Chinese Acrobats and Middle School Teachers

February 27, 2009

During our Wednesday All-School Assembly we witnessed an inspired performance by a Chinese Acrobat Troupe from Beijing, China. I’m not sure that I have ever seen our audience—K through 8, faculty and staff—so rapt for an entire program. The five performers dazzled and bedazzled the crowd from start to finish. From gymnastics, to foot juggling, to board balancing on a rolling pin, to unicycle riding - these performers had it all.

For all of us it was not only the gravity-defying feats and the incredible displays of both strength and flexibility that stood out, but also the ease with which they performed each act. Both were equally impressive. The performers were the epitome of grace.

Throughout the rest of the day, I caught myself replaying the images of their performance, searching within my body for what it might feel like to try some of these feats. (Yes, all of us who work in education, like your children, have active imaginations!) Walking the playground I watched as students attempted to recreate aspects of the performance, some within the guidelines of acceptable behavior, some not. Some students grasped marginal success, others not. All to say the acrobats’ performance lingered long after they left campus.

At the conclusion of the day I was in a meeting with administrators and staff. Over the previous two months we had had the assignment to observe one middle school teacher in action. (We had observed lower school teachers in the fall and will observe specialist teachers in the spring.) In this meeting we were debriefing on what each of us had observed and what we had learned about teaching middle school students. The conversation was also interspersed with moments of laughter as our own middle school years, often unexpectedly, bloomed in front of us.

At one point during the discussion, I found myself repeating and savoring some of the words I had heard more than a few times in descriptions of our middle school teachers: vulnerable, humorous, flexible, strong, risk-taking, authentic, quirky, limit-setting, connected, and honest. Yes, I thought to myself, these are the qualities necessary to succeed with middle school students. For example, some aspect of vulnerability in a teacher is necessary to gain students’ trust. That is, vulnerability resonates with all middle school students because they themselves are so vulnerable. Furthermore, as a result, and for better and worse, they have finely-honed radar for vulnerability in others. If one pretends not to be vulnerable they never connect, but if one is too vulnerable they pounce. Humor is another example. Only the teachers who can authentically laugh at themselves can invite students to look at themselves and their own behavior through a humorous lens.

Walking to my car at the end of the day I realized that acrobats and teachers require some of the same qualities for success, though in slightly different measure. The acrobat needs to be physically flexible, while the teacher needs to be psychologically and socially flexible. The acrobat needs incredible body strength, while the teacher needs the strength to continually hang in there on lessons and students. The acrobat needs to connect with the audience to gather support and encouragement to accomplish gravity-defying feats, while the teacher needs to connect so the students will open themselves to new ideas and new places within themselves.

But most of all, like ducks swimming in a pond, acrobats and teachers need to move gracefully and effortlessly through the water while just below the surface, out of eyesight, they are paddling like mad. And neither the acrobat nor the teacher can let the audience see how hard they truly are working or the magic is lost: A tough and beautiful balancing act, for acrobat and teacher alike.

Have a great weekend, and be sure to ask your children about the assembly.

Mike