115 Years of Teaching….and Counting

It’s back to school and last month, I worked with about 400 teachers, school administrators, and instructional coaches in a large rural public school district in southern Louisiana, where low-lying waters meet endless sugar cane fields. This is an area that has held tightly to traditional Cajun ways and continues to recover from the vestiges of racial segregation and intergenerational poverty. 
  
We talked about empathy and how cultivating an empathic mindset could support them and their students and especially the most vulnerable and marginalized.  Perspective-taking, the ability to see things from another person’s viewpoint, even when you don’t agree and maybe especially when you don’t agree, powerfully builds empathy, connection, and trust within and outside the classroom.
  
At a break in the program two teachers were introduced to me. They are the longest serving teachers in the district, and maybe in the state, and collectively they have more than 115 years of teaching service. They were joyful. They were hopeful. They were proud to be teachers. They were excited to welcome students into their classroom for a brand-new school year. The teacher on the left is 80 years young and continues to teach junior high school. 

This moment brought to mind Rumi’s profound words…“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”


Here’s a wonderful resource from Brene Brown on the distinction between empathy and sympathy that I shared with the teachers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZBTYViDPlQ