The Trouble with Relationships: A Talk to Teachers
Unlike the talk by our American hero[i], this talk is about the organizing principle and fundamental ideology for what it means to be an effective educator. The trouble with relationships is about a systemic imposition, a lever of control, the relationship as a saving grace and eventually agent of chaos. By the time you realize relationships don’t move the needle of progress[ii] it will be too late; you’ll be navigating an inherently oppressive and classist system[iii], searching for the type of vulnerability to make it better when it will almost certainly make it worse. I wrote this to encourage you to remain vigilant with your boundaries, to value what it means to be in a relationship; to warn you not to use your most valuable resources - time, attention, energy - worrying if you’re liked or perceived as “one of the good ones.” It’s important that you, educator, are aware of three manipulative and dangerous relationship settings beginning when you’re hired.
1. From district superintendents[iv] to building administrators, to the families and students you serve, everyone believes in the relationship as the vehicle to success, good intentions are assumed, trust is a commodity to cultivate. Pulling and poking at your heart and morality while permanently cementing themselves in your bank account is the subtle power move. Your school district provides you with excellent benefits, they are the reason you can fill your Xanax prescription and see a therapist about your relationship struggles - the irony. Perhaps the greatest thing your school district employer does for you is a pension, a portion in perpetuity, but only if you promise to never leave. If your interests and values evolve, you must find a way to suppress those bad thoughts. When you didn’t know any better, you signed a 30-year mortgage on your career, and now you’re stuck paying the bill; An arrangement a colleague of mine refers to as the “golden handcuffs,” golden because of the promise of a financial payout, handcuffs because of the inescapability, tarnishing the golden adjective irrevocably. The desire to exit this relationship not only puts the possibility of retirement in question but could mean ruining the relationships you were pressured to cultivate. Simply wanting something different breaks the agreement of trauma bonding and shared suffering, putting everyone’s ego in jeopardy, including the school district who refers to you as a “champion” or “all-star” provided you comply. This is not a healthy relationship; you don’t even have the freedom to break up.
2. Next is your colleagues, there’s trouble here too. Encouraging people to show up as their “full authentic self” has intentions to empower. People should not have to change their natural hair, disregard ethnic fashion, or speak the king’s English to be considered professional. Authenticity creates opportunities to learn and bond, ultimately bringing colleagues closer. Rational people agree on this point. Unfortunately, for many people in both personal and professional contexts, closeness equals chaos. When a level of closeness is achieved, so with it comes over-sharing, manipulation, gossip, and deception, to name a few. Think of how many people struggle maintaining intimate relationships, now take these same people, place them in schools and tell them they MUST build relationships to be successful. A senseless proposition. It’s possible to be one's full self aesthetically, linguistically, and ideologically without the missteps into trauma and dysfunction, however this usually proves to be too narrow of a line to toe, therefore the wrong priority. Instead, you can focus on being smart, helpful, and kind, you can model self-control, restraint, discretion and boundaries. Reveal less about yourself, learn less about your colleagues, understand more about your purpose and craft.
3. Building relationships with students is likely the reason you pursued a career in education, only to be told to get even closer, use your superpowers. You wear a cape that can help your favorite student pass math class, but it cannot pay rent, or get dad out of jail. A paltry cape, if not worthless. You would love to be the main character in this movie about the superhero educator but will settle for the supporting role in a student’s redemption story, a classic trope. Young people make destructive decisions, but more commonly they live within dozens of difficult life circumstances - over which you have zero control - ruining the story you’re writing on their behalf. Because you have been pressured to get close and build trust, you will be tempted to take this personally, tainting subsequent interactions, setting you on the path to cynicism. In Baldwin’s talk to teachers, he says Black history and Black empowerment upsets a liberal white identity; I would add, poverty paired with ambivalence to saviorism upsets liberal educators when they realize they exist as an American cliche. If you remove ego and pride from your relationships with students, I wonder what will be left? I hope you challenge yourself to find out.
We have mixed up the variables. If a relationship emerges while in pursuit of learning and knowledge, then it properly prioritizes the development of the human person. What you’ve been taught is to pursue the relationship, while hoping learning and knowledge occur somewhere along the way. The second equation creates a context for inappropriate emotional investment, an environment for disappointment and hurt feelings. The first equation creates a context in which you can learn to treat students like clients to whom you hold one duty: to create opportunities to become curious and critical thinkers, to appreciate differences, and exchange experiences in pursuit of a more just society[v]. Learning occurs and knowledge is constructed socially[vi], relationships are one possible means but never an end. You cannot be an effective educator while trapped in unrealistic expectations, conflating the personal with the professional. The truth is you will be a better teacher building no relationships and avoiding vulnerability rather than manufacturing the former and being coerced into the latter. Please take heed to this warning, read more James Baldwin and skip the district professional development.
By The Knight of Infinite Resignation
AKA Dr Spencer Childress
[i] Baldwin, James, "A Talk to Teachers" (1963). Retrieved from https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/baldwin-talk-to-teachers
[ii] Banathy, B. H. (1991). Systems Design of Education: A Journey to Create the Future. (Educational Technology Publications.)
Katz, D., and R. L. Kahn. (1969). “Common Characteristics of Open Systems.” In Systems Thinking. (Penguin Books Ltd.) Systems like schools are characterized by three concepts: hierarchy, homeostasis, and purposiveness. Change efforts in systems like this have seen little success, in part because of the piecemeal, incremental approach and thinking only within the boundaries of the existing system. In other words, school systems are designed to do exactly what they have always done.
[iii] Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.C. (1990). Reproduction in education, society and culture (2nd ed.) (Sage Publications, Inc.) According to Bourdieu, schools are key mechanism for maintaining and reproducing a social characteristics, including social class and racial hierarchies.
[iv] https://www.cherrycreekschools.org/Page/14311 The core values for Cherry Creek School District include strong language about relationships, with similar values stated by Aurora Public Schools, and Jefferson County Public Schools. These are large school districts in the Denver metro area, where I work and live, that reflect a national attitude about the value of relationships in schools.
[v] Dewey, J. (1980). Democracy and education. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), John Dewey: The middle works 18991924: Vol 15, 1923-1924 (pp. 180-189). (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.)
Dewey, J. (1988). Experience and education. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), John Dewey: The later works 1925-1953: Vol 13, 1938-1939 (pp. 1-62). (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.) Because of this overemphasis on relationships and the confusion that may come with it, I believe it will be helpful for teachers to return to foundational education thinkers, like Dewey.
[vi] Valsiner, J., & Van Der Veer, R. (2000). The social mind: Construction of the idea. (Cambridge University Press.) The way that knowledge is socially constructed is distinctly different from close relationships being a pre-requisite for learning.