Fear and Love and Hate

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with.
-"The Prince", by Nicolo Machiavelli

Many a teacher has been cautioned by their mentors to "never smile before Christmas." I think this goes hand in hand with the advice given to me from Jim Smith (Master Teacher and god-of-all-unit-leaders) about how it is easier to start out tough and then lighten up, than the other way around. Classroom management and discipline is one of the hardest things to master as a teacher and it took me almost twenty years to develop my own style. In fact, it took me over twenty years of trial and error, hundreds of miserable teenagers, and quite a few irate parents to get to what Jim Fay describes in one short book. So the Machiavellian teacher is usually the new teacher and they will find that it is easier to be feared. But there is more to Nicolo's particular chapter and style that many have overlooked.

Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated...

This is where I think a teacher can go very very wrong if they don't pay attention to the rest of what Nicolo has to say. Having students fear you is one thing, but you have to ask yourself if they hate you. Hate is a two way street: if they despise you, then it is very likely you feel the same way about them. And let's be honest about why we teach and what brought us to teaching. On some level we love kids and want to open the world for them. I think that at first it is easier to "come down hard" and "be feared than loved," but, even by Machiavelli's own account, it takes greater strength to inspire both.

To be honest, a lot of my students have a healthy fear of me and part of that is simply my personality while part of it I deliberately cultivate. I never raise my voice in anger, I never punish, I rarely call home; and yet, I have had no discipline problems in class or salle (fencing studio) in over twenty years. My students and I openly acknowledge this and they learn to take comfort in our relationship. They admit that they were once terrified of me, they are bemused at my sardonic attitude toward that fear, and they freely concede that I am "not so bad" once they get to know me. Not so bad: but not a party in my classroom either. And no, we are not friends - friendly, but never friends. In other words, they know that I do not hate them and they return the courtesy by not hating me. It is an honest relationship.

How have I done this? I can only explain my approach and I hope that you can figure out your own style.

My first lesson of the year is about names and identity. It is a safe way for students to share their self image with me and for me to demystify the aura of the ogre about me. I have them get out their brand new writing journals and on the very first page they write their full name. I then ask them to write for a sustained, five minutes about the "story" behind their name (e.g. Where did it come from? Who chose it? What, if any, is the special meaning? etc). After they are done writing, I break the ice and write my full name on the whiteboard and then tell them the story behind it. By the time I am done, they know a little about my family, its traditions, and the details of my multi-ethnic heritage. In just  few minutes I become human to them and it starts to get more difficult to hate me.

Usually, bolstered by my risk, their stories start to flow about their names and identity: I can only love them for that.

Anarchy and Tyranny

One of my favorite quotes comes from the back of a police cruiser. No, it's not what you think.

I used to work out at a gym that was in the same building as my fencing club. This was a real gym: hard-wood floors, lots of free weights, and lots of mirrors for the body builders. It was not a "fitness center" where there is carpeting, air-conditioning, and mirrors to check out the opposite sex. Because of the type of place it had a lot of Watertown's Finest there and I got know some of the local police: which was good in case we had trouble at the club. Once, during a particularly nasty Massachusetts winter day, one of these guys gave me a lift in his cruiser to the bus stop.

For giggles, I asked if I could right in the back like a real perp, and he said it was a good day to do it since he had just cleaned out the back seat from a the weekend (don't ask - it is someone else's story to tell). So there I am, sitting in the back and trying to imagine what it would feel like if I was really in trouble and I look up to see a quote he has put up on the Plexiglas partition for all his "guests" to read as they sat there as they really were in trouble. It read: "Freedom without discipline is anarchy: Discipline without freedom is tyranny." I asked him about it and he said it was a quote from Nyerere, the President of Tanzania. He said it gave a lot of back seat riders something to think about while they had the time and it reminded him to be professional. I was impressed.

The thing about cops and teachers is that we have a lot in common. We are underpaid, overworked, and under appreciated. We see people on their worst days and we are still expected to make a go of it. We are in the unhappy position of enforcing rules we did not create. We have to de-escalate confrontations with the people we are trying to serve and protect. (as an aside, I always drop that I am a teacher when pulled over, and so far it has gotten me lighter citations than what I probably should have gotten). In short, we are the disciplinarians.

I keep this quote around in my head and sometimes on my signature on my e-mail. It reminds me that I have to be professional and gives the students, parents, teachers, and administrators I correspond with lens with which to view me. Because when all is said and done, we are the peace keepers in and out of our classroom and it is classroom management that is one of the toughest parts of a teacher's job. If we fail to learn this, then our classrooms will go in either the direction of tyranny or in the direction of anarchy.