The Profundity of Parents as Teachers and Teachers as Parents: Be mindful of what you unconsciously teach. (revision 2)

 When faced with the dilemma of parenting and teaching, when does the parent in you show up and when does the teacher show up. As I contemplate my journey of being a parent/teacher and teacher/parent, I have come to know something about these roles. I realize that there is no real demarcation between the two worlds of parenting and teaching. Trading places is a misnomer used to separate the roles. It’s only the duality of western culture that has set us up for this separation and to have us shift responsibility to institutions and the arbiters of those institutions. This shift leaves us relying on institutions and their arbiters to keep us collectively from holding ourselves and others accountable for human and social development of young people (specifically young people of color in America). It is an illusion to ascribe education benefits to the growth of all young people when we foster separation between teaching and parenting. I am both And.

 Parenting is the most significant task that I have had in my life and the one that I thought I failed at the most. This idea of failure was an illusion. I had little conscious understanding that I was my children’s first teacher. I never considered when I was having children what it would take to be a parent and to love unconditionally. I was not conscious of what it meant to be a parent. As a young parent in search of missing parents, I wasn’t aware that I was unprepared for this role psychologically and emotionally. I did not know that having children required more than just feeding and clothing them. It would require me to be responsible for educating them and ensuring that their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual development were being cared for. I did the best I could with where I was in my own development in these domains of being. My not knowing would deny me the beauty of consciously watching them grow. However, my seeking to know, even in my not knowing, was teaching them something about who I was and what my aspirations for them were. I have grown to know that we must cultivate being mindful of what we unconsciously teach our children. The truth is that as a parent you are doing the best you can with where you are.  I learned that the best you can do is be conscious about growing who you are with them to reduce the number of hours they will spend on the therapist couch later.   My seeking allowed me to pursue intuitively how I needed to be present for them and now with their children. My children have been and continue to be my greatest teachers. They have taught me that who I am being teach more than what I say.”

However, what I have come to know shatters all the illusions about who I thought I was, what I thought I needed, and the delusions that I internalized about myself, my family, and society. What I know is that having a sustained relationship with those who care for you is our first and one of the best protective factors for life. While family is the first organic socializing force of learning in a child’s life, regardless of the configuration of that family, teaching has been relegated to institutional forms of socialization. Education institutions have in the white western cultural context become the arbiter of what is taught and defines the limits and boundaries of parenting and teaching and what it is supposed to be. Understanding these blended roles has led me to know that we as parent/teacher and teacher/parent have something unique to offer the world.

 The bifurcation of the relationship between teacher and parent became a norm of the white western institutional cultural forms and distinctions made between teachers and parents. This cultural conception has been based on a patriarchal worldview where other configurations of mothers and fathers were not officially considered parents. When we consider the educational system in the United States where white educators makeup 84% of teachers even while the number of white students has decreased to under 50% and Latino and Black students have increased (National Center for Education Statistics, 2022). In the world of colleges and universities, the data shows little difference, with white professors making up around 76% of the teaching population in higher education. In contrast, white students only comprise 53% of the college student population (Duffin, 2022). The inequity in racial representation also contributes to the lack of relationship building between parents and teachers due to lacking common understanding of lived experiences and maybe even the ability to empathize with challenges that arise for students of color and their families.

 Even as we consider the dynamics of the parent as teacher and the teacher as parent, we find ourselves in a dilemma with the statistics of who is educating children of color. The majority of  white female educators in the k-12 school context are an average of 42 years of age and “44% of new teachers leave within the first five years in the profession. (That's well over a third of new teachers.) In general, newer teachers are 2 ½ times more likely to quit than those who are tenured”.  https://teachercareercoach.com/why-teachers-quit/. The power of the tenured white teacher serving children of color is that the psychological and academic damage to children of color is minimized overtime. Only when they have had constant study and development about the social, cultural and racial context in which the delivery of pedagogy occurs. This understanding only starts to make a difference between the 5-10 year period. This does not fare well for the children who are at the mercy of underdeveloped new teachers who leave within 5 years and have not been guided by tenured teachers who have developed some wisdom about the racialized context of education.

 What happens when you have a phenomenal white teacher delivering knowledge and skills to her students of color but when asked why she does not develop their higher-level thinking skills and she says, “I am not going to give to these children what I have to pay for my children to get in private schools” What are these hidden incentives and biases not to educate students of color? This was a real conversation that happened between a professor and a white female teacher. We might want to consider that the tenured teacher is also a parent and has had her own children educated in a system that provided a certain kind of nurturing in alignment with white western cultural norms that continued to afford many of their children privileges for advancement through academic success. For the tenured teacher the challenge is more daunting because of the inequitable systemic racial structures that are embedded in many of their perceptions and  understanding about teaching “other people’s children”. However, retention of new younger teachers who are yet to be parents, is a significant indicator of lack of sustained development of teaching practices. There is an impact on children of color who are the test subjects for white teachers to learn about teaching, where the lack of relevant cultural practices embedded in teaching children of color is missing. However, the impact of both the new and veteran teacher’s role as the arbiters of what happens with the “education” of students of color in an inequitable system begs many questions.

 Teaching is the most profound experience of sharing knowledge, and it’s what gives me the most fulfillment. The teaching that I am speaking of is not the transfer of information that I have gained that serves my own self-interest, growth, and development but that which inspires others to translate the information they receive into understanding about themselves and those whom they serve. I see teaching as a service that supports the growth and development of our humanity. For parents and professional teachers, engaging directly with young people becomes an opportunity for cultivating useful knowledge that can make a difference in the lives of other young capable human beings. Equally, parents and teachers engaging with each other is a gateway to learning and teaching the other about the experience that’s shaping their roles.

 The challenge in the experience of being a "professional" teacher is that we forget that we are perpetual students and that in every instance of our interactions with others and ourselves, we are teaching and learning from students and the environment. The challenge with being a parent is the experience of having to be improvisational and learning constantly through many life encounters. Once I discovered this manner of being in the role of a parent/teacher and teacher/parent, I recognized that being consciously aware of being student and teacher, I could learn and teach from all forms of interactions. It does not matter if it’s observing a newborn child or listening to a 100-year-old elderly person; whether it’s a situation of tremendous loss or small gains, a circumstance of emotional upheaval or an interaction with nature in some mundane or profound way. The opportunities for my growth are boundless. It is only in this recognition that I have come to know the wisdom of being a parent/teacher and teacher/parent.

When does the parent in you show up and when does the teacher show up?

“There is no real demarcation between the two worlds of parenting and teaching.”

 “We must cultivate being mindful of what we unconsciously teach our children.

 “Who I are being teach more than what I say”

“It is an illusion to ascribe education benefits to the growth of all young people when we foster .separation between teaching and parenting”

Having a sustained relationship with those who care for you is our first and best protective factor in life.

 “I am not going to give to these children what I have to pay for my children to get in private schools” What are these hidden incentives and biases not to educate students of color?

 “Teaching is a service that supports the growth and development of our humanity”