ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

"An understanding heart is everything in a teacher." - Carl G. Jung

THE DOORKNOB PHENOMENON

In her new book, The Essential Conversation:  What Parents and Teachers Can Learn from Each Other (New York: Random House, 2003;  www.atrandom.com), Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Professor of Education at Harvard, offers this observation:

"Every time parents and teachers come together, their dialogue is to some extent related to their early childhood experiences, which get rehearsed and replayed in the classrooms of their children.  As parents and teachers sit facing one another they are drawn back in time, to the time when they felt small and powerless, to the specters from their youth.  These ancient ghosts invade the classroom, crowd into the conversation, and often make it difficult for the adults to place themselves in time and space.  It is as if there are two plays being enacted simultaneously:  one in which the adult actors speak rationally and clearly about the young person for whom they are responsible, and a second drama that goes on inside, where adults reenact scenes from their own childhoods.

"These two plays compete and converge to produce the doorknob phenomenon.  At the end of the conference, just as he is about to leave, the father suddenly unleashes the anguish that he has managed to ignore and repress during the meeting.  He warns the teacher that he is determined that the trauma he experienced as a fifth-grade student will not be inflicted on his son.  He will do anything to protect his boy from a repetition of the same pain.  One of the great challenges facing teachers and parents is to recognize the presence of these autobiographical echoes — the ghosts in the classroom — that reverberate through the conference, and then to be careful not to let them drown out the dialogue that should be focused on the student.  There are both important insights and dangerous distortions carried in these ancient echoes, and bringing them to conciousness helps parents and teachers distinguish the good from the bad.

"Teachers who are aware of this 'double channel' going on in the parents' heads find ways of helping them unravel the knots of converging narratives.  Elizabeth Morgan, for example, speaks about her use of 'wait time,' a purposeful pause in the dialogue that opens up space for inchoate feelings and formless reflections.  She uses these 'silences,' generously and strategically, to make room for the wandering, improvisational talk that often leads to new insights and interesting discoveries.  'I'm very good on the back roads,' she says about the comfort she feels in letting this drama unfold.  She gathers the pieces of the jagged conversation together, 'giving it back to the parents in the form that makes sense and moves the conversation forward.'  All the time, however, Elizabeth works to keep the child in focus.  The travel along the back roads must be in the service of carving out a more straightforward and productive path for the child.  The adult reflections and retrospection that the silences permit must be in the service of moving the student forward."

For another take on considering the parents point of view, go to the Exchange Bookstore and check out Anne Stonehouse's book, How does it feel?  Child Ccare from a Parent's Perspective at: http://mail.ccie.com/go/eed/0028

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