In my experience, for a child to learn and develop in confidence and self-awareness it’s important they feel safe, both emotionally and physically. However, in the classroom a whole host of things are going on – not just the child’s relationship with the lesson in hand.
Children are very aware as they are feeling everything, all of the time. They can feel what is going on outside the window in nature while they are colouring in or doing their maths. They can feel the rest of the school and what is going on in other rooms. They can feel how the teacher and the other children are feeling and what is going on at home for them and so on, all whilst getting on with something, and yet this is not recognised or honoured by the system.
Instead the education system reduces the child to a prescribed way of doing things in a very linear way. They have to face the front, sit in a certain way, do things in a certain order, not talk, not look out the window – not be themselves in other words – which squashes their spherical awareness by not allowing them to acknowledge or articulate what they are feeling or how they are responding to what they are feeling.
When we do not give children permission to express what they are feeling, they learn to dismiss the truth of what they know, second-guessing what is asked of them and ‘playing it safe.’
Over time this false configuration of expression becomes deeply embedded in the body, feeling so familiar it eventually becomes ‘normal’ and what is perceived to be true, but the true knowingness remains unexpressed and lies dormant and buried. It is not totally forgotten however, which creates a constant underlying tension, which of course plays out slightly differently for each of us.
These insecurities have the same root cause though because the current model of education suggests that who the children are isn’t enough and that getting things wrong is bad, and therefore they have to try harder, be better etc. In learning that it is only by what they do and achieve that gets recognition, a stress is created by over absorbing ‘knowledge’ and regurgitating it. This generally causes a lifelong, un-admitted issue with making things look good at the expense of how one is really feeling.
It is clear that underneath the façade of doing things ‘right’, children do not feel wholly safe to be themselves, learning instead to hold back their natural expression for fear of not being accepted for who they are. It is interesting to note that as the child becomes an adult this becomes normalised, and so the whole cycle is repeated as they send their children off to school and encourage them to value their self-worth through what they achieve, not because of who they innately are. As a consequence, and in my experience, children very quickly learn to self-bash when they don’t understand something or find something tricky, as underneath they are looking for recognition through being a ‘success’. Nowhere is it in their lexicon to even possibly articulate their value beyond what they perceive themselves to be good at.
As a teacher therefore, my main aim, on which I base all my lessons, is to build relationships with my students. This comes from my relationship with myself first before I connect to my pupils as they can very much feel where I am at (as nothing can be truly hidden from them – their not expressing it doesn’t mean it isn’t a known!), and so a genuineness, openness and honesty needs to be there from the start. I have found that the children I teach really appreciate this and if I am feeling fragile then it is perfectly ok for this to be communicated, as in this communication my students are treated as the equals they are. Often asking them for support when I need it confirms this too.
Not only is all of this in itself incredibly powerful, but also to accept my students for where they are at is also deeply registered by them and supports them to feel safe. Ultimately what I am teaching is not beyond their scope, even if they appear to be struggling. I know that this struggle comes from the self-imposed blocks and inner tension they have created by falsely believing they are not good enough and so I hold them in a quality that communicates the truth.
Ultimately, trust in the teacher is the cornerstone of true learning for a pupil because their bodies need to feel safe to be open to learning. For example, observing year 2 children playing with Lego recently I could feel that they didn’t mind their designs falling apart because they weren’t under any pressure to get anything right – they were relaxed, having fun, simply learning as they were playing – and the great thing was they were working out what worked and what didn’t with ease.
As teachers, through developing trust we can support our kids to feel at ease, to ‘have a go’ without fear of getting things wrong because they feel valued as a person first and foremost, not judged according to outcomes or results.
By Michelle McWaters, Bath, UK
Further Reading:
What would our Education be like if we Truly Supported our Kids to Connect to their Body?
Education, Schools & Teaching our Kids: ‘Quality of Presence’ in the Classroom
The True Purpose of Education – One Size Fits All or Evolution?
687 Comments
Feeling safe is a man made construct that is only necessary because we aren’t living the truth of who we are. If we were living the truth of who we all are then the concepts of fear and safety would not exist.
I have recently been working in a new school with some children that are presenting some challenging behaviour. I only have each class for about half an hour or so in the day and I am five weeks in. Little by little the kids are sensing that I care, that I understand their struggle and that I see beyond the surface layer. Beautifully, I am sensing a little melting in some quarters as connection is being made. I do love my job!
The kids only display the behaviour they do because they don’t feel like they are understood or met. It is a joy to be able to untangle this, even if it is only for half an hour a week because this confirmation will stay with them for life. It can only take one moment to confirm a child and for them to feel it but if this is done consistently, over time, their self perception changes.
When a teacher takes a child into school from its parent, he or she is signing an unwritten declaration that while the child is in their care, they have the responsibility to look after them and keep them safe to the best of their ability. It’s not to control or bully them but to nurture and develop their evolution and growth.
This is certainly what most parents wish for, sometimes not as in my experience a handful of parents simply want the relief from the responsibility of having to raise their children and they don’t want to look too closely at the system they are handing their children over to. That said, yes, teachers have a duty of care and they are normally very aware of it even if they fall short every now and then.
This is very true Michelle, and very sad that it is the case, ‘When we do not give children permission to express what they are feeling, they learn to dismiss the truth of what they know, second-guessing what is asked of them and ‘playing it safe.’’
I recently returned to college for an apprenticeship. In it I have to re-sit my English and Math GCSE. All those barriers to learning came back as if they never left in the first place. I felt 10 years old again. I hated school as I always felt stupid and labelled with ADD and Dyslexia. Returning to maths did create tears at first but now I am enjoying maths because I’ve dropped the pressure of getting it right and giving myself the space to learn in my own way.
There is a famous quote by Einstein that says something along the lines of ‘the only thing that gets in the way of my learning is my education’. I love this quote because it sums up for me everything you have just shared Leigh. It is a tragedy that someone like you who has so much to offer with such heart has been made to feel inadequate. The deep hurt that is caused by the labels and by a relentless system that doesn’t allow someone to learn at their own pace is the block to the learning, not the fact that there is inadequacy there. How cool that you are going back into the system at a point where you are wiser and more self contained and claimed so that you can heal those hurts and discover that the learning need not be problematic , that it is simply a process we can be open to or not.
Feeling safe is more than just physical surroundings, its an awareness of every intention around you.
The world can feel like a scary place when you can read how shut down people are and how people calibrate towards those who bully just to escape being on the receiving end. This is felt and received at schools all over the country and rather than knowing how to read it and handle it pupils go into reaction – withdraw, get emotional, react etc. It is something I am aware of daily and it is something adults in frustration have no idea how to begin to deal with. In connection to our essence we are powerful in the face of all of this and to coin a phrase we can “be like fish in the sea and not getting wet”.
Beautifully said Michael and this alludes to the depth of responsibility we have in providing truly safe environments not only for children but for us all.
The other day my son was sharing how he couldn’t wait to leave school because of the toxicity he encounters every day. Sadly the world of work is not much different. Agreed- so important we work towards making sure that all our environments feel safe enough for us to be ourselves naturally.
We are all teachers and we all have the responsibility to walk who we are in the world to support everyone around us.
Teachers are so important, they can either crush or connect to a Childs essence
I see with my son at school that if he feels safe and supported by the teacher then he naturally can do the work that he is asked, if he does not have a positive relationship with the teacher then there is a struggle and resistance to doing the work. Building relationships with the children is key and then from here it is much easier for them to learn and feel safe to experiment and have a go.
Michelle, this feels key; ‘As a teacher therefore, my main aim, on which I base all my lessons, is to build relationships with my students.’ At school the subjects that I enjoyed and where I excelled were ones where I felt supported and had a good relationship with the teacher.
The world is lucky to have teachers like you Michelle.
It is paramount we create space for our children to express as it is essential for their growth and supports them enormously. They get to feel the power of expression and the impact expression has on their body and well being.
This support for anyone is hugely confirming and confidence growing.
Supporting children to be emotionally articulate, relate to others and to deal with fall outs/ arguments is as important as teaching the curriculum. We seem to have the balance out of kilter… what good is passing exams if there is violence in the home?
Failing to understand that the world turns on the quality of our relationships just as much as the function aspect of life we are failing to imbue life with quality. More abuse takes place in the home than anywhere else and what we live at home is taken out into society. Within our families, we are shaping the society we see outside of the home. So far from observing what goes on in the world and wanting to have none of it, we need to be looking in our homes, stepping into the responsibility we have to not perpetuate the mess we are generating.
I absolutely agree Rachel, when a child is confident in their selves and knows how to be with others, learning then becomes a natural part of their growth. They enjoy learning but it comes from the relationship they have with themselves. At the moment the set up is the other way round where exam grades, achieving, winning and ticking boxes are priority over not only the kids but also the teacher’s health and wellbeing.
It’s so important that teachers provide a space where it is totally safe for kids to be themselves. Kids are constantly bombarded with who and what they need to be for everyone around them – imagine if they could come to school or class and know that there was something amazing in them worth not leaving behind.
What an amazing opportunity teachers have and resonate submitted to truly support children in learning.
We all have a responsibility to the world to present with a clarity in ourselves. This helps others build a trust and share Love. This is what life is all about.
It is a great responsibility for a teacher to be honest. We can recall the reflections from our teachers throughout our lives, even when we have long forgotten their names, we can remember whether they supported us and held integrity. What an influence a great teacher can be should never be underestimated.
The try harder and be better model in life is very flawed as it does not allow for the acceptance of who we are in essence rather reduces us to one aspect of ourselves, the ability to function or be productive.
As human beings we haven’t even begun to realise the capacity we have to hold space with love. We just know that when someone does it feels beautiful. Imagine if we all brought that understanding and tenderness to our interactions and those we meet.
We don’t enough in our society give credence to the truth that children are very connected to an intelligence and wisdom that is innate from day of their birth and our responsibility is simply to confirm and foster the development and deepening of their relationship with their divine beingness. You are leading the way Michelle in showing how our relationships with our children either inspire them to feel the power of all they are or impose falsities that harm their development of living in connection to the power of who they innately are in essence.
The depth to which we have reduced children when we come from this perspective is so all-pervading and deeply rooted that we remain ignorant of the utter damage that we inflict. To me, it is so so simple. Honour ourselves, love ourselves, claim and appreciate what we bring in full so that we may support children to do this for themselves.
Michele, I love that you put the children first – their learning will then naturally come because they feel safe; ‘As a teacher therefore, my main aim, on which I base all my lessons, is to build relationships with my students.’
I have talked to teachers about this subject, a child feeling safe and appreciated for who they are is the true foundational place to start. It is pointless to push ideas on children it does nothing to enhance them, support them to shine who they already are this is true teaching and we do this through love and connection.
So much of our current system is about herding kids through, regardless of whether they can keep up or not. In the focus on results children can feel like they don’t matter so long as they can keep up. When they feel intrinsically valued, just because, the results come.
A child doesn’t need anything but love for who they are. They are seen for who they are regardless of what they can or cannot do and when this is set as a foundation in life they soar not necessarily academically although this can naturally happen as they are confident and joyful beings in their own right.
Michelle, I love reading this; ‘As teachers, through developing trust we can support our kids to feel at ease, to ‘have a go’ without fear of getting things wrong because they feel valued as a person first and foremost.’ What you are sharing makes absolute sense. For me at school the subjects I enjoyed most were the ones where I had a connection with the teacher, where I felt supported by them.
It’s interesting that its the teacher not necessarily the subject that gets kids engaged. In my experience, we normally end up enjoying the subjects because of the teachers, not the other way around.
So very true that trust and knowing with anyone to be able to not worry about “getting it wrong” is priceless and something I know we all deeply value in another.
I have seen many instances where children have not been given the space and freedom to express how they feel, openly and without rejection. And I can also see how it is the adults who do this because they themselves experienced it, and so the cycle continues. Which is why Universal Medicine is so great, because it gives people an opportunity to heal the old hurts that stop us from truly, openly loving each other.
The hurts we suffer as children because of this continue into adulthood with us, but they become buried as a feeling not articulated in words, which would give them shape, context, awareness and understanding. In this denial as adults, we do mete out the same to our own kids, which to me is an utter tragedy, given how much we know of the hurt of it. What I have really appreciated about Universal Medicine is that in the clarity offered by the Ageless Wisdom, that shape and context, awareness and understanding has been offered so that rather than being owned by my hurts I have been able to appreciate myself more, observe more and let the hurts go, taking responsibility for them and for the fact that I never claimed I knew better as a child – that it wasn’t myself that was less or that my feelings didn’t matter – it was simply the fact that society is set up for children to close down and to turn off their clairsentience. In this understanding, we give ourselves permission to reclaim who we naturally are and to rebuild that foundation of self-love we come in with that then allows us to openly love each other.
The best teachers i can remember at school made you feel like you were understood and therefore spoke to you with a respect for who you were not for what you had achieved.
Feeling safe is all our responsibility, we have an opportunity to work together to ensure safety for children, it’s never one person alone, for we are strong together.
Indeed. There are times when I feel very strong and together but equally there are many times where I am processing something and am feeling fragile and vulnerable. Whilst there can be a strength in that fragility, at those times I need the support of others. We can not do life alone, whether we are children or adults, and no matter how wise or advanced we are there is always something else that another can offer to advance that learning.
Allowing children, the time and space to articulate what they are feeling and supporting them to develop their expression is as valid (if not more so) than the delivery of the curriculum as this will support their communication in life as well as the quality of relationships they will end up having as a result. It will enable them to live life with a greater sense of knowing themselves.
So beautifully expressed Rachel. Our relationships, not least the one we have with ourselves, are at the heart of every system and facet of life. To ignore this is to diminish life and to reduce it to mere function and not always a smooth one at that. Know ourselves and the utter richness that comes with this, supports a vitality and joy that function can only look at across a divide that not only seems impossible to get across, it rejects as being real.
Feeling safe helps to go a specific learning path -feeling unsafe helps to go a different one. What we learn, what we are open to learn is simply different. Feeling safe, on the other hand, derives from feeling settled in one´s own body. Settlement is something a teacher can help sustain but it is not his/her exclusive responsibility.
Yes – supporting others to feel safe is something that we all have responsibility for and yes even for ourselves, because the choice to connect to our bodies or not is very much our own choice. We can only truly feel safe when we arrive at a deep settlement within the body and this takes a conscious effort to do for oneself. I can be supported by another to arrive at this settlement but it takes commitment on my part to sustain it.
Talking to a teacher recently it seems that in her school most of the children are very rarely valued at all and if they are it is because they have done something for their parents – to keep their parents happy which means keeping themselves out of trouble. They either become good pupils obeying and trying to curry favour with the teachers or they rebel and become either withdrawn or loud and controlling, possibly even bully-ish. She feels that the most important thing is to make a connection with the pupils. It is the relationship that she builds over time that determines the pupils approach to learning. Being consistent and always accepting them as they are and appreciating them for the qualities that they bring allows them to gain trust not only in her but in themselves.
The greatest trust a child can feel is that an adult is not perfect either, and thus being a student is not about being perfect or not getting it wrong. Teachers can make mistakes too, they can be vulnerable, they can express their feelings……children just want to see the reflection that what they know inside is natural too for another, an adult that they can trust, our Livingness is the best confirmation they can ever receive. The trust back to their body is the best confidence they can be equipped with in life.
Because we don’t often show our vulnerability to children they develop a false perception that we need to be perfect. Strip this away and children learn that it is ok to be. Also in our imperfections we reflect to another what their strengths are supporting them to know that often they bring something another can’t or can’t quite bring so powerfully. If we are accepting of our imperfections, in this awareness we appreciate what others bring that we can’t. In this instance there is no jealousy that wants to crush another but an awareness of the awesomeness of that other, confirming in them something that needs to be cherished and nurtured.
“I know that this struggle comes from the self-imposed blocks and inner tension they have created by falsely believing they are not good enough and so I hold them in a quality that communicates the truth.” What an angel you are in that classroom Michelle, thank you.
So true Michelle. By a teacher being steady within themselves, a child feels safe, and the teacher is then able to impart clearly to the student in their movements and words, that they are valued and cared for. From this foundation the student feels safe to ‘have a go’ and not terrified to be shown up to get it wrong. True education. Great sharing.
I have been observing recently how so many of our steady teachers are getting attacked within the system as our culture puts the system before people. It’s so important that we give the space to appreciate our qualities over and above being slaves to the organisations we have created. When we undermine our teachers we undermine our kids and ultimately society as a whole.
This brings tears because it happens to us all and we end up living half lives, not commited and truly expressive….‘When we do not give children permission to express what they are feeling, they learn to dismiss the truth of what they know, second-guessing what is asked of them and ‘playing it safe.’‘ I have reservations in life and play it safe (less than I did, but still it happens) and this is very much part of it, playing safe….
The rot runs so deeply and we swallow it so completely that we think we forget, but in truth we carry the sores and hurts even though we become numb to them. We have learned to live with tumours but it is only when someone walks by who is free of them that we can truly feel where we are at and what our potential is. The miracle is that when we are truly open to living the truth our imperfections don’t matter. The power of love is such that we can undo lifetimes of contraction in one lifetime – just a few short ones against a backdrop of hundreds of years if not thousands.
‘Playing safe’ is fraught with danger, too numerous to mention.
Giving time for children to express how they feel in class time, or sometime during the school day is important otherwise we teach them that what they are emotionally experiencing is not important and has little value compared with getting academic results.
I agree that it is important for children to express how they are feeling, and to be heard, so they feel met.
Allowing children to express what they are feeling seems key, this inspires me to have this dialogue with the children I know.
Michele, I love your way of teaching and being with the children -putting the children and your connection with them first. This feels like a huge support for them; allowing them to be themselves and trust themselves.
There are so many awesome teachers out there who seem to do this instinctively too. Kids feel much more settled when they have boundaries but are supported underneath by someone who gets them and who wants to get to know them more!
I wonder if a teacher would struggle giving their children the space to feel safe if the teacher themselves would not feel safe?
As a teaching professional, I know that school staff are needed and expected to support kids with many issues. These issues stem from having to perform in a loveless system as well as parenting from adults who have been equally hurt by their own parents and the system.The irony is, as with most adults, teachers are also carrying their own childhood hurts and reactions from school and life. Until we can appreciate ourselves for what we bring rather than what we do we can’t offer this or reflect it to the kids in our care. Until we can speak openly, honestly and freely about our insecurities and work on healing them without shame, raising awareness as we go then we are going to continue to make it all about function.
Wise words, we need to look deeper and stop trying to make a broken and ‘loveless’ system work. Break the mound and choose another way.
Function without being is like a body without a heart.
I remember the teachers that I considered honest – when they had a bad day, some children attacked them but other children actually supported them especially and that felt very harmonious for those children that gave the support.