 27 May 2005 @ 04:58, by Judih Haggai
This week I've been told that I love and understand my students. This is good. This is unusual. This is me. Yet, I've been told that one class of special ed kids needs less love and understanding and more of an Iron fist. They need stricter limits, tougher treatment. They'll need to get on with their schooling in the rougher lane.
It's true - I see their pain! I'm an empath. This is how I am all the time. It doesn't turn off when I enter a classroom. What does happen is that I'm continually learning limits: how to respect privacy, how to feel students' dilemnas but how to respond in a way that helps them deal with it and get on with things.
Too often ADHD [link] is used as an excuse. "Didn't take my pill" "Can't focus" "Can't learn today", etc.
Yes, it's a real condition, but yes, the world doesn't wait for anyone. Life moves constantly. Dealing with a current neurological state is part of living. Dealing, not avoiding.
Yes, I've taken no medication, but there are other ways to oxygenate my brain! I can meditate, jog, exercise with a quick chi cong movement. I can listen to music. I can draw. I can sing.
I don't need an excuse for not doing, for I can do.
Too much love in a coddling manner is not a good thing. But loving to feed the positive in a student is vital.
When a teacher scares a student, speaks only of how bad things are, have been, will be, what kind of learning will take place? Fear has its place in study (look at a Buddhist monastery where the master will strike anyone losing concentration). Yet, what does fear accomplish? Fear closes off the possibility for new connections, creativity. Fear doses the brain with chemicals. Short-lived attention does not make for long-termed love of self.
This week, I've learned that I, myself, need to integrate my understanding. A lifetime of psychic input and investigation of tools to make my efforts more efficient is fully ready to be used. I am ready to open the drawers, pull out the techniques and the knowledge. I am ready to unzip the self-made boundaries and introduce one brain cell to another. I am ready to activate my potential by releasing fear.
Short-termed proficiency can be expanded to integrated consciousness.
The more I learn, the less I want to talk, yet I must talk. I'm still part of this societal matrix. What is ritalin but a drug created by society to drag a bystander into the main hall of life?
Perhaps I'll use this drug on occasion to see what it's like to 'fit in'. Perhaps I won't use it. Fitting in has little appeal.
How to live a parallel life without getting caught.
This week's ruminations;half-formed thoughts and dangling sensations making this diary entry kinesthetic. There'll be more.
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