By HILARY COLLIER
In Marshall Rosenberg’s book Nonviolent Communication, he focuses on the concept of “life-alienating communication.” This style of communication alienates us from others and only increases the divisions that already exist among us. Rosenberg focuses on a few specific examples of “life-alienating communication” and how easy it is to fall into the traps of judgment and comparison when we communicate with others. Understanding these pitfalls is also vitally important to being aware of how we communicate with students in the classroom.
Moralistic judgments are one way that we assess other people and their behaviors. In a classroom environment, it is easy to give accolades to the students who do the right things, while tending to negatively recognize the same students over and over again who struggle to make the right choices.
What is illuminating about the way we make these judgments is that they are actually expressions of our own values and needs, rather than a commentary on those of others. As a teacher, I need my students to feel safe and supported in their learning environment, and I therefore value behavior that encourages that. That said, when I am dealing with behaviors that go against these values and needs, communicating my own needs and why they are important/matter, not just to me but to the entire group, is a far more effective strategy for creating a dialogue than providing the “problem” student with negative consequences and criticism.
For example, when a student continually seems distracted or distracts others when a teacher is trying to provide instruction, it is easy to respond in frustration with, “You need to stop fooling around and pay attention or you won’t know what we are doing later.” This seems harmless but will likely cause communication to shut down rather than creating space for a solution, and these same issues will continue to repeat themselves in the future. Instead, the teacher could respond with, “I am feeling frustrated because I am concerned that you are missing material because you are having trouble focusing. I also want to make sure that everyone in the class is able to do their best learning, and I need your help to do that.” This helps the student understand why the teacher’s efforts matter, and it also helps them become invested in not only their own learning but that of the whole class in a more compassionate way.
Another way that we make communication more difficult is by making comparisons. As I mentioned in my last column, we already have a tendency as humans to evaluate ourselves in a way that promotes more self-hatred than learning, and when we communicate using comparisons, our students do the same. This form of communication does not encourage growth and compassion, but instead blocks creativity and learning and creates divisions among students.
One example of this could be as simple as regularly praising the student who lines up quietly when asked, while regularly providing negative feedback for the student who does not. Finding opportunities to provide students with positive feedback is vital, even when those moments are few and far between. Particularly when a student frequently struggles to follow expectations, it is even more important to notice and celebrate the moments when they make the right choices, which in turn will encourage repetition of that positive behavior in the future.
Many times, when we try to broach a difficult conversation with someone, denial of responsibility is another huge barrier to communication. It can be particularly challenging for us as educators to own our mistakes because admission of a mistake feels like a relinquishing of power. But if instead we see it as an opportunity to model a growth mindset and resilience for our students in the face of failure or adversity, we teach them that these are things we can learn from positively.
Imagine that an educator is trying to teach a new unit and is already feeling less than confident about the material. Any slight miscommunication of information or moment of uncertainty feels like a huge failure. But instead, the teacher could be more open about her own limitations/humanity by beginning the class with a statement like, “This is going to be new information for all of you, but it is pretty new for me as well, and I am really looking forward to the learning we will do together. It is also okay if we make mistakes along the way, because that is a big part of how we learn.” This not only lowers the stakes for the educator, it allows the students to feel more comfortable working with something new because the teacher has already taken that pressure off and removed some of the negative power dichotomy that typically exists in the classroom.
