This Week’s Bit of String: Forbidden conversations
The exams (GCSEs) for our Year 11 students have begun. I’m sitting them alongside a young man with special needs, in line with his access arrangements.
The first exam we did together, we had a power-tripping invigilator who told us off for talking. The student finished dictating answers to me minutes before the end of a 105-minute exam, and I asked how he was feeling. He nodded, and grinned, and said he felt ok. Then he asked what time it was.
We’re not allowed to tell students, because it might unfairly advantage them (apparently). So I silently pointed at the analog clock set up in front, which many students can’t read.
The invigilator came over and said we mustn’t talk. According to her, I could only speak when reading directly from the paper.
“And if you want to know the time, you have to ask me,” she told the student.
“Oh, okay. What time is it?” he asked.
“I can’t tell you.”
Gah! Thankfully, our usual invigilator is less officious. We’re not rebuked (yet) for asking a frightened exam-taker how they’re feeling.
I wonder if smiling at a student and showing mild concern for their welfare does give them an extra advantage. I wouldn’t feel too bad if it did; there are so many disadvantages actively at work. Many of our students with special needs are already convinced they will fail.
My exam student keeps saying, when we’re studying: “I don’t know how I can remember all this.”
I worry about this developing from a mantra to a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I’ve been suggesting fixes. What if the video clip running in his mind said instead, “I’m good at solving problems. I can try to work out the ones I don’t know.”
It’s hard to change an internal narrative, though.
Rewriting the Internal Monologue
How we talk to ourselves inside our minds can be a game changer. My inner voice, for quite a long time, has been somewhat generous and cuts me some slack in a few respects. It cheers me on through busy days, and it might later say, Great job, you’ve done a tonne of work, have a tonne of peanut butter. You know, stuff like that.
It wasn’t always that way; as a young person I completely reviled myself. Trauma and peer pressure and mixed-up interpretations of religion will cause that. Then, after a couple years as an immigrant, on some subconscious level I must have grasped that no person especially in a foreign land would ever provide all the reassuring words I’d always longed to hear. And I settled for hearing some version of that from myself.
It wasn’t a conscious effort. I realised how much kinder I’d become to myself because I listened to how my students talked about themselves, and contrasted my own, long growth.
But lately, my inner voice has been harsher. Once again, this realisation snuck up on me. I was summoned to a procedural absence hearing at work, after all those days I missed with a late winter flu, plus a couple days further back in the year thrown in.
The deputy headteacher said I’m great, highly valued and respected by all staff, and they don’t question the reason for my absences. But… do better, Or Else.
That put me in a panic. How do I avoid getting sick while I’m scribing a GCSE paper, leaning in to hear whispered dictations from a boy who’s blowing his nose rather juicily?
Panic Versus Control
The thing is, I had been really down on myself about every sick day. There’s no excuse for this, I’d think while I bundled, practically immobile, on the couch. No one else missed as much work for this bug. There’s obviously some insufficiency in me.
But when told I could lose my job if I get sick again, the terror I felt came from helplessness. I can’t truly be helpless and at fault at the same time. Maybe it’s time to stop blaming myself, and summon some fighting energy.
Fortunately, I’ve had words from others to help me turn things around. Colleagues from my actual work team have been outraged that I felt threatened. In their view, I do way too much already.
“I know it isn’t easy,” one of my TA friends said, “But you have to put this away in a mental compartment so you don’t think about it, or it will make you sick, and we aren’t going to give them that.”
The SENCo, head of our department, swore she’d accompany me should any further meetings occur. “I’ll tell them that if they let you go, I’d be under so much stress I’d be off sick, and good luck to them covering us both.”
Sometimes, people around us know just what to say. Slowly, our panic and stress ease off. But as wonderful as it is hearing kind support from others, it’s even more important what we hear within—after all, our inner voice is the one we’re stuck with. Might as well make it an amiable one.
I certainly hope to at least keep panic at bay for my students, and more importantly to help them dwell on their positive attributes. I will work on moderating the tones of my internal monologue to be less harsh when I have a slight off day.
How does your inner voice keep you going?