Magda Gerber's 3 R's and Nonviolent Communication To Teachers' Rescue



It was the beginning of the school year and at a new school. The teacher planned on using acquired experience and knowledge to figure out students’ skills, difficulties, and school culture. In addition to relying on past experience, teachers’ meetings would be an important venue to unravel students’ stories. In teachers’ meetings, our teacher was surprised to hear stories teachers would start but never finish them. Our teacher assumed that the hushed parts of stories needed to stay unspoken because nobody could do anything about it.

 

                                        Clear Communication

Our teacher created their own curriculum according to the teaching method they were hired to deliver.  Fairly soon, the teacher realized that levels in each were unmanageable. This could have been remedied by extracurricular activities such as meeting outside of class time or during recess, lunch time, or after school. Nothing of that was possible for reasons outside of the teacher’s control. 

Clearly, lack of communication left the teacher with growing anxiety. Starting to doubt their self-efficacy, the first observation went wrong (O’Hair, & Wiemann, 2012, p. 51). Strangely, events seemed as though to have been set before the observation. During following interactions with the administration, the teacher continued to see with more acuity and stepped to both sides (The Third Side, n. d.). However, miscommunication continued.
 

Obviously, the missing skill from the teacher’s strategy was speaking from the Thirdside and “transform conflicts into opportunities for collaboration” (The Thirdside, n., d.). Speaking from the Thirdside implies that one can “interrupt constructively, affirm interests of the whole, and support a triple win” (The Thirdside).

Moreover, the teacher would have greatly benefitted from the Conflict Resolution Network advising to use appropriate assertiveness to express needs and ideas, dispelling any wrong perceptions (CRN, n. d.). The Conflict Resolution Network recommends to:

“Use an "I" statement when you need to let the other person know you are feeling strongly about the issue. Others often underestimate how hurt or angry or put out you are, so it's useful to say exactly what's going on for you - making the situation appear neither better nor worse i.e. your "I" statement should be "clear" (CR Kit, n. d.).

All in all, it was up to the teacher to rebalance the power dynamics by speaking up and communicating assertively their observations and needs (O’Hair, & Wiemann, 2012). The Center for Nonviolent Communication offers “concrete skills for manifesting the purpose of creating connections of compassionate giving and receiving based in a consciousness of interdependence and power with others. These skills include:

1.     “Differentiating observation from evaluation, being able to carefully observe what is happening free of evaluation, and to specify behaviors and conditions that are affecting us;

2.     Differentiating feeling from thinking, being able to identify and express internal feeling states in a way that does not imply judgment, criticism, or blame/punishment;

3.     Connecting with the universal human needs/values (e.g. sustenance, trust, understanding) in us that are being met or not met in relation to what is happening and how we are feeling; and

4.     Requesting what we would like in a way that clearly and specifically states what we do want (rather than what we don’t want), and that is truly a request and not a demand (i.e. attempting to motivate, however subtly, out of fear, guilt, shame, obligation, etc. rather than out of willingness and compassionate giving)” (NVC, 2013).

Practice makes perfect!

References

CNVC. (2013). Training. foundations of NVC. Retrieved from: http://www.cnvc.org/learn/nvc-foundations
Conflict Resolution Network. n. d. Retrieved from:
http://www.crnhq.org/pages.php?pID=12#skill_3
O'- Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2012). Real communication. New York: Bedford/St.Martin's.
The Third Side. n. d. Retrieved from:
http://www.thirdside.org/