Near Enemies
In Chapter 7, Brown introduced me to a concept I understood immediately, but had never heard labeled before. Brown shares Kristin Neff's description of the Buddhist concept of "near and far enemies" of emotion: "near enemy is a useful Buddhist concept referring to a state of mind that appears similar to the desirable state... but actually undermines it." The behaviors and attitudes of "far enemies" are easier to recognize because they are polar opposites, while behaviors and attitudes of the emotion's "near enemy" can be more challenging to recognize because they can appear more similar. I was particularly interested in Brown's discussion of compassion and pity.
Compassion/Pity
The far enemy of compassion is cruelty. In the classroom, this might translate to a teacher using extreme sarcasm with students, being overly critical of the student without offering meaningful feedback, or even having a "no excuses" attitude with all students, refusing to acknowledge that not all students have the same conditions. These are pretty easy to see and if a teacher can't recognize this in themselves, an admin, colleague, student or coach would likely be able to identify these actions.
The idea that the near enemy of compassion is pity, though, really struck me. Unlike cruelty, it would be more subtle to recognize when a teacher believes they have great compassion for their students, but actually behaves in a way that pities them.
Brown quotes Jack Kornfield who writes, "pity says, 'oh that poor person. I feel sorry for people like that.' " This separates us from our students and sets us up to be the person who can swoop in and save them because we see ourselves as better than. I immediately began thinking about what this does for our academic expectations. When we feel bad for, or pity, our students' life circumstances, learning struggles, or other aspects it's easier to excuse them for tasks and experience that feel "too challenging." Although the near/far enemy concept is a new one for me, I can recall instances where what felt like compassionate behavior was really more pity. I was also reminded of Zaretta Hammond's work on "dependent learners" and how as teachers we often perpetuate this dependence when we don't actively cultivate independence and academic mindsets. Pity makes it difficult to push students to independence because this emotion views the students as incapable of rising to the expectations we have for them.
When we pity students we say, "How sad. I couldn't possibly expect too much from you so I will lower my standards." With compassion we say, "I know this is difficult for you, but I won't disrespect you by lowering my standards. We will work toward this together." Brown doesn't go into this too much in the chapter, but she says one element of pity is "a passive, self-focused reaction." I imagine that when we pity students it is much more implicit and compassion has more explicit actions. For example, if my pity for a student drives me to give them credit for "nearly correct" work, I probably won't say anything directly to the student, I'll just give them the credit. The student may believe they were proficient when maybe they weren't or the student may KNOW that the answers weren't actually satisfactory and now they realize I don't have very high expectations for them. Compassion, though, seems to require more explicit behavior--a conversation with the student about exactly where they were correct and where they started to go wrong, an acknowledgement of their effort and feedback on how to improve. This explicit conversation sends a clear message to this student that I will not let them fall short of the standard. The chart to the left shows a couple specific classroom scenarios where we could respond with pity or with compassion.
As I reflected on my own pity/compassion responses with students, I began thinking about how this translates to my interactions with teachers in the coaching role. Honestly, in some ways responding with compassion as a coach feels more challenging. Teaching is a vulnerable activity and having a coach witness your teaching can be intimidating. Directive Coaching is a style that feels uncomfortable for me when I am uncertain if the teacher wants this direction. Building out the scenarios in the table to the right helped me realize that compassionate responses have more to do with honesty, conversation, and follow through than they do with directing a teacher on exactly what to do. This is an important reminder for me because in the past I have felt guilty about responding in a "passive self-focused" ways with teachers because I was too nervous to offend them or damage a relationship. In the same way that we want teachers to hold high expectations for all students, we must do the same for all our teachers. Anything less than this says, we don't believe our teachers are capable of growing, which is certainly not a message I intend to send.
Reading about pity/compassion and reflecting on how these emotions negatively and positively impact our expectations has been timely. As a district, we are entering year 2 of trying to increase equitable literacy experiences for our students across classrooms and schools. A foundational idea of this work is that we must establish and maintain high expectations by providing students academically rigorous opportunities. We can't pity our students by jumping in too quickly and saving them from a challenging text or task and take away their opportunities to think, struggle, and succeed on their own. Instead, we can compassionately acknowledge the struggle and provide students timely supports they need to meet the expectation. This mindset feels equally important to apply to the coach/teacher relationship when thinking about saving versus supporting teachers. Our responses must show we respect them enough to hold high expectations.
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