Days 360-361: Fear of parents - a teacher dilemma

2911&01122013

Neither approach really works - and might not even really exist.

I commit myself to explore performing situations from the perspective of allowing others to witness my learning process through whatever mistakes and misgivings I manifest.

I commit myself to continue mapping out who I believe and perceive I should be and how I apply myself according to this belief/perception, and to thus investigate what is causing me to feel burdened, resulting in the pain/friction in my shoulders.

(From Day 358: SF on "Who I should be")

I return to the commitment statements above in the light of recent events. We had a little theatre show for the friends and family of the participants of the children's theatre course I am directing, and I had to talk to the audience, direct the situation and present myself as the director (“the one who carries main responsibility”). I was nervous and burdened by this, and it was visible in me as a general restlessness, seriousness and stabs of pain in my shoulders. I spoke to the audience from within the nervousness, but thanks to what I had written before I didn't take it as a self-judgement point, but realized that if nervousness is who I am right now, why not let others see that. I am young, inexperienced and new to many things, and I have in no way claimed to be a master at what I am doing, so exposing myself within my process of growing into a “professional” serves me better than attempting to hide it when it can't really be completely hidden anyway.

So the main points here are 1) my relationship to performing / being visible / gathering attention and 2) who I believe and perceive I “should be” as the director of this course.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel nervous about performing in front of an audience because I was afraid I would not fulfill the expectations the audience (the parents – authorities/”owners” - of the course participants) and that my incompetence would be exposed.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive and believe that the parents of the child “own” the child and thus have the right to dictate what the child is exposed to and how the child is educated, not realizing that this perception is extremely shortsighted as within it I accept and allow and excuse parents to raise their children as it pleases them even if the results would be destructive to the reality as a whole, simply because I am afraid to face the reaction of the parents when I question this paradigm of parenting and education.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not consider children as the future creators of our common world, not realizing that even if a child is raised shut out from the world according to what the educator believes and perceives the world to be, the child will still affect all of our shared reality as what is real is undeniably HERE no matter how much one would try to protect another from it.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to play along with the parents' fear of their children becoming messed up by “apologizing” for my position as a person of influence in their children's lives. (This point needs elaboration.)

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if the parents actually do have expectations towards me that I do not fulfill as who I am now – which I cannot know as this subject has not been discussed with the parents – it is not my responsibility if they react to their world not being what they wanted it to be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel guilty for not being what I believe and perceive others to want their world to be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my belief/perception of “what parents want” out of the adults who direct their children is based on the assumption that parents are possessive of their children and afraid of the world “screwing them up” - because if I had children right now, this is who I would be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that with this assumption that parents are authoritative, possessive and protective I support parents to live this way.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my assumption of parents being authoritative, possessive and protective is visible in my actions as I am afraid of interacting with children as who I am but instead try to be who I believe and perceive I am expected to be (a “good educator”), thus not interacting with children relaxed, breathing and present but instead interacting through tension, fear and from a distance – thus allowing my fear of failure / fear of judgement flow directly to the children and through them into the world.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define “director” to mean “the one who carries responsibility above everyone else”, within this charging the role of the director with expectations and assigning a single person work and responsibilities that should not and don't have to be carried by just one person but can in fact be shared among many individuals and some even by the group under directing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that if the course “fails”, I am to blame, not realizing that there are numerous factors contributing to the outcome of the course, not just myself, and that I cannot thus pass all the responsibility of the outcome on myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that the course will be a “failure”, with this meaning that the kids will not learn anything / “enough” and that the kids will not enjoy the course, this resulting in the parents thinking it was a waste of their money, my seniors thinking I am not suited for this work and the children perceiving me as a failure.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that the kids will not learn “enough”, with this meaning enough to proceed into actual theatre projects and/or enough to understand what being an expressive human being is about – not realizing that especially the latter is quite the humongous goal to be achieved in just 9 months even if I'd meet them every single day.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to “save” these children from the influence of the world, not realizing that I cannot save anyone as everyone ultimately makes their own choices.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to “save” others standing within and as the statement “don't be like that because you're ruining my world for me” - don't be a mess because life would be a lot more enjoyable (for me) if everyone got their shit together.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust that the kids will learn something of value during this year as I have not realized that a human being's learning process is always running and cannot be switched off, but that what they learn might not be what I want them to learn but what I show them through my own living and application.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself for not being “ready” for teaching children and thus only teaching them my patterns of nervousness, not realizing that I am also showing them (indirectly through my application) my struggle and learning process with my misgivings, thus giving an example in self-correction, self-attention, self-forgiveness, self-responsibility and self-care. *

* Realizing this just now brought me to tears, because I don't really give myself any credit for the process I have already walked, but only blame myself for all the things that are yet unresolved. I've sometimes gotten feedback from others that they would love to have me teaching their children, or that they would have loved to have a teacher like me when they were children themselves, but I have never really understood why people say that and what on earth they see in me, and I have shoved this feedback aside by thinking that “I'm a fraud, they don't know that I really just suck as a person”. But I guess that admitting to being imperfect is a commendable quality in itself, as well as actively doing something about it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that the kids will not enjoy the course, not realizing that they have shown no signs of such, quite the opposite: almost everyone attends each and every meeting and participates in every rehearsal we do.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust myself to be able to read the signs of dissatisfaction that the kids do express and to act accordingly by addressing the issue and mapping out possible solutions.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make it a point of self-judgement when/as/if a child expresses dissatisfaction during the course, not realizing that the dissatisfaction a child expresses is nothing personal towards me even though I am the one who has designed the activities but rather disdain towards the activity – a point I can then assist and support the child with.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as no set of rehearsals can function perfectly for a large group of individuals, it is close to impossible to reach everyone's most potent learning zone with the same structure, and that in order for me to teach a group of this size within the time limit I have got, I need to adjust, re-evaluate and re-design my rehearsal structures according to the circumstances as I go: every meeting needs to be thought again.

I commit myself to focus on relaxing myself when I am directing the children by focusing on my breath.

I commit myself to investigate what I'm trying to hide from the children when and as I interact with them, for example by looking at what I avoid.

I commit myself to further investigate my fear of the children's parents.

I commit myself to map out the responsibilities I believe and perceive myself to have as the course director and to share what I can to others and let go of those that are imaginary.

I commit myself to design the course by mapping out through listening and communication where the children are standing, structuring the course on my basic principles but keeping in mind that process is a lifelong journey that might not show immense results in just a few months.

I commit myself to reserve myself an hour for reflection after the course meetings and an hour for planning before the next meeting.