MGCs Can Be EXHAUSTING

Dear colleague,

Earlier this week, I invited you to join me in a month of experimenting and playing with Strategy #1 in The Will to Learn: Tracking Attempted Moments of Genuine Connection (MGCs). And today I'm going to write to you about something you'll find as you work on this: MGCs can be exhausting.

An MGC attempt is very simple: in a brief (30-60 seconds), one-on-one conversation, you attempt to make a student feel valued, known, and respected. In the early pages of his book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (Audible version), David Brooks provides a rich argument for why MGC attempts are such a key teacher move.

Here are some of those arguments:

• “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.” (p. 9)
• “‘The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them,' George Bernard Shaw wrote, ‘but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.' To do that is to say: You don't matter. You don't exist.” (p. 9)
• “Artificial intelligence is going to do many things for us in the decades ahead, and replace humans at many tasks, but one thing it will never be able to do is create person-to-person connections. If you want to thrive in the age of AI, you better become exceptionally good at connecting with others.” (p. 11)
• “Seeing someone well is a powerfully creative act. No one can fully appreciate their own beauty and strengths unless those things are mirrored back to them in the mind of another. There is something in being seen that brings forth growth. If you beam the light of your attention on me, I blossom. If you see great potential in me, I will probably come to see great potential in myself.” (p. 11)

But in this list of Brooks' comments, we see not just the importance of attempting MGCs with students; we also start to get a sense of just how much inner work is required here. Seeing a student and then communicating that sight to students is a “skill”; it's “a powerfully creative act;” it involves the beaming of the light of my attention on a student.

This isn't fuzzy-wuzzy stuff. This is work. And I need to remind myself of that as I go through the September Invitation in my own classroom, that the fatigue I feel makes sense in light of just how much emotional and spiritual and relational work these small, brief, intentional interactions are.

I mean, just consider how much work is implied by this line from psychologist Diana Fosha: “The roots of resilience are to be found in the sense of being understood by and existing in the mind and heart of a loving, attuned, and self-possessed other.”

Do you know how much work it takes to bring 133 new students into my mind and heart? To have them exist in my inner world, to attune myself to them, and to maintain a sense of self-possession as I do so?

A LOT!

And this is an important point, colleague. The biggest problem I ran into in trying to share my work with teachers in schools around the country this past summer is that the teaching practices I recommend appear stupidly simple. They are a lot like Mr. Miyagi's wax-on, wax-off admonitions to Daniel in The Karate Kid. This idea of checking in on individual students to let them know that I see them, that I think of them, that I know them, that I value and respect them — it's stuff so basic that they don't even need to talk about it in School of Ed classes. Most of us became teachers because we had a teacher or two who successfully MGCed with us. And much of the rest became teachers because they didn't receive enough of this stuff and wanted to make a change for future students.

But just because something appears simple does not mean it is easy.

I'm telling you: this is work.

And that's why you've got to give yourself permission to just do what you can each day. You can't get good at MGCs through brute strength. It takes practice and rest and then more practice. Day in, day out, humdrum kind of stuff.

To close, I'll share a video reflection I did this afternoon on how my MGC work is going so far in September. It's not long, it includes real examples from my classroom, and I really hope you find it encouraging.

Actually, I hope this video helps you feel known, valued, and respected — especially if you're feeling tired during these early weeks of the school year.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR