‘Everyone is a friend’. This was one of two rules displayed in my classroom during my first year as a primary school teacher. I firmly believed that all of my students were capable of having a friendship with one another and with anyone who visited our room.
As it turned out, my students believed this just as strongly as I did, enabling the rule to disappear, and the intent to become firmly ingrained as our way of being. We owned the belief and we lived by the belief. It was an extraordinary year. A year where together we created a compassionate classroom.
Over time, however, I have ebbed and flowed from that belief and that feeling, particularly when things haven’t quite worked out with those I considered to be friends. The flip side, of course, is that some of my most profound moments of compassion and consciousness have been experienced with total strangers, who in one short moment, for whatever reason, became a friend, and, I too for them, in the reverse.
Perhaps this is why the definition of friend is not absolute. Someone you know, another you trust, one who is an ally in a cause or simply another who is not an enemy, can be a friend. Some we have forever, some come and go with our interests or vocations, and others appear for the shortest of time, at just the right time, to give away something of themselves that is needed in another, and then they’re gone.
Whatever the formal definition, I have come to the conclusion, that friends are orchestrators of connectedness and compassion. They provide a sense of belonging, a knowing that someone cares, an acknowledgement that you matter. Friends give face to face, eye to eye, hand on heart connectedness that brings us together and creates a warmth, an energy, that lifts our spirits, gives us hope and makes way for embracing and giving away more of the same.
If I had that first classroom today, my students would be connecting, linking, sharing and making friends from all over the globe. Social media would be the enabler for strangers to become allies, for acquaintances to become friends, and friends to become closer. It would also be the enabler for my students to disconnect, to trust emoticons, to influence and be influenced, to accept friends they would otherwise choose not to be with.
My responsibility would not be to deny my students technology or social media. My responsibility would, however, be to demonstrate and expect a healthy balance between the disconnect of emotional intelligence that technology can bring and the connectedness of compassion through face to face, eye to eye and hand on heart human interaction.
If my students learn to be present when a stranger cares, a friend disappoints or an acquaintance brings hope, they’ll learn to become connected to who they are, their own way of being and the being of others. They will become powerful allies of connectedness and compassion in both physical and technological form. They will become discerning citizens when their gut is talking to them. And if at any time they began to ebb and flow between believing in their intuition, their capacity for connectedness and compassion or otherwise, I’d remind them of the second rule we had on display…’there’s no such thing as can’t, I did my best and now I’d love some help’.
Copyright © Cheryl Lacey 2016 All rights reserved.
Parent, educationist and advocate of agitating change in Australian education. By raising the bar we can face any global challenges facing Australia and Australians.
Contact Cheryl on cheryl@cheryllacey.com
