I’m pretty good at learning. I’m naturally academic. I want to understand, analyse and evaluate. I want my opinions to be founded in sound evidence based research. I want to be able to justify my words and actions because that makes me feel good. I’m good at helping people understand the things that I understand, so it stands to reason that I’m good at teaching, and I am.
I’m not so good at regulating my emotions. Oh that is really hard to say. I’m admitting weakness…
I feel strongly. I can’t not care. I take things personally, even though I know I shouldn’t. I get angry, and sad when things go wrong. I forget lots of things about people and events but remember how they made me feel, for better or worse. I make emotional decisions. I question my motives and what other people will think of me. I overthink the things that people say to me, and my anxiety skyrockets at the thought of doing something wrong, or bad, or simply not good enough.
Mental health diagnosis aside, I’m admitting to a very human weakness. Scrap that. You know what; it isn’t weak to be human. I tell myself I’m weak all the time for not being like other people, and I tell other people all the time that they are good enough just as they are. How does that make sense?!
The teacher in me knows that learning and feeling are inextricably entwined. Education should empower us and make us feel good. It should also help us to understand that it is ok not to feel good. Trying to separate feeling and learning is when we run into problems. If we feel, we have to learn from those feelings, understand what they mean so that we can own them. I have two toddlers, and they feel BIG. We don’t respond to them by saying “you mustn’t feel this way” we respond by allowing the emotion and explaining it, and helping the boys learn how to deal with it. Sometimes that results in mummy screaming and crying too, but then, so what? I’m showing them that we are all human, that we all feel this way, and if we need to cuddle and say sorry to each other afterwards, that’s ok too. I wish, as a young person, I had learned these things – how to accept failure, how to get things wrong, how to deal with big emotions, how to like myself and trust myself and show kindness to myself. Because learning those things as an adult (and a parent) is really hard.
For a large proportion of my life I have chased achievement. Bettering myself by adding certificates to a file that serves as ‘proof’ of my worthiness as a human being. But, it doesn’t seem to matter how much I know, how many qualifications I earn, the feeling of achievement is short-lived and the emptiness that should be filled with satisfaction and self-worth remains.
So achievement for achievement’s sake; whether that is for a certificate, or to give us a purpose, or for the pride we know someone else will feel is all well and good but as soon as we no longer need the information we learned, when it no longer matters to us, we forget it because we don’t care.
There is a good reason why learning through doing is so effective, for toddlers, for teenagers and for adults. By association, we link those things we did, to sights, sounds, smells. Ultimately, the way we feel is part of how we experience something, we learn because we feel. A baby learns to search for mummy for comfort and nourishment, because it feels safe and good, all of their senses confirm it. A toddler learns to stay away from the road, or big dogs, or platform edges, because it feels scary and unsafe (that’s not to say they don’t need a LOT of gentle guidance first!). As adults we learn that confidence comes with skill and understanding, we might learn to drive, not just to pass the test or to achieve a certificate but to be a confident, competent driver, to experience the freedom and control that driving brings, in other words, to feel safe and empowered.
