversations shifted from being about the mistake to understanding what had prevented them from doing something, or likewise had prompted them to do something else. We underestimate the power of kindness in the face of a mistake. Somehow, the more calm and respectful I am in addressing something, the more prompt children are in fixing it, almost as if they want to reciprocate that kindness. Not surprisingly, the effect often lasts longer too.
This is not to diminish the necessity of having to be firm sometimes, or to dismiss our responsibility as adults. Is it however possible to hold that responsibility without having to also assert my authority? Is it likewise possible for me to clearly express what I need to say, while still leaving room for a child to question where I’m coming from?
The hardest and most rewarding conversations that I’ve had with students over the years are the ones in which I responded as an equal, where I was able to set aside the weight of my experience and expectations. Those conversations ceased to be about me and became about the children instead, about what they were going through in that moment. What I also discovered was that the more vulnerable I was in front of children, the more willing they were to open up and speak about their discomforts and fears. In those moments in which I was able to share my struggles with something, conversations came alive with more such stories. Likewise, when there was space for children to question me, and call me out on what I was doing wrong, is also when I learnt the most.
Some of this extended to my journey as a parent, too. Each time I grew a little as a teacher, I grew as a parent as well and each time my perspective shifted as a teacher or a parent, I know I grew a little as an individual too. If I look back at my journey of almost a decade as an educator, my experiences as an individual and as a parent seem to blend into one another, to the point of it becoming hard to distinguish one identity from the other.
This to me is perhaps the essence of learning with children: the understanding that we are all a work in progress, the comfort of not having all the answers but also knowing that one will get to them in time, the ability to admit one’s mistakes and to be vulnerable, a shift from the affection we have in our hearts for children to something closer to respect, and working together to create a space that is free of fear.
* Vipula coordinates the middle school at The Valley School. She can be reached at vipula.mehta@thevalleyschool.info