Having empathy in our expectations

Daffodils don’t surprise us, but people do. (Image by larsoncoach)

I was hanging out in a bus station (as one does), eavesdropping (as one does) as an an older man made conversation with the slightly younger one behind the counter.

“So…do you get free travel?”

“Yes.”

“Year round, or just two weeks a year?”

“Year round.”

“Ahhh…but you don’t have year round vacation,” said the older man with a note of regret in his voice.

“I’m working on that,” said the man behind the counter.

“Oh yeah? What are you doing?”

“I’m cultivating an appreciation of beauty,” said the man behind the counter.

At this point the older man couldn’t continue the conversation. He asked the man behind the counter several times to repeat himself, but was not able to grasp his meaning or even his words. He said something like, “Sounds like a good plan,” and excused himself.

Perhaps it was the heavy foreign accent of the man behind the counter that prevented the older man from understanding him, but I think it was more than that. The traveler had seen his conversational partner as merely a bus station employee, working under fluorescent lights all day, with a small life and an even smaller inner life. He wasn’t expecting the conversation to veer into an existential direction, and he was not prepared for it.

We should all strive to turn our lives into leisure by developing a high level of appreciation of the beauty of everyday life. I suggest that we also, especially when working with children, be alert to the possibility that, like the older traveler, they may not have the tools to see what we see; however, we should also be ready for them, like the poet behind the counter at the bus station, to surprise us with what they can see.

I recently spent a few days with my tiny nephew, who is just eight months old. We took a family trip to the zoo, where most animals seemed to be invisible to him. He did react to the pandas, but that’s it; all of the other animals apparently, to him, blended in with the landscape. There was no way to help him to go beyond that. He was like the android Dolores on HBO’s Westworld, unable to make sense of things he didn’t have a frame of reference for: “That doesn’t look like anything to me.”

On the other hand, that same weekend, my nephew began using baby signs (adapted from American Sign Language) to communicate. It took his mother a moment to notice that he was signing because it was so unexpected. She had been using signs for weeks and assumed that they were as invisible to him as the tigers at the zoo. She almost didn’t see that her baby had begun to communicate at a new level.

When parents or teachers place themselves and their expectations at the center of their experience, they run the risk of missing or misunderstanding what their students can and cannot do.

“I started to read when I was five, therefore I’m concerned that my child is slow.”

“It usually takes three weeks for students to master this concept — this student must have cheated.”

To avoid these kinds of distortions, we have to center our work on the learner. We have to listen, observe, and adapt, doing our very best to empathize with their experience rather than viewing them through the lens of our own. When we find ourselves unable to do this, we should consciously acknowledge it to ourselves.

Once we understand a concept, it’s hard to imagine how someone else cannot. And when we, ourselves, don’t understand something, it’s hard to imagine how someone else can, especially if they are younger or less educated than we are. When we are mentoring others, we have to let go of our own biases and concentrate on what the learner is capable of doing and understanding, no matter how frustrating or surprising it may be from our perspective..

Each one of us is on our own developmental timetable, progressing through life in our own way. Even if we can’t do something today, there’s no reason we won’t be able to do it in the future. And when we’re ready for the next step, we’re ready, even if it might seem premature to someone else.

The best teachers are flexible and mindful, keeping an eye out for the signs of comprehension and competence. They know that these signs won’t always look the same or appear on a predictable timeline. That’s the magic of it — and the strong teacher will be ready.