Sitting at my desk today I noticed three books sweetly stacked on top of each other with the spine out so I can clearly read the titles staring back at me. The book on the bottom is Thich Nhat Hanh’s newest, Happy Teachers Change the World wherein he states, “Our mission as teachers is not to transmit knowledge, but to form human beings, to construct a worthy, beautiful human race, in order to take care of this precious planet” (2017). Resting on top of it is The Book of Joy, Douglas Abrams’ beautifully crafted ccount of a week-long visit between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu whereby these two moral leaders who transcend any confines of their own religions to connect with each other over the desire to relieve suffering in all people.
And last but not least, the course book for an eight week Action for Happiness course, Exploring What Matters. This enlightening course successfully unveils the myth that happiness is a vague and abstract concept that cannot be understood, much less taught or attained.
For the record, I didn’t stack these books here on purpose to impress my visitors or make for an interesting talking point. They are there because my experience of working in schools as well as watching educational initiatives and trends rise and fall, has led me to seek some tangible wisdom in their content. My husband and I are on our fourteenth year in education. Over the years we’ve asked ourselves at different points along the way: How can I do the most good? How can little old me make a genuine impact on our next generation? The answers have been slightly different each time, leading us to where we are today, converging into a similar topic in these last few years. I believe that educators are asking themselves these questions all the time, whether they realize it or not. This is why we all got into education in the first place, to make an impact and make the world just a little bit better, one child at a time. The big question is how?
During our course, our ragtag group of educators from diverse cultural backgrounds, religions and socioeconomic backgrounds grappled with questions such as, “What actually makes us happy?” and “How can we maintain healthy relationships?” Each
week, it was astounding how much we agreed upon; we all want to feel valued, listened to, and connected to each other. It made me realize that on the big questions in life, we all agree. It’s the minutia of the day to day that gets in our way of understanding the truth about each other. We ended our course with the big question of, “How can we create a happier world?” Silence fell among the group as this question was posed.
Well, don’t the same rules apply? We know that we all desire to feel valued, listened to
and connected to each other. This is what our students crave as well: they long to be seen, heard and felt. I’ve tried to think of another profession besides teaching that
demands such a profound and sustained level of presence and connection with other
humans for such a prolonged period of time. I can’t think of one. If this is what people, including our students, are hungry for, then this is what they will demand from the
adults in their life. However, as Thich Nhat Hanh wisely states, “We [teachers] may not have enough patience, understanding, freshness, or compassion” to live up to the demands of our students and our colleagues. I would say I agree with him, if we are
expected to do it alone. But as a collective group, with a common understanding and
common values, I say we have a fighting chance.
So what does this have to do with teachers being happy? I think the word happy has
unfairly turned into a bit of a cliche, a word that implies the opposite of the things that we’ve come to value as a society: busyness, rigor, success. As in, if you are happy, then you must be naively missing out on something more important. I reject that notion. I believe that the newest definition of the word happy will involve having a sense of self-worth as you connect and add value to your community, and in turn, the world. Research has proven that this quality connection with others is the biggest indicator of human happiness. It’s only that some of us have been shamed into thinking we won’t be taken seriously if we acknowledge this truth as our primary goal for life satisfaction. If we take our eye off the prize of striving for more and being better than others, then we’ll be left behind in the race for success.
As teachers, we are teaching students what they should value as we model for them what is valuable to us. They are watching to see how we connect with others, how we
handle our strong emotions and deal with life’s challenges. Thich Nhat Hanh says, “I believe that happy teachers will change the world. If a teacher has a lot of happiness and a lot of love in her, she can surely make her students happy”. It used to be that this concept of happiness was elusive and intangible. But there is a growing brand of science that is proving that notion wrong. One research study at a time, we are proving that happiness is not as random and subjective as we once thought, bestowed upon only the privileged and the lucky. Happiness can be broken down into key concepts, each one backed by multiple research studies. Sonja Lyubrominsky states, “People who are happier are more likely to make a positive contribution to society.” In my rational mind, I now see no excuse for us to continue with the delusion that happiness is not something worthy of our attention as teachers. In fact it seems grossly irresponsible to have this knowledge on hand and not be modelling and teaching it explicitly to our next generation, does it not?
I was recently speaking to a year two student, who had been complaining about other kids being mean, about what could happen to make him feel happier and safer at school.
His immediate suggestion was that all the “mean kids” could be sent to a special
boarding school for kids who like to be mean to others. Now, in his seven year old concrete operational brain, this was a perfectly logical and reasonable solution. However, his willingness to cast off all the “mean kids” to a distant land, never to be bothered with again, did alarm me and inspire me to look more deeply at the messages we are sending to our children regarding how we deal with mean behaviour. A wise colleague of mine reminded me of the saying, “hurt people hurt others” which I believe can also be stated as, “unhappy people make others unhappy.” So at the dinner table last night, I proposed to my six and nine year old son and daughter this question, “What if we approached someone who is being really mean as someone who is really suffering and needs our attention and care?” In other words, unhappy people are lacking connection and a sense of value and should be treated as such.
As teachers, we have the power to set the moral standard for how we approach problems such as these. If we value happiness, an authentic connection with others and the sense of being of value to our community and world, then doesn’t it make sense for us to model this value for our students? I pose the radical idea that teacher happiness be put first, above everything else. And it is far from easy. For instance, sometimes we’ll need to learn to forgo our desire to be the one who is “right” or “best” in order to be the one who is vulnerable and willing to be changed and made more whole by those around us. We’ll most definitely need to intentionally take care of and invest in our own needs for authentic connection as an individual and as a teaching community if we have any chance at instilling it in our students. And maybe, just maybe we can guide our students into truly believing that the other student who is being mean can be helped by being embraced by his community and made a bit happier by connecting with others in a positive way rather than a forceful or aggressive one. In this case, yes, I believe happy teachers can most definitely change the world.