Your Decisions Affect Everyone

Physicist Richard Feynman was a visionary with brilliant insights into the subatomic world.  He was also kind of a pill to work with, never meeting deadlines or attending faculty meetings, and parking wherever he felt like it. When I was teaching honors physics, I wanted my students to know about this interesting man and his work, so I had them read a book of his speeches and articles.  These readings often led to a discussion about whether his behavior was acceptable.  I had students at both ends.  Some said, "He needed to use his mind for bigger things," to which I replied, "I'm betting you wouldn't you feel the same way if you were his secretary."  One of my students summed up the other argument well,  when she put her book down and said, "He drives me crazy. He thinks rules are for everyone but him."

Middle and high school students are naturally focused on themselves and act largely out of their feelings, so it can be difficult for them to understand how their actions affect others.  (Actually, if we aren't careful and reflective, we don't recognize it as adults either.)  If society is going to function at all, we have to recognize our interconnectedness.  That means, as teachers, we have to take every opportunity to demonstrate this concept to our students.  

In the early days of my time as yearbook advisor, the school was small enough that every senior got their own page. One year, a senior was expelled in January.  Because it was so late in the year, the page had already been submitted.  If we had wanted to remove it, it would have been nearly impossible, costing several thousand dollars to ask Jostens to reprint what had already been submitted.  So, I didn't even have to make that decision.  The next year, we face another senior expulsion, but this one happened in October, before the pages were submitted.  So, I sat down with my student editor to have a conversation.  Do we take him out since it is possible?  Do we stand on precedent since we didn't remove last year's student?  As we talked through our options and how we would explain the thinking behind the decision to anyone who asked, she sighed, "I wish we didn't have to decide this."  Same, girl. Same.  But we did have to decide it.  I told her, "You'll find that nearly everything that happens in the school affects the yearbook." Her mom told me later that she had come home talking about how that kid's misbehavior impacted her life in a way no one would predict.  

And that is always true. It's impossible to predict all of the ripple effects our decisions will have on other people.  In the multiple timelines theory made possible by quantum mechanics, every decision with more than possible outcome is equally likely and therefore, spawns multiple timelines. We live in the one with the decision we actually made, but in other universes, things are playing out with the other choices. This was dramatized to a ridiculous extent by the TV comedy series Community in an episode where Jeff roles a die to determine which member of the group would go to the door to pick up the pizza they ordered. Some of the results were disastrous and later seasons included characters from "the darkest timeline" whose lives were completely upended by everything that came after the wrong person being out of the room.  (Please note:  I do NOT subscribe to multiple timelines theory, this is just a thought exercise.)

Consider something as simple as not turning in a field trip permission slip.  It seems like such a small event to the student.  But the teacher has to spend time emailing their parents. It may delay the teacher's ability to inform the location about how many people are attending, which could result in a higher cost.  It will remain in the back of the teacher's mind until it resolved, reducing her working memory capacity for other important things. She may snap at someone else when she is really aggravated with you, hurting that person's feelings and affecting how they treat other people that day too.  

This isn't all dark, so let's consider a positive example. I have written many times about my amazing instructors at the YMCA.  They do something extraordinary every time they teach a class.  It's the ordinary act of doing their job well.  Just by doing that, they have changed my life in profound ways.  They've made me physically stronger and increased my confidence. Other people see those changes in me, knowing a was a clumsy girl I am, and they are doing new things too.  I eventually decided to teach cycle, and a friend of mine said he was inspired by that to do something he had been thinking about for a while, getting his personal trainer's certification.  Ask anyone who taught me PE or took it with me, and they would not have predicted that I would be inspiring anything physical in anyone.  But it started with instructors who cared enough to take their jobs seriously.

Teachers, this isn't something that's going to be part of our curriculum.  It's going to be about catching teachable moments and taking the time to ask students to look farther than the next five minutes.  When a student doesn't push their chair in, ask them to consider why that could be a problem for someone else.  Yes, it will be uncomfortable, but getting students to think beyond themselves is worth it, so we can all live in a better timeline.