A few ago when I was the head of High Meadows School, I was walking the halls of the early childhood building and heard something extraordinary.
A teacher was seated on the floor outside of her classroom with a young student. From what I could glean, the student was not getting along well with one of his classmates.
"She keeps bumping into me and she knows she's doing it," said the student. "She did it last year too and it makes me mad."
After guiding the student to think of his own strategies to improve the relationship, he sat quietly. "Are you OK with this?" asked the teacher. "Something tells me that you're not."
Her heartfelt sensitivity to the child's feelings opened him up right away. "I just don't think it's going to stop," he said.
"Do you know what it means to forgive?" the teacher asked. "I like to think of people as lumps of clay. We can be molded and changed, and we are never the same. It's possible to change and be different shapes over time. So if you give her time and space, you might notice that she has grown and changed too."
The student sat quietly, pondering what his teacher had just said. Sensing that she needed to go a bit further with him, the teacher said, "You know, bad feelings about someone can weigh on your heart like a boulder. It can actually make you keep feeling angry if you don't let go of that heavy boulder."
What a lesson! The teacher, demonstrating natural intuition and compassion, engaged the student's trust as he shared with her his honest feelings. She guided him in coming up with his own strategies. She then used metaphor, a powerful teaching tool, to illustrate the nature of change and the ill-effects of holding on to resentments.
I hope the outcome is as strong as the lesson, but the lesson itself will stay with this student for a long time. I know it will stay with me.
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