When the Veil Drops

I had a high school math teacher who I don't think liked me back then. He had a short temper with me a few times, and it felt like an overreaction. Looking back on it now, I can see that he was likely responding to who he thought I was, not who I really was. Most of us have had that experience, where what we're actually saying isn't being heard because of the filter someone has for us. It happens between teachers too.

When I get in front of a class at the start of the semester, there are certain looks that I'll sometimes get from kids - seeming looks of judgment, or superiority, or something - and I'll notice a veil drop between me and them, a translucent wall. The veil is a sort of filter. How the kid looks, how the kid talks, will get bent by the filter, blurred in such a way that the kid continues to look and sound how I would expect them to. A self-reinforcing system, courtesy of confirmation bias.

When the veil drops, we're not seeing others as they really are.

As humans, we all do this (there are evolutionary reasons for these cognitive biases). There are two mechanisms at work. One is the mechanism of keeping myself safe. The wall acts as a self-reinforcing filter, and it constantly reminds me to avoid being too vulnerable with this kid (or colleague or stranger), because it could be dangerous.

The second mechanism is the shortcut mechanism. We create mental shortcuts: we categorize people and places and things in order to be a little lazy. It would be exhausting to see everything as it is all the time, seeing each thing newly and freshly. The shortcut mechanism reduces brain processing and allows us to conserve calories.

What are the impact of these filters on you?

I suspect that neither of the justifications above are worth that impact. So, how do we get rid of the filter so that we can see the person who's actually there?

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The Special Sauce is not about Technique

Most adults can think back to a special teacher, one who impacted them in some valuable way. Big or small, the impact of this teacher (or teachers) is profound - they touched some key part of who we are, they spoke to us in a way that resonated with our inner self.

Who do you have in mind?

If we put all of these teachers in the same room together, the ones that connected most to me and the ones that connected most to you, we’d see that they’re quite different people with different teaching techniques.* Men, women, young, old, positive, irascible. Some were lecturers, some were lab scientists, some told jokes, some had impossibly high standards. There’d be almost no discernible similarity among them that would point to the “special sauce”, the way to have a meaningful impact on students.

The only clear similarity among them is that they’re all human. And so are we.

There’s something in who we are as living beings that allows us to connect with other living beings. The life and beauty and innate well-being in who I am acknowledging the life and beauty and innate well-being in who you are. This isn’t the key gap in education that I’m seeking to fill, but it is the way in, the way through the door, the access to filling the gap.

The special sauce in teaching is not about the technique. It’s not about the perfect lesson plan, the organized handouts, the classroom decorations, the pedagogical approach. Yes, those things matter, and they’re certainly ingredients of an effective, well-structured learning environment. But they’re not ingredients of the special sauce.

Instead, the special sauce is something much more special than technique. It’s ancient, universal, and grounded. This special sauce is infused in some way within the teaching. In fact, it comes from within the teacher. And it speaks to something within you.

The special sauce is a teacher’s capacity to awaken truth within us.*

And there's actually nothing "special" about it. It's a capacity we all have to tap into who we really are.

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* So much gratitude to Parker Palmer for the ideas noted and these beautiful lines his book, The Courage to Teach: “The power of our mentors is not necessarily in the models of good teaching they gave us, models that may turn out to have little to do with who we are as teachers. Their power is in their capacity to awaken a truth within us.”

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Schools: Access to Being in Love with Life.

There are gaps in how we do education. I want us to fill those gaps.

I want schools to give students reliable access to confidence, creativity, and clarity. I want our young people to be grounded, self-expressed, and prepared to explore and develop skills in areas they’re interested in. I want students graduating high school with reliable access to being in love with life.

As models of adulthood for every student, teachers need this education too. So I'm starting with us.

This year, I’m working on a project addressing this gap in our education. The project will guide teachers (and others!) to greater levels of satisfaction, enjoyment, ease, and peace of mind in their lives and their work.

I’ve seen that I am most effective in my teaching when I am in that zone, yet effective tools and techniques to consistently achieve this experiences are not part of the typical training and professional development workshops that schools have teachers participating in. In fact, these tools, techniques, and understanding are not typically in any of our traditional education!

While this project is aimed at heightening teachers’ experience of their own lives, this project is actually about our students and society itself. There’s a missed opportunity in the way we typically educate young people, and that missed opportunity has little to do with teaching technique and almost nothing to do with subject content. But it has nearly everything to do with a teacher's access to their true nature.

This blog is my twice-weekly attempt to refine my own thinking and planning and to receive helpful feedback from you, my reader. Thank you for exploring this path with me. ❤️

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