"I don't know how to teach people how to care."

It's strange how some things can stick in your brain. Things your parents or grandparents tell you as a child, or messages from your heroes often occupy a part of your brain and stick there. I'm almost certain that there are important things that went into one of my ears and out the other. It just didn't stick. And then there are things that seem meaningless at the moment, but make so much sense later on. This week I had one of those experiences and it led to a bright idea that I really do think can help us be better educators right now. 

In the 2016-2017 school year, Carrie Ann Miller had agreed to take a step out of teaching full-time to try to coach other STEM teachers. At the time she had received a lot of praise for the work that she was doing and STEM education was a buzzword nationally. We had asked her to try to get teachers to think and work in the ways that had made her successful. She was apprehensive but agreed to try. We knew going into a coaching position, that it is hard to see quick success. Ask any of our instructional coaches. Getting adults to change is difficult, but incredibly rewarding when it pays off. Carrie Ann quickly realized something about herself and what was holding her back as an instructional coach and what she told me has occupied a small corner of my brain ever since.

"I don't know how to teach people how to care." 

Carrie Ann wasn't critiquing the pedagogy, standards alignment, or any other piece of instruction that she thought she was there to fix. Those parts are easy to identify and much easier to correct than other problems. What she saw instead was that when teachers were struggling, so were their students and vice-versa. This struggle often left teachers, good teachers, being dismissive or overly focused on tasks than on human beings. She wasn't saying that they didn't care about their students or even their work. Instead she saw a difference in how teachers managed students and themselves in difficult situations and how easy it was to forget that we are people first. Her struggle left her frustrated and she returned to the classroom full-time the next year because she needed to feel the success of something she knew she could control. 

I had not thought much about that year until this past Friday when I heard a podcast about the economics of compassion in medical care. The show cited several research studies that proved that compassion and empathy on behalf of the doctors actually made patients heal faster, provided less expensive care, and reduced doctor burnout. They could provide amazing medical care, but beyond that, the biggest impact on themselves and their patients had nothing to do with medicine. The researcher was now searching for ways to teach doctors how to care about patients as human beings instead of just treating their illnesses.

So many students are in a state of educational trauma this year and so many teachers have resorted to some form of triage as we try to make things just work for a bit. If that's left you burned out or if your students just are not responding to every education trick you try, maybe it's time to try a dose of compassion. It sounds strange and a bit hokey, especially for high school teachers, but I can tell you that there's a lot of research that says it works. We have to teach everyone how to care right now.