QLC 5 (Theme – Empathy)

In the fifth QLC, which had been scheduled three school days after the previous one (due to scheduling conflicts), three out of the four teachers stated that there had not been time to trial NVC in their classrooms. Subsequently only Peter, who had been absent from the previous meeting, had examples to share of trialling NVC. Fortunately, these examples provided a good base for creating discussion amongst the group, both at a practical and theoretical level.

In his first example, Peter had applied NVC with a student whom he had seen as off-task during class. This student named Ben² was continually using his phone whilst Peter was talking. Peter went up to him and said, “Ben, you keep looking at your phone and right now I need your full attention”. Peter stated to the group that as soon as he said that the students face changed and he looked down towards his desk. In response to this reaction Peter said,

“Ben, I think I might have just blown it there. I’ll come and talk to you shortly”. Peter then went back to the student after a short time and said:

Look, I can tell by the change in you that I might have really blown it and I think I may have really upset you … and he said, yeah, you should see what I’m doing before you growl at me, cause I had my device and was researching these questions while you were talking … I said to him, I got that so wrong, I’m really sorry … because you probably need to have some sense of fairness … You must feel really angry at me?

2 Pseudonym

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Peter felt like he built a stronger relationship with Ben by being honest and acknowledging how his comment may have impacted him. He shared this sentiment with the group:

I have to reconnect and show empathy that he [Ben] must feel quite negative feelings towards me because of my actions, and I need to own that, and I did that with him and he really appreciated that.

After telling this story, Peter laughed and told the group that Ben then said to him, “actually, that time you saw me I was playing a game”. Peter believed that because he was upfront with Ben about ‘getting it wrong’, Ben had felt more comfortable to admit that he was in fact playing a game instead of working and this he felt helped to create a more honest encounter between them.

In his second example, Peter described using NVC with a whole class. He recounted having another teacher come in and observe his toughest class (bottom year nine). After the class ended she had given him feedback, with some of it in the form of negative critiques. When he had that class next he brought up these critiques with his students:

Last week I had Miss … observe as you know and I felt that it went alright, but she had some critiques of me [which he outlined to the class] … I need to feel like I am doing the best I can for you guys so I’m going to focus today on having your full attention.

Peter decided to express his feelings about the other teacher’s comments because he believed that, “sharing what you’re doing and why you’re doing it is really powerful in creating positive relationships within the classroom”. Peter commented that since trialling NVC, he has been more willing to share his reasons for doing things with his students.

In his final example, Peter talked about a student who was using his phone during class. Peter went up to him and said, “I notice you’re still playing with your phone and it’s a full attention time and I need your full focus. So, would you be willing to put it away?” Peter then went away from the student, whom continued using his phone. At the end of the class Peter began a dialogue with this student, saying:

You really struggled to self-manage with your phone, how do you feel about that? He said, yeah, you’re right. [So I said] well, moving forward, any idea how we solve this together? He said to me, next time you should take my phone from me, that’s what other teachers do. I said, that’s one strategy, but really, I don’t feel like I would be helping you … this is about you managing yourself.

After sharing this experience, the group began a conversation about what the student’s needs may have been in that situation and his reaction towards self-managing. During this

conversation, Sarah proposed that Peter could have said, “I’m curious why you want me to do

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that? … And in that answer, you look for his feelings and needs”. This comment demonstrates an increasing movement towards examining students’ needs behind their actions.

Building on the conversation above, Sarah informed the group that she was having difficulty thinking in terms of her own needs. She outlined that she had a preference for focussing on students’ needs rather than her own in the classroom. This decision to focus her empathy onto her students rather than on herself meant that she was less inclined to examine her own needs during the QLCs and in the classroom. When speaking about using NVC to focus on her own needs, Sarah stated:

I am still struggling to work through conceptually placing my own needs as important as the students’ in the classroom … I don’t want to dump my needs on them when it’s not appropriate to do so … that’s my thing, that’s not their thing.

As a result of this, Sarah was more likely to think about and ask students what they needed during class and reflect on how she could fit in with their needs. Keeping in line with exploring needs, Jake gave an example of a group of students whom he perceived as being defiant and how his perception influenced the way he communicated with them. Jake told the group that he was not clear about what his needs were during that encounter and wanted to do more exploration around that. He thought that once he had self-empathised, he would be better able to empathise with these students:

When I talked to them today I was quite accusatory in my tone … I need to build empathy because I think I’m getting off-side with them … I’m getting annoyed and impatient with them. I think that my real feeling underneath is that I’m concerned, or worried, or stressed that I can’t trust them … that they aren’t going to be productive during this class. I think I need to put a framework around them being in class that is clearer.

This comment highlights how Jake’s perception of these students stemmed from his

frustration surrounding his need for trust. Discussing this with the group allowed Jake to gain clarity on the processes behind his perception of challenging behaviours in this instance and indicated that creating clearer boundaries would help facilitate him to be more empathetic towards theses students.

In addition to Jake, Michael also noted how he wanted to be more empathetic towards his students. He recalled a class that he had earlier in the day where he talked to the students about their test results, particularly how some students had not done well in the test.

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I acknowledged that they (the students) have worked really hard and that it is an excellent class … and that when I saw the test results weren’t great, I took

responsibility by saying that perhaps I rushed them through the school work too fast and I reminded them that they still have enough time to work through it … usually I put the responsibility on the students, but this time I took some on myself.

Michael said that he thought the students took his acknowledgment of their hard work ironically, because they had not done so well in the test. He mentioned to the group that perhaps he could have empathised with them more, but was unsure of how to do that with an entire class in that moment. This example concluded the teachers’ stories in this QLC.

Shaping the fifth QLC meeting

Following on from the previous meeting, the teachers continued to provide support and feedback to each other and within this meeting several of the teachers also challenged each other’s assumptions. During this I did not notice any defensiveness regarding these comments, but rather a development of ideas, which I believe helped to establish a climate where the teachers’ felt comfortable and safe to both give and receive critical feedback.

The teachers also talked more about presenting their students with choices and a large amount of the conversation was direct towards exploring ways to empathise with students and present them with different ways to fulfil their learning needs. Peter believed the students learnt that,

“teachers are there to tell you what to do and make you do what you don’t want to do”. In response, Sarah stated that:

It’s important to bring up a balance between being aware of our feelings and needs and the students’ feelings and needs … there are many reasons why students can be

challenging … they may have issues at home … I think that being clear to them about what the problems is and giving them a choice is important.

At the end of the meeting Sarah stayed behind to discuss this idea further with me, as she wanted to explore ways to acknowledge her own needs, while at the same time, not imposing them on her students. I suggested to her that she could be aware of her feelings and needs in the moment, however, keep this as an internal dialogue and focus on the students’ feelings and needs. From this, she could then engage in a direct conversation geared towards empathising with her students, rather than herself.

96 Summary and personal reflections

During this QLC I became more acutely aware of the preferences that each teacher held in regards to their application of NVC. While I believe that all the teachers shared a balanced focus between applying NVC towards their own self-development and that of their students, their stories showed that there was a distinctive difference in the way that certain teachers chose to apply NVC – either inwardly or outwardly. For instance, on one hand, Peter’s primary focus was on exploring his own feelings and needs throughout the group meetings so that he could better influence his teaching practice. On the other, Sarah chose to principally focus on understanding her students’ feelings and needs, rather than her own.

While I believe that neither position held an advantage over the other, they did reflect each teacher’s needs at a particular time and the strategies that they chose to take in order to connect with their students. In regards to Michael and Jake, I had noticed that they lay

somewhere in the middle and chiefly used reflection as a tool to explore ways that they could apply NVC in retrospective scenarios.