Trying to See Needs

Good morning, God, and thank you very much for this new day.  The semester has started so I'm back to school, and it looks like my classes will be very enjoyable once again--thank you for that. It's school that I'm thinking about right now, not surprisingly, and the students that I work with--I wonder more and more each year that I teach about the needs of those students, about the things going on in their lives that are difficult for them. I think that this may be a benefit of growing older, feeling more compassion and trying to understand people on levels that are much different than the levels on which I used to understand them.

If I could ask you anything, I would ask you to help me to be there for them--especially on the academic level, of course, for that's why I'm there and why they're there. They're students at a university and I'm a teacher, so my main focus needs to be on the academics.

But that doesn't mean, of course, that I can't encourage them as people rather than as students; that I can't offer them support when things get difficult for them; that I can't show compassion and understanding when they're necessary for someone else to see. What I don't want to happen is for me to get so caught up in what we're doing academically that I lose sight of the fact that these are young human beings who are trying to find their ways in life and who could benefit from a bit of caring and a bit of other people's experiences.

I want this to be a good semester, and I know that in order for that to happen, it depends mostly on me--what I do and say, and what I don't do and say. I'd like to ask you to be there with me to help me to maintain that balance and to be an effective teacher, mentor, and colleague.

Thank you.

a reply:

You're welcome. And thank you for making compassion and understanding such an important part of who you want to be as a teacher. Most teachers, as you well know, do get caught up in their topic areas and in the performance of students that they neglect the human side of their students; they forget to even think of the pain and the confusion and the fear that their students may be feeling at any given time. They may look fine sitting there quietly in your class, but it's almost impossible to know what they may be hiding--if anything--if you never even consider the possibility that they may be hiding something important.

Many people get so focused on their work that they never consider just what the other person is experiencing in different areas of his or her life. It's so easy for us to see student, customer, client, server, officer, janitor, and so on, that we forget to see human beings with hopes and dreams and fears and such. Yes, it is a benefit of aging to be able to see more clearly with compassion and love, but aging doesn't guarantee this benefit--it only happens for those people who are open to it and who are working their ways towards love and compassion as a way of life. So stay on this road. It's a difficult one at times, but it's one that provides great rewards--for the person who feels it and the people whom that person is able to affect.

Have a great semester. Your students are great people--I made them that way. Treat them as such, and they will return the favor. Most of them, at least--not all of them are ready to do so. And they're the ones who need your love and compassion most of all.