Moments of mania or true reflection?
It’s the end of the school year once again and I find I’m observing and witnessing what I’ve observed for the last three decades only with renewed and greater intensity.
Part of my daily routine is to check in with the many children I teach about how they are feeling. Nearly every single child I ask over the course of a week references the fact that they are exhausted. Why? Ostensibly, this is attributable to the assessment demands, the many grading cycles that culminate in the end of year report card. However, there are a huge number of events also occurring at this time of year, both centre stage for children, and behind the scenes for teachers, who are themselves exhausted by the increased workload and expectations to jolly along with it all. Exhortations to stay positive pour petrol on an open wound and the ‘positive’ smiles of those who comply with the enforced jolliness resemble a pained grimace. As one colleague phrased it, it's like everybody is being dragged along into the holidays, banking on the light at the end of a very long tunnel. The holiday season, rather than being a time for deep rest and rejuvenation, instead becomes a time for mental and emotional respite care - the recovery from the onslaught of the end of the school year.
Similarly, parents often show indications of sheer overwhelm at the volume of things that have to be done at this time of year, many of them arising from events that are offered at the school.
End of Year
A peek at the local school calendar reveals a great number of events prefaced with the phrase end of year. Year 6 graduation and the transition into High School occurs alongside the transition into schooling by pre-schoolers and there is everything from end of year academic awards to end of year assemblies; end of year swimming lessons and swimming carnival; end of year parent teacher interviews; end of year projected curriculum planning for the following year; end of year reports and end of year data analysis; end of year school concerts; end of year reward days; end of year excursions; end of year room clean up and then re-allocation and moving classroom; end of year class configuration for the ensuing year; end of year teachers reallocated next year's grade; end of year class parties; end of year Grade 6 leaving party and farewell; end of year wrap up for every single child in the school; end of year class clean up; end of year staff party; end of year formal farewells for those moving on to other schools or retiring.
It’s an unceasing maelstrom of end of year activity that is leaving most of us absolutely exhausted with end of year-itis. Add to the mix that, at a time when regular routines would be super supportive, most daily activities are severely disrupted with harmful consequences for the wellbeing of everyone involved. At times, it seems as though it is all a piece of orchestrated theatre that long ago lost its humanity and equally any depth of purpose it may once have had.
The deluge of this frenetic activity is conducted at a gruelling, breathless pace. It’s worth considering that so much of what is happening is also projecting this quality into the ensuing year, and that this then constitutes the foundational quality that is carried over into the next collective cycle around the sun. Then there arises the ostensible, societal surprise at the rates of teacher and student burnout and the exhaustion within the education system, even in those who are considered as being otherwise well.
Why the surprise, given that this energetic quality is constantly and consistently projected forward from one year into the next?
The Magic of Class Groups
In every year, each class, including the teacher, is a uniquely configured group. Teachers often sense the signature quality of their class and work either to, in some instances, correct, or to enhance and even evolve those qualities that build true responsibility and a loving foundation within that group. In addition to teaching, teachers support those in their care to build those qualities that will serve as the founding qualities throughout the entirety of their lives.
The most significant end of year activity that I have never seen on a school calendar, is for each teacher, for each group of children, to reach a point of completion with where the group quality has landed from its initial signature quality.
What gold will every participant – adult or child – take with them as a result of having been part of this uniquely configured group?
Many children spend more face-to-face time with their teachers than they do with their family. Monday to Friday, 5 days a week, up to 8 hours a day or more for over 40 weeks of the year. This is a hugely significant amount of time to develop the richness of true relationship with both one’s teacher and one’s peers and this richness nurtures the expression and the building of those inner qualities that make us a genuine, loving and caring human being, who can contribute significantly when collaborating with others in a group.
Where in the end of year orchestrated theatre, are the moments for both the children and the teacher to get a sense of what has been accomplished, not only by each person, but within the group that has been specifically constellated to come together for that year? Is this not equally, or possibly more, significant than the grade allocations (?), especially in consideration of the fact that the group may not be configured in the same way the next year.
The potential depth of appreciation in such moments of reflection about the attained qualities of the current year, bring the foundational layers for an even greater depth in group relationships in the following year.
Children start to learn from the inside what qualities and inner strengths they each bring and contribute to any group, quite apart from the specific skillset required within that group. So, there could be a group of builders, teachers, accountants, but what they consistently bring is a depth of inner strength and quality; they bring themselves and not merely a skillset.
In the absence of this, we are caught in the trap of same ole, same ole repetition every year and the ever-present situation of group dynamics and office politics is perpetuated by the lack of foundational people building in education. The insidiousness of this is that it keeps us and our children in the situation of relying exclusively on that manically busy outside world for confirmation of our qualities, an outside world that is usually way too busy even to notice, let alone value, what we bring. In schools and across society, the battle for recognition continues to rage unabated with victors and ‘also-rans’, a battle that dissipates when we move inwards and bring forth rounds of endless appreciation.
Rounds of endless appreciation
So, what is there to appreciate in each group and in each child?
Qualities that I have noticed and deeply appreciate in the children I teach are endless and unique with every group. They have included a tenderness of the heart in engaging with others; the capacity to draw out the expressions of others by confirming them; a willingness to step into situations of conflict and offer a healing resolution for both parties; a formidable depth of organisational skills that bring a flow to the classroom; a sensitivity that registers when to speak and when to wait; a compassionate disposition that is ever ready to support anyone who is distressed; a lightness of movement that brings joy to all in the classroom and playground.
There is so much more and yet none of this forms part of the end of year report card, nor the end of year data profiling. In fact, there is no space systemically designated for this purpose.
However, it can occur in the simplest of gestures or words when we remain open to the fact of the significance of this and refuse to become the exhausted puppets of the end of year orchestrated theatre of mania.
In doing so, we also confirm our own appreciation of how the uniqueness of each group and our part in what is essentially the parenting of it. We do most certainly stand in loco parentis, parenting an entire group of children or young people to develop and unfold foundational qualities that will be the mainstay of their life.
In the absence of this, and in the maelstrom of activity, everyone dives into the holiday season completely exhausted and with an impetus to checkout and withdraw from life and from their own expressed, but unconfirmed, qualities. The holiday becomes the respite care referred to above, and all that has actually been attained starts to seep away due to dehumanised neglect.
What foundation does this set down?
How does this then support the new beginning of the next cycle? Simply, it doesn’t. It does no more than undermine the next cycle by refuting and avoiding the laying down of a true foundation from which to deepen and expand into the next. This is a travesty, a tragedy with heavy costs upon the human body and upon the well-being of us all. The avoidance and ignorance of building true inner foundations quite simply wrecks lives. It serves no one when we allow frenetic activity to rob us of the richness of what we have directly experienced as being the true accomplishments of the year that set down the foundation for our life. We are presenting to our children a model of life that exclusively emphasises functionality, a cog in a machine model that generates despair and self-negation, rather than the richness of contribution, relationship and working together in groups.
From Rags to Riches to Riches
It is possible to break this momentum quite simply by becoming aware of the true movement that resides within us all. This movement is equally seen in Nature, where night always follows day, Spring follows Winter and there is a time for every purpose under heaven. So, it is with us: reflection, rest and repose always support both our previous and ensuing activity as we move within, confirmed to draw ever deepening qualities from the well of inspiration that we all truly are and reside within.
Global Malnutrition
Avoiding or refusing this cyclical movement of expressing, confirming and then resourcing inner essence, is to hand ourselves over to the ruthlessness of empty repetition, where only reward and award sustain us. Inevitably, these fail to nourish us. The carrot and the stick approach to life has had only meagre success with donkeys. Why would we believe it would work for us? We are, in effect, placing our body into intense states of excess motion with little to zero sources of replenishment. This then sets the body up to drop into an inevitable state of exhaustion, while inside, we withdraw - with apparent justification.
This is the actual malnutrition that every person in the world subjects themselves to on a daily basis when we live in the avoidance of our true and natural cycles of rest and repose that replenish us from within.
This malnutrition is a global epidemic.
This epidemic cuts across all strata within society. It is present regardless of one’s age, culture, gender, race or religious affiliation. It is everywhere and in every classroom, in spite of the fact that it is simply and readily unhinged by adhering to the natural cycle of activity followed by rest and repose.
Movements of Repose
Our most obvious access to repose is very clearly our sleep cycle at night, which has its own Early to bed, early to rise rhythm. The nourished and rested body simply does not allow movements of relentless motion and expresses very clearly through its physicality those movements that are true to it and those that are not. It simply says no to relentless motion so that the indwelling being responds to the rhythmic calls to resource and express their core essence.
The refusal to listen to these calls and the overriding of them during the day are a significant aspect of the global malnutrition. In the same way that many teachers only nourish themselves with food in a hasty, perfunctory manner, or even in ways that harm the body, so are we are equally malnourishing ourselves when we avoid and refuse the simplicity of movements like taking a trip to the bathroom, or sitting for a moment and taking a pause, if not, resting. It literally takes a single moment however, many of these moments are passed by daily when we allow the relentless momentum of activity to take precedence over what truly sustains us.
When the body has enjoyed a deeply restful sleep, these moments of repose during the day present themselves clearly and loudly from the body because it has experienced its true and natural rhythm at night and so is finely attuned and sensitive to the same quality of movement during the day. These are the moments of appreciation, of deep confirmation and reflection.
A Significant Final Moment
At the end of the school year, there comes a moment when all of the artwork has been taken down and sent home; the word walls and the exemplars have been removed; student work, classroom posters and decorations are all gone. We are left with just a classroom that represents the system, void of the people who have moved within its walls for that year.
This is an amazing moment for us to stop, feel and appreciate – a moment of reflection and repose.
How does the classroom feel?
I’ve observed that it feels cold, empty, life-less. It has no vibrancy.
This leads to - why so? Is it the case that the configured group, including the teacher, was the lifeblood that brought the warmth and life to that room? Did every wall poster, decoration and learning aide adorn the space with the care and love of the teacher? Did each piece of student work express not only the relative mastery of academic skills, but also who they are?
I have found there is no greater moment of significance during the end of school year period than to stop and truly feel -- what was the room in the presence of the class group and how does it feel without it? I am left with an irrevocable sense of the vitality and aliveness of each configured group, as well as the fact that it is how we bring our qualities as the teacher, that build each uniquely configured group. It is these qualities within people, within our students, that sustain well beyond the lifespan of their passage through the education system.
For me, this is the actual significance of the end of the school year, and it is what sets up in advance the forthcoming new school year. The awareness of my part within this uniquely configured group is invaluable; how I contributed to building its foundation is without price, as it is this that will sustain the students throughout their life.
These moments are also those that subtly chip away at the global malnutrition arising from the relentless motion that we all witness and live daily in our world. Equally, these inner moments confer a relative immunity to the end of year-itis that is symptomatic of this global epidemic. In these moments, I know I am more than the current definition of a teacher: I build foundations for life.