Title: The Profundity of Parents as Teachers and Teachers as Parents: Be mindful of what you unconsciously teach your children (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 our 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?
"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 our students and the environment."
"The challenge with being a parent is the experience of having to be improvisational and learning
constantly through life encounters"
“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 am being teach more than what I say”
"As a parent you are doing the best you can with where you are. The best you can do is be
conscious about growing who you are with your children, to reduce the # of hours they will
spend on the therapist couch later."
“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”
(Q?) What was it that you wish you knew while raising your children (child)?
(Q?) What do you wish your parents/guardians would have known while raising you?