A good thing

It is such a booootifooool day. Spring has sprung here and finally the long, cold and wet winter seems to be drawing to a close. Surprisingly for me, the winter has dogged me with various viruses but I woke this morning feeling completely energized and ready to rip into life again. Boy, that's a relief! I had such an interesting experience last night that I feel I want to share it here, although the relevance may not be immediately apparent.

It was a parent teacher evening for my son and he and I went to that together. My other three children gave me reason to not look forward to parent teacher nights. I knew that I was likely to hear several "if only he/she would put in a full effort", and so on. I knew this would be different and went there ready to enjoy myself.

What really struck me about the experience was the enormous variance in styles in the teachers. Each one of them was most definitely a committed teacher who liked my son and had very nice things to say but each one was in fact offering him, as a growing person, something very different. I'm going to narrow down my comments to three teachers because what they said applies to the dominant/submissive roles we speak of - what a dominant might be striving for and what a submissive might hope to achieve from the experience.

The Chinese teacher is a fine boned, softly spoken genteel Chinese man. He spoke of my son's "consistent effort", his "attention", his "dedication" and "respect". He expressed pleasure that he had chosen to go on with Chinese and highly recommended he pursue it throughout school. He talked of the benefits in later life - that he never knew where he would travel and what he might do and it would be useful to him. But, this conference for him was not about Chinese. He used the time to teach my son about life. He said that nothing in life has value unless you put in effort and he told him that he will need to always look for challenges - to challenge himself; not to do the easy things but to look to do difficult things. "Nothing comes for free J."

Then, the English teacher. I have known this man for many years and I have a respect for his intellect. It was apparent from the word go that he was going to be good for J and we had an amazing 10 minutes together. He took him through a piece of work. He was forceful in his approach, putting J on the spot and then commending his answers and insisting that he wanted to see that sort of evidence from the film in his next essay. He tutored him through presentation, making it very clear that presentation mattered. "I don't want an examiner to see a paper of yours and mark you down for an immature presentation, J. It gets attended to now and you are to go into the new year with it completely resolved. Do you understand me?"

His bark is much worse than his bite, but he comes across as the dominant of all dominants. I know that I would do things exactly as he said and certainly J got the message too. "He's a good lad, an honest boy, very intelligent and he has a wonderful future in this school," he ended. I was incredibly impressed by him and what he has achieved with J and I thanked him for his attention to detail and I said that it had been what he needed. He asked if we were going to the play, and thank God I had been diligent and bought the tickets. J said that he had been in a couple of plays but not this one. "Well, you will want to be in another play before you are finished here, J. Got that?" "Yes, Dr. C." Ahhhh, my kind of man!

I thought we were heading for the hills (going home) when J asked if he could see his Geography teacher. Since he isn't going on with it next year, I was ambivalent but not letting on, we sat and waited until he was free. We talked briefly about geography but the teacher had other things on his mind. How did he think it was going sitting next to Michael? "Yes, going fine; challenging but fine,"J said. Michael is a gifted boy but a complete introvert and I wondered where he was going with his comments until he let the cat out of the bag.

"Michael has really come out of his shell this year, J. We had him work closely with you, partnering him with you in many situations because we thought you might be able to help. You are in no small measure responsible for his progress as a well rounded person."

J really is a wonderful boy and we all delight in his company. It is extremely pleasing seeing him get the results he deserves. He has had his challenges, too. But, it was this last comment that opened my eyes to his potential value to the world - his ability to make a true difference in the lives of the people who will surround him.

And so, in one evening we had on display all that is best of the power exchange dynamic: a strong bond between teacher and student; respect, diligence, hard work, consistent effort, correction, adjustment of focus, attention, interplay between the two parties, motivation, a desire to achieve and a desire to teach. Perhaps most importantly of all was clear evidence of the capacity and the will to make a difference in another person's life.

A few years ago now my daughter was selected to make up a special orchestra for a week. A well known conductor came over from the United States and in one week taught them an amazing repertoire and they performed it in the Town Hall on the Friday evening. When she introduced the performance she said this (or thereabouts):

"There are a lot of bad things happening in the world. But, what you see on stage here - the effort and passion and love for their music that you will see in these children - this is all good."

I know I have a rosy way of looking at a power exchange but at its best it encompasses all that is good about people. This is the attraction for me.