Jesus had an incredible ability to cut through to the very essence of human experience. In today’s episode I want to talk about how one of his most important sayings relates to a way we can improve our daily interactions with all our students, colleagues and parents. I also share a great quote you wont want to miss from Adrienne Vin Speyr.
Transcript
Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you.
Speaker:Once again, welcome aboard to the Catholic teacher daily podcast.
Speaker:Really great to have the pleasure of your company.
Speaker:Hope you're doing well.
Speaker:Wherever you're listening.
Speaker:I really enjoy doing these lately.
Speaker:And I just hope that, uh, there is some encouragement here for you.
Speaker:A little bit of inspiration.
Speaker:We never know how God's going to show up on any particular day and just give us
Speaker:a little bit of a nudge when we need it.
Speaker:Now, today, I want to share with you a great quote.
Speaker:From the author, Adrian Von Speyer, that's a challenging one
Speaker:to pronounce, but there we go.
Speaker:Adrian Von Spire.
Speaker:This one really jumped out at me and I'm going to give this
Speaker:a scriptural basis as well.
Speaker:I hope it's a blessing to you.
Speaker:It's very simple.
Speaker:She says this the first step in learning to love others.
Speaker:Is the attempt.
Speaker:To understand them.
Speaker:The first step in learning to love others is the attempt to understand them.
Speaker:Now I want to put this in the context of our difficult students.
Speaker:I mean, as teachers, we don't have any problem loving those students
Speaker:that are just easy to love.
Speaker:They're just engaging and polite.
Speaker:And my oldest daughter's like that.
Speaker:She's um, she just loves to learn.
Speaker:She's incredibly respectful and well behaved.
Speaker:She's just beautiful.
Speaker:So she's the kind of student that if she sits in your class, if you had like
Speaker:20 or 25 of those sort of students, you'd be like, how good is this?
Speaker:I love every single day of teaching.
Speaker:But of course we don't get 25 or 30 of those kinds of students and
Speaker:we definitely don't get a whole staff room or faculty lounge.
Speaker:Full of people that are always instantly able to love.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:We all know those people.
Speaker:I think of a priest who was here for dinner the other night.
Speaker:He's one of God's really special people.
Speaker:He's just.
Speaker:The most.
Speaker:Um, humble, relaxed, joyful, simplistic person.
Speaker:Everybody loves them.
Speaker:But what we want to be able to do is what do we do with those people
Speaker:that are hard to love those students, those colleagues, those parents.
Speaker:So this is the great quote from Von Speyer, who says that the first
Speaker:step in learning to love notice.
Speaker:There's the implication there that this is something we learn.
Speaker:We don't instantly do it.
Speaker:It's not like jumping on a bicycle, you know, like, oh, sorry.
Speaker:It's a lot like jumping on a bicycle.
Speaker:It's something that we learn.
Speaker:We didn't all get on a bicycle.
Speaker:Just absolutely nail it.
Speaker:The first time I can remember teaching my kids to ride and just
Speaker:how long it took to to slowly get them confident and comfortable.
Speaker:So the ability to love people.
Speaker:Is something that we learn and get better at as we go through life.
Speaker:Karen and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary recently, and I'd like to
Speaker:think that we've had plenty of practice and plenty of ups and downs and failures.
Speaker:But we've learned this process of loving over time.
Speaker:So firstly, we need to give ourselves some grace and cut ourselves some slack
Speaker:that the difficult people in our Catholic schools are difficult and challenging
Speaker:students, parents and colleagues.
Speaker:We're on a journey here of slowly learning to love them
Speaker:through the gift of daily grace.
Speaker:But what VIN Spire Von Speyer is getting at here is this, this, the crucial
Speaker:ingredient of seeking to understand them.
Speaker:Remember that great.
Speaker:Line from St.
Speaker:Francis of Assisi.
Speaker:You know, divine master that I would seek to under, to.
Speaker:You know, to understand more than to be understood.
Speaker:So, what we want to do here is when we find people difficult to love,
Speaker:let's ask for the grace of this first step of understanding them.
Speaker:Usually there's some kind of difficulty or abrasiveness or recalcitrance
Speaker:in a person it's often because of something that's happened to them or
Speaker:is currently happening in their life.
Speaker:They've learned a certain way of being they've been hurt or
Speaker:rejected, or they don't feel loved.
Speaker:And so.
Speaker:That first step of asking ourselves the question what's going on for this person.
Speaker:Why are they manifesting this behavior?
Speaker:Remember that Aristotle was really big on this, you know, the, uh,
Speaker:it's the first line of book, eight of Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics.
Speaker:I always memorize this because he said that.
Speaker:You know, all human action.
Speaker:Is action towards the good all human action is aiming at
Speaker:something it's got this teleology.
Speaker:We call it.
Speaker:It's got this.
Speaker:Desire to bring about some things.
Speaker:So when a student is difficult, Or a colleague is, you know,
Speaker:dismissive or abrasive.
Speaker:There's a reason behind it.
Speaker:Now, crucially, this does not mean we accept abusive or inappropriate behavior.
Speaker:Of course we don't.
Speaker:One of the most crucial things about learning is creating a learning
Speaker:environment that's stable and safe.
Speaker:So I'm not saying that any of us should put up with.
Speaker:Really difficult behaviors, but I think rather than seeing it as a
Speaker:turf war between us and a student or between us and a colleague, Takes
Speaker:a lot of grace and maturity to go.
Speaker:What is happening here.
Speaker:Who is this person?
Speaker:Why are they doing this?
Speaker:And then prayerfully doing this right.
Speaker:Asking the Lord to give us the grace as we go through our relationship
Speaker:and our daily interactions with them.
Speaker:Lord, what is going on here?
Speaker:Give me your heart for this person.
Speaker:Show me what I need to know about them.
Speaker:Help me understand them.
Speaker:And I guess over time we can just be direct and ask direct questions.
Speaker:Like, why are you doing this?
Speaker:Why are you behaving this way?
Speaker:So.
Speaker:I wanted to give this a scriptural basis and the simplest way to do it
Speaker:is to go straight to the golden rule.
Speaker:Matthew chapter seven, verse 12.
Speaker:Jesus says to us.
Speaker:So in everything do to others, what you would have them do to you?
Speaker:For this sums up the law and the profits.
Speaker:Friends, we could spend a day on this, like for Jesus to say this
Speaker:sums up the law and the prophets.
Speaker:Now what's the law.
Speaker:You know, the, the, the Mishnah, the mosaic law that the Pharisees, for
Speaker:example, operating under head close to 620 provisions, there was roughly
Speaker:300 dues and roughly 300 don'ts.
Speaker:So, you know, Oh really devout Hebrews at the time of Jesus would
Speaker:be going around trying to make sure that they lived up to the 600
Speaker:prohibitions or 600, uh, expectations.
Speaker:And of course, then you've got the entire prophetic tradition.
Speaker:So what's Jesus saying here, it's radical.
Speaker:He's saying you want to understand all of these 600 laws.
Speaker:You want to understand the entire profits.
Speaker:Let me sum it up for you in a, in a phrase, in a sentence.
Speaker:Just due to other people, exactly what you want them to do to you.
Speaker:So let's link this back to Von Spire, which is what understanding, what
Speaker:do we want people to do for us?
Speaker:You never had a day where you're over tired or cranky or stressed.
Speaker:And, you know, everything's going wrong.
Speaker:What do we crave from people?
Speaker:You know, we crave for them to cut us some slack.
Speaker:They, we pray that somebody is going to see through the difficult circumstance.
Speaker:And be patient and gentle with us.
Speaker:You know, after my kids are still pretty young and.
Speaker:I think I've told this story recently where it had been raining and,
Speaker:uh, my youngest daughter was in the car and she started screaming.
Speaker:And I turned around, there's this massive spider.
Speaker:So for my American listeners here in Australia, it's just yellow.
Speaker:Just don't go outside and you'll be fine in Australia.
Speaker:Just never leave indoors.
Speaker:Um, cause this thing was, you know, half the size of Texas and it was on her leg.
Speaker:And she lost it and I whacked the spider.
Speaker:I got rid of that and I grabbed her and brought her into the front seat
Speaker:of the car and just held onto her.
Speaker:And calmed her and you know, I'm no super perfect parent, but I
Speaker:know psychologists say that as a child, if you have experiences.
Speaker:Have a strong, grounded, parental figure.
Speaker:Being with you in a traumatic experience, you can, you know, often bypass
Speaker:a lot of the suffering and trauma that can happen in, in childhood.
Speaker:And what is that?
Speaker:It's a, it's an aspect of understanding.
Speaker:It's like she goes through this horrible experience, but she's understood.
Speaker:She's held in that.
Speaker:And I wonder if in behavior management we could begin to say, okay, how
Speaker:do I as a Catholic teacher, how do I, as a, as a Christian, how do I.
Speaker:Stay grounded.
Speaker:And seek to understand what this person needs not justifying toxic behaviors.
Speaker:But seeking first to understand.
Speaker:And that's what Stephen Covey did.
Speaker:Remember Stephen Covey's famous seven habits book.
Speaker:I mean, what was his Bob was principle number one, seek first to understand.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:I hope that's going to be useful as you go into your day, as you
Speaker:deal with difficult colleagues as you deal with difficult students.
Speaker:Lord, give me a heart of understanding.
Speaker:Remember what Solomon prayed for?
Speaker:Give me wisdom, give me wisdom to lead these people.
Speaker:Lord, you know, what's the prayer that we need to have as Catholic educators.
Speaker:Lord, give me wisdom.
Speaker:Give me groundedness and patience and love.
Speaker:So that I can be who you need me to be, and I can understand this
Speaker:person and then I can love them.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Hope that's useful.
Speaker:Please make sure you've subscribed.
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Speaker:throw it on Facebook and say, Hey.
Speaker:Have a listen to this, email, this to a few other teachers in your school,
Speaker:because that would be a great blessing.
Speaker:And finally, if you like what you're hearing, uh, please come and
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Speaker:Do a search Jonathan Doyle.
Speaker:You're going to find me there and there'll be links of course,
Speaker:on these emails that you get.
Speaker:I'd love it.
Speaker:If you could offer some support there so I can keep doing this day after day.
Speaker:God bless you everybody get out there seek understanding ask the lord for the
Speaker:grace for an understanding heart and let's press on one more day as catholic
Speaker:teachers god bless everybody this has been the catholic teacher daily podcast
Speaker:my name's jonathan doyle and i'm going to have another message for you tomorrow
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