This weekend I had a little revelation. It came when I was reflecting on a conversation I had had with my colleague, where I felt uncomfortable with my part of the conversation. Here's the basic story.
Last Friday I had brunch and a bike ride with a friend and colleague. Throughout our time together, we did a lot of sharing of our current states, and listening to each other, as friends do. And one of the main themes of my sharing was Imposter Syndrome. I feel like I'm doing a kind of crappy job as a teacher right now, and one feeling that pervades is that I've never been trained to teach effectively. Next weekend I'm going to a photography workshop, where I'll probably be working with other semi-professional photographers, and I feel somewhat unqualified to even attend that workshop. I've been appointed as a surrogate chair to a committee, for which I feel incredibly unqualified.
One piece of our conversation was over social issues, including gender identification. This is the piece that I had reflected over the following day, feeling uncomfortable largely because I am cis-gendered, and I was having a gender conversation with my trans-gender friend, and I was terrified of saying something ignorant, or offensive, or both. As I reflected on this throughout the day, I realized that this was another instance of my imposter syndrome. I was speaking with the air of someone who is "in the know" on gender issues, yet internally feeling unqualified to speak as such. But, being a rather socially conscious Bay Area resident, I also felt some amount of pressure to be in-the-know, rather than in-the-learning.
And here's my revelation... it's not just our classrooms and grading systems that enforce the notion that mistakes and lack of knowledge are bad; it's our entire culture. For so many years I have been thinking that it is school systems that are creating this mistakes-are-bad culture, and math classes were the most egregious, with their "there's always a right answer" undertone. But in any group conversation there is a pressure to be one of the in-the-know folk, and a need to disclaim our qualifications for each interaction. Sometimes, depending on the context, it's downright shameful to express a lack of knowledge. I once went into an electrical supplies shop, needing some things for a LED project that I was working on. I didn't know some key things about circuitry, and I studied up for hours before going in to the shop, because I was terrified of looking dumb. In the end, I never did learn enough to figure out what I needed on my own, so finally I gave myself a good pep talk of the "it's okay to be a learner" variety, and I went into the shop and said, "Here's what I know, and here's what I need to know. Can you please help me fill in the blanks in between?" The response I got was, essentially, "We really cater to the people who understand how these things work and can speak our lingo." Or, in other words, "Come back when you're less stupid."
Different but related: it's often terrifying to express an opinion that is different from that of the group at hand. Here are some ways to practice sitting up straight and acting confident in the face of direct shaming: Go to an artisan coffee shop in San Francisco and start discussing Donald Trump's virtues. Go to a barber shop in Great Falls, Montana and start discussing Hillary Clinton's virtues. Go into a vegan household and talk about the amazing sausage you just bought. Go into a rancher's home and talk about how terrible beef is for the health of people and the environment. Go to a modern art gallery and express that the abstract art on the wall looks like it was made by a 3-year-old. Go into a creationist's home and talk about evolution. Go into an atheist's home and say that you're a fundamentalist Christian.
These scenarios may seem incredibly different from making mistakes in an educational context, because each of them boils down to an expression of opinions or beliefs rather than fact. But I would argue that they are more alike than that. In particular, I would wager that the context group of each scenario would be fully convinced that your expression of whatever is an indication of your ignorance, and that, if only you knew the things that they knew, then you would have the same opinions and beliefs as them. Over and over, I'm reminded about how terrible we humans are at separating objective facts from subjective beliefs. In the end, they all boil down to being beliefs.
So... what does this mean for me as a teacher?
One thing it means is that this notion of creating a safe space for expression of differences and making of mistakes is a whole lot bigger than helping students heal from their past math class traumas; it's about helping them to find a safe place within this very aggressive culture of ours. And, in that, I also need to be aware of the ways in which we as a society are (in)tolerant of each other's ignorances, or expecting that they understand our lingo.
Understanding this also gives me context for my own discomfort from my conversations with my friend. I feel now like I can revive that conversation and intentionally create a safe space wherein I say, "Hey, I'm still learning here. Please correct me or challenge me if I say something that you think is out of line, and let me know why." This is the type of statement that I would like to be modeling and supporting for my students, and I'm still learning all of the facets of what that means.
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