Back to school jitters

In an earlier post (being seen) I said that I was going to ask the kids to share their fears with me so that I could get to know them better. I also said that if I was going to ask them to do this, I would need to do it myself. My original intent in doing this was to see my students for who they are. But now I have a couple of other reasons for doing it as well.

One of the things that I want to be able to do in my classroom is to be able to respond to situations that come up instead of react. This idea comes from a lecture given at the San Francisco zen center about sun/ moon buddha. It's mostly about the fact that in any given situation, we perceive reality based on the stories or personal histories that we bring to the situation. This summer I've been trying to look at my own stories, my fears and insecurities, the thoughts that I bring to situations. Knowing what those are has helped me to recognize them while I'm in the situation and, therefore, allowed me to step out of them and see the situation for what it is. This allows me to respond with clarity instead of react with the muddiness of my own fears and personal history.

The second reason I want to do this is that during meditation lately, I've been noticing what thoughts come up for me (another lecture at the zen center: directed versus responsive listening). I've been looking at these thoughts and figuring out not only why they're coming up for me but where they're coming from. As a result, I'm seeing that a lot of my thoughts are coming from fears, and that when I look closely at those fears and where they're coming from I find that they're totally unfounded. And the really great thing is that once I did that, looked at their source and saw them for what they are, a lot of them went away. That was really cool, to have my thoughts go away on their own instead of me having to keep telling them to leave.

So, I'm going to try to look at my fears around teaching, see where they're coming from. I'll decide later which ones to share with the kids and I'm still debating about which ones I'll share on this blog. But I think the important thing is this: reflect on my fears or thoughts around teaching both so that I can share them with the kids but also so that I know them well enough to recognize them so that when they start to take over the situation I can tell them to go away and get back to teaching.