February 28th, 2024—The poet Kwame Alexander proposes this theory of change for human behavior, “If you want people to change the way they act, change the way they think. If you want to change the way they think, change the way they feel” (NPR Morning Edition, 1-26-24). In an article on physician wellness, Dr. Tait Shanafelt adds to Alexander’s insight on feeling as central to leadership focused change, “Empathy for others promotes leadership reflectiveness more than cognitive task proficiency” (Academic Medicine, vol. 96, no 5, 2021, p. 644). The poet and the physician are pointing to the same aspect of human consciousness and the true center of change. The real and abiding core of change is less the brain, intellect, or reason and more the heart (poetry and empathy). What might a heart-forward theory of change for the poet and the physician offer teachers and learners seeking to foster more humanistic and healing educational spaces?
To begin answering this question let me first position feeling and empathy in relationship to a range of emotions associated with the human capacity to connect to and with another person in distress. A typical initial response to someone experiencing some form of suffering is likely to be sympathy. In its basic form, sympathy is an emotion of recognition. A willingness to see and acknowledge another person’s pain. Sympathy can often expand into empathy which both acknowledges the witnessing of discomfort and adds a willingness to be present with the other person in their suffering. In empathy, the framing moves from “I see you” to “I am with you” in your moment of distress. At its highest level, care for another becomes compassion. It includes both elements of sympathy and empathy while also incorporating action. The stance becomes, “I see you, I am with you, and I will work with you to change the source of your suffering”.
All three elements (sympathy, empathy, and compassion) are evident in the thoughts and actions of teachers who like Alexander and Shanafelt, are attuned to feelings over logic when caring for students in emotional, intellectual, or psychological discomfort. This very human response from educators is often in conflict with the logic of educational policy and practice that tend to constrict and diminish the professionalism of teachers to standardized practices. And as an educator concerned about educational reform it is the teacher’s heart, the source of emotional knowing, that is in need of the most healing and care. When I think about the suffering of teachers it is not my mind that quivers, it is my heart that feels the depth of pain. It is my heart that longs to comfort and walk with teachers in the compassionate act of we are in this together.
When I think of wounded educators in need of healing, I’m reminded of a teacher who, in response to my question of how they were doing in the face of systemic challenges noted that, “All the joy has been tested and legislated away. All that is left is sand and dust”. Twenty years after I first heard this expression of grief, I still feel the sense of loss and broken heartedness. For twenty years I have walked, when possible, with teachers who also find nothing but a desert wasteland where the oasis of their calling to educate had once flourished. True compassion, a willingness to share the struggle with wounded teachers seems like the only way to truly offer the support and care they so desperately need and deserve.
If we want to change the field of education for the better, to make it more humane and less dehumanizing, then Alexander’s framing of act, think, and feel is a good process to follow. Compassion brings everyone into the conversation and solution through the core of their being, their heart. However, there is another side to this motto that needs to be considered. A warning of sorts. There is potential in this linkage of feeling and action as a fulcrum of change that can actually be detrimental to teachers and learners.
For instance, there are numerous cases of educators misinterpreting the actions of students. They might approach the analysis of action not from the feeling of the heart but from the logic of the head. On any given day in any given classroom, it is common to hear a teacher ask a student, “What were you thinking?” From the student’s perspective, the answer may be that the student was acting not out of thought but rather out of feelings of isolation, being misunderstood, undervalued, or discounted. The teacher’s intellect (the tool they have been trained to rely on their training) is in conflict with the student’s emotional center. In a worse case scenario, the teacher might abandon reason and instead resort to the emotion of shame to control behavior. In this way, Alexander’s theory of change can work in reverse; the emotion of shame leads to self-diminishment leading to actions of resistance as a student seeks to assert their humanity.
However, when considering the more positive formulation of act, think, and feel there is much that can be productively applied in an educational context for both teachers and students. What are pedagogical practices for stimulating feelings and emotions of compassion? A regular practice in my teaching is the use of poetry and wisdom stories to enliven and personalize the course readings. I select poems relevant to the lesson of the day, read the poem out loud—poetry is meant to be read out loud—and offer a moment of silence for the wisdom of the poem to find the heart. I then invite (not demand) students to share a word, image, or phrase that captured their attention and seemed to connect to the assigned readings. Sometimes the ensuing conversation is robust and uncovers understandings that would otherwise be missed. And sometimes the conversation lags and ends quickly. In both cases students hear from their colleagues personal stories and experiences that otherwise would have been left unshared. And over the quarter as more and more stories of teaching are shared, stories of love and stories of loss, the level of compassion for each other rises.
If the ultimate goal of education is change in student behavior then the insights of the poet Alexander and the physician Shanafelt seem relevant to that purpose. Change, contrary to the dominant Western intellectual tradition, begins with the heart not the head. Change in the way a person thinks might be the end goal but that process is best centered on compassion first. This means a willingness to walk with a classmate who, because of their pain, may see and experience the world very differently. Compassion doesn’t accept the premise that one person is right and the other person wrong in their views. Instead it says, “I see you, I am with you, and I will work with you to change the source of your suffering.”