Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome back to Talking elt, the easiest place to learn about the big issues in language teaching. Today we're continuing our theme of compassion based language education. I'm joined as before by, by Professor Sarah Mercer, author of our new book titled Compassion Based Language Education, and by Charlotte Raunce, our senior professional development consultant. In this third episode, we'll be focusing in on what we really mean by teaching with compassion. What does that actually look like in the classroom? I want to turn now and look a bit more at what that actually means in practice in the classroom.
So. And particularly starting with the first part where you talk about teaching with compassion, we're also going to look at teaching for compassion. And I know they overlap at times, but focus a bit more on. On the teaching with compassion. And I think one of the things that you bring out very strongly in your book is the importance of the teacher learner relationship. That's kind of at the heart of it.
So I think my first question is, well, what do you think that relationship should be like? You know, what, what would. And I just want to say, when you read the book, one of the nice things that you start the book with is, is getting people to think about what their ideal classroom would be. Sometimes we're so weighed down by our constraints that we kind of don't take that time to think about the ideal classroom. So focusing more on the teacher learner relationship, what should it be?
[00:01:53] Speaker C: I don't think I can answer that because I think it's different for everybody. And I think perhaps one of the key things that I hope I've communicated in the book is that everybody has to have their own authenticity about how they enact this relationship. So when you ask people to describe a teacher that they remember that they loved, they have very, very different teachers. I had a French teacher who I loved to pieces, but she scared the pants off me. But I knew that she wanted me to learn French. I knew that she was invested in me. I knew that she cared for me as a teacher and that she wanted me. And I had just nothing but the deepest respect and a little bit of healthy fear from her. But I loved her and she was great with humor in the classroom. She was never mean. That she was very strict.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:40] Speaker C: Now that works for her. And the kind of teacher that she was and the kind of person that I was, it isn't the kind of teacher that, well, there's a little bit of me in there perhaps, maybe, but we all have our own sort of authenticity. You know, we all have a different way of being as a teacher. But I think it's about wanting to build relationships, wanting to connect with learners, to help them feel that they belong, that they've been seen and that they've been accepted for who they are. And there are lots of sort of different ways of going about it. So how teachers build those relationships, I think will be quite individual. I think they will vary according to the authenticity of the individual teacher. And what is right for one teacher won't work for another.
But being guided by this idea of helping learners to feel cared for, to feel seen, to feel that they belong, to feel that they can be courageous, to be who they authentically are, and that this teacher will nurture and accept and respect and nurture that. I think those. That's the driving ideal vision I have of relationships. But how that's enacted in specific actions I think will vary.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: I think that's really important because I think one of the doubts when I've spoken to teachers around this subject is I'm not in a school or in a classroom where I can be compassionate because I need to be authoritative.
[00:04:13] Speaker C: I don't see any conflict in those two things at all.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think that's. I think that's a thing to bring. It would be really good to bring that up.
[00:04:22] Speaker C: I think one of the things that I talk about with my trainee teachers is being friendly and being a friend are two very different things.
And being strict and being authoritative. But caring for your learners are also perfectly compatible. And in very many cases, learners benefit from having strict guidelines, consistency, transparency, that they know what to expect, they know what's expected of them. So I don't see any conflict at all. I think it is an act of. And let's go back to what compassion means. It's about having the courage and criticality and the caring. So it's about. Learners benefit from knowing where their boundaries are, what's expected of them. They need to have transparency in why they've got this grade or what's expected of them, and that they can trust their teacher to be consistent. That if their teacher says this is what's going to happen and this is how we're going to do it, that that's then what happens. So a compassionate isn't. And anything goes. Let's just be friendly and let's have fun and let's. That's not what compassion is. Sometimes the most compassionate thing to do is to have very truthful, very honest conversations with your learners, which are not always comfortable. And we're back to this notion of courage. So compassionate sometimes requires you to be courageous, to have those conversations that might not be comfortable but are actually in the benefit of your learners, that they're going to understand what's expected, what they need to do, where things are working well, where things are not working well. So compassionate isn't blind kindness and anything goes. Yeah. Compassionate does sometimes require you to be quite strict and to be quite clear about your boundaries and your lines. And learners will benefit from that.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: I'm wholly in agreement with Sarah on this. You know, I, I, if I had words.
Yeah, you, you asked at the beginning, you know, what, what does a compassionate classroom look like? And to me, it looks like a place where my students trust me and I trust them. I think that trust is something, you know, we, we say things like, trust is earned, but trust has to be given.
And, you know, when my students are in my classroom, they're trusting me. They are giving me their trust to say, you know, okay, Charlotte, you are my teacher. You're going to help me get from A2 to B1 in my English or you're going to do that. But, but there are so many layers to that trust. You know, I'm trusting you not to laugh at me when I make a mistake. I'm trusting you not to judge me if I get something wrong. I'm trusting you to correct me if I don't understand what's happening. I'm putting myself in your hands. And likewise, the same is true for a teacher with the students.
And we have to give trust over to them, to allow them the space to make their own mistakes, to develop, to learn. And you can't do that without authority. You can't do that without boundaries. You know, boundaries are a key part of the classroom. They're a key part of the teacher student relationship. We can talk about things like teacher burnout. You know, if you don't have boundaries, that's going to happen to you very, very, very quickly. And it's, you know, yes, you can, you can be compassionate, but it doesn't always mean being sweet. It doesn't always mean being kind. It doesn't always mean laughing and joking. Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is putting your foot down and saying, no, we need to focus on this. This is not how we behave in a classroom.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: Well, and in fact, it's almost, it can be the reverse. That the laughing and joking can actually be uncompassionate, can sometimes be cruel, because I don't know if you've had the same experience I've Sat in the classroom, seeing the back of a classroom, seeing a teacher highlighting a mistake by a student in a way that drew laughter from the others. So the teacher had a nice moment of getting laughter from the other students.
But you could see the student who made the mistake was kind of cringing in embarrassment. They had been, in a way, their trust had been broken with that teacher. So that kind of laughy happiness is not necessarily a sign of compassion. It can, it can almost be the opposite.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Sarah nodding intently there.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: I don't know. This is quite an old film now, but do you, do you remember the film called Precious?
[00:09:06] Speaker A: I have seen it, but I've only seen it once.
Maybe for the benefit of the audience, you can unpack it.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: I think the actors or it won Oscars and I'm struggling to remember exactly which year, but it's over 10 years old, I think maybe, maybe 15 or certainly some years old. But it is based in education. It's a teacher with one of her students has a really difficult life, home life, which is not visible to the teacher at all. It is hidden. And the student looks like someone who's just very unresponsive, unmotivated. And it takes a lot of fierce caring for that teacher to find out what really the. The problem was. For me, it was such a model of compassion without fluffiness, you know, it was, it was. It's a great model. If you go. Go back and look it up, I will do.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: I. I love an education film. I absolutely love an education.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: It's not an easy watch, but it's. It's a great film.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: And you, you mentioned trust there and the importance of trust. I think I was just wondering if we could talk about some ways that teachers could look at how to build trust in their classes.
[00:10:37] Speaker C: Yes, you're looking at me.
Trust is not something that's done through one activity. You have to build it over time.
And also this is an old model, but a useful model is, do you remember the Stephen Covey thing that he had this. That you invest in relationships and you have like a bank account. You have this emotional relational bank account and that you make payments into it through acts of understanding, trust, relationship building, conversations over time. And sometimes you're going to make a withdrawal because you'll make a mistake as a teacher. Because we're human, that's what we do. Sometimes we get it wrong. But if you have built up these reserves in your bank account, which, with your relationship with this learner, they'll let you off that one mistake and you can Start to reinvest in that relationship. And I like that idea. I like that metaphor. I like this idea that relationships are something we invest in. We put in day after day, week after week. It's those micro conversations we have at the door. It's the remembering things about the learner, getting their name right, pronouncing it correctly, involving them in discussions, noticing if someone's being left out, making sure that they're integrated. It's the thousand and one little acts on an everyday basis that build up trust in a relationship. And it's about. Charlotte talked before. She talked about the fact that you have these little acts of self disclosure that you give trust. You give trust by telling them things about yourself when it's appropriate that you say, you know, this is what I'm going to do at the weekend and this is what my family does. And Ben was talking earlier about his grandkids and this like sharing of the self when it's appropriate. It's about asking them questions, it's about listening properly when they respond, giving them choices, letting them make decisions in the classroom, showing respect, even if it's little things like you say, do you know, do you want to do this activity? Do you think it's going to take 10 or 15 minutes? Let's have a quick vote. 10 minutes. Okay. Right. Let's do it. Let's give it 10 minutes and see how we go. So it's a thousand and one things that you do that show respect and give trust to your learners and that show that you care and that you're invested in them as people and as learners, and you build that bank account up in the relationship with them gradually over time. And yeah, you will sometimes get things wrong and you'll make a withdrawal, but if you've hopefully built up good reserves, you'll be able to then start reinvesting in the relationship and continue building it up.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: You have one of the many little ideas that you have in your book. One of them is just a practical thing which rings a bell to me, which is keeping a record of your students and the things that you pick up about them, whether it's a spreadsheet or a table or something like that, their name, how their name is pronounced, anything about them which they have chosen to reveal to you so that you can, you know, you can remember that it's difficult if you've got lots of classes.
[00:13:33] Speaker C: Well, I've got. This came from observing teachers. So one of the things that my job allows me to do is observe different teachers. And this is Just brilliant teacher here in Austria, and her students loved her and she just remembered things about them. And I've got the most appalling memory. And I just thought, how does she do this? She knows their names. She knows their football team. She knows whose brother is in a band. And I don't know how she knows it all. And she did say that she makes, like, a conscious effort to remember this. And I realized that it isn't cheating to make these notes. It shows that you care enough to want to be able to remember these things. And so I have to write notes down. I just don't have this brilliant memory. It's not going to happen automatically. But I don't see that as a sign of cheating. I see that as a sign of great respect, that I want to know my learners. I want to try to remember these things. And, yeah, I need a cheat sheet. It's not going to happen, unfortunately. It's not going to happen on its own. Yeah. But, yeah, I hope that's a way in which I show to myself and my learners that who they are matters.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: And it's interesting, isn't it? You know, Sarah's speaking there about, you know, making the effort to make those notes and to write those things down. And it comes back to that idea that compassion is effortful. You have to make those steps. Steps. And I think that sometimes as teachers, you know, you. Sarah mentioned making those withdrawals, and sometimes we do make those withdrawals from those relationships. As a teacher, you know, we. We can be guilty of things like listening to how our students are speaking as opposed to what they're telling us is a very common one for me, certainly, you know, get my teacher head on and I forget to hear what I'm being told.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: But just heard the tenses. Yeah, I hear the tenses. I hear the speeches. I hear the pronunciation errors.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: And I don't hear the message.
[00:15:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: And you do have to sort of put yourself into that space of making an effort.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: To hear what the person is saying, to keep that human connection. And, you know, it brought me back to this. This student that I used to have. Let's. Let's call him Mario for the. For the sake of it. He was. He wasn't Mario. He wasn't even Italian. But, you know, he was a notoriously disinterested student. He didn't see the point in learning English. He didn't really get why he was being forced to do this. And if you had heard some of the things in the staff room that that came out about him. You know, you get those self fulfilling prophecies, don't you, where a student has heard so many times that they're never going to learn English. They don't put in enough effort, they don't X, Y or Z. And I heard it all the time. So when I first met him, I was apprehensive to say the least. But what I found as I started to build my one to one relationship with him was a young man who was curious about the world. He was interested in things around him. He had high aspirations to be, you know, number one rapper. And he was brilliant with words in his mother tongue.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Which to me opened a door. So I was like, okay, all right, you're not really interested in learning English, but you are interested in rap music. Let's have a conversation about that. Let's find out who you're interested in. And then gradually from there, as I got to know him better, I would set him little challenges and it became part of the school game, you know, the classroom game. We'd all pick a word for Mario on a Friday and Mario would have until Monday to create a short rhyming couplet rap based around that word. And he'd come in every Monday and perform it.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Fantastic.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: And the knock on effect of that was that he started to engage more in other elements of the lesson and within. And I don't want to say it was quick, it takes time, it's effortful.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: You know, it took me at least the first term to have a breakthrough, but once I got to that breakthrough, you can start to see those incremental gains in the classroom. And by the end of the year, you know, he had a working knowledge of English and was able to communicate, even though if you'd asked him day one, he had no interest whatsoever.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: Really interesting example. Wonderful. I think there's also. I'm trying to remember if it was in your. It's in your book as well, Sarah. Just asking students as they come in at the start of the lesson, just how are you? And just watching them? And is that point that you're making that the teacher is interested in you and sees you as being a big part of that building the trust.
[00:18:35] Speaker C: And I think one of the other things I'm just thinking about the lovely story that Charlotte just told is remember that they see you all the time. So how you respond to every learner in the class, even if it's not them directly, they see what you're doing with other learners. So that trust is built not Only on a one to one basis. It's built. But because they observe how you respond to others and how you interact with others. And Charlotte taking the time to respond, respond to this learner, to build up that relationship, the other learners witness it too. They don't not notice it. So that also builds up their sense of trust in you that they can see that you're investing in learners, that you're building the class. And yeah, it makes a difference on the whole level. It's not just the individual.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: And I think that links to another point that you make in the book around inclusive teaching, which you emphasize is not just accommodating people with special needs.
There's more to it than that.
Do you want to say a little bit about what you mean by inclusive teaching?
[00:19:36] Speaker C: I was really wary about, you know, I was really wary about touching on inclusion because I'm by no means an expert on inclusion, but it is a fundamental principle of a compassion based approach to education is that you shouldn't be having to make special accommodations. But if you design your teaching from the start in the most inclusive way you can, then it's not about accommodating individual, it's about welcoming everybody. It's a different way of thinking about it. It's not making changes so that you can accommodate somebody. It's about trying the best that we can to teach in a way that is accessible for the greatest number of students we can and do that from the get go. And that means finding out about ways in which we can accommodate learners, the ways in which learners may be diverse and need accommodations, and building that in right from the beginning so that everybody finds their way in the classroom. Everybody finds that they can access things that they can share, that they can get involved and that they can do things on their terms.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: Yeah, you make a reference to the universal design for learning. I think it is framework, which I think is a really helpful way of bringing together both the design of learning and that universality right from the start.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Talking elt the easiest place to learn about the big issues in language teaching. Tune in again next week when we will look more closely at another aspect of compassion based language education.
Don't forget to like and subscribe if you want to learn more about this issue and others like it. To find out more about Sarah's book on compassion based language education, see the link in the episode description.
