Are you an educator?

I don't know the answer to that question. I am not an academic educator in the traditional sense of the word. I do work in higher education. Perhaps that's why this is an issue for me. I do teach dance, and flow tool manipulation to teens and adults, and I think about how my teaching affects those I teach.

Does everyone become an educator by virtue of having obtained a specific amount of experience as a human? If that were to be true, is there responsibility to those being educated? How far does that responsibility go? Is there a responsibility to preserve the feelings of those being educated?

Does a person, or a group of people, open themselves up to whatever a "judge" or "educator" thinks when they agree to participate in a competition? If one is an educator in charge of those attending a competition, what responsibility does that person carry? What if the feedback received from a competition could negatively impact those who participated? Is it the group educators responsibility to impart the comments of the judging educator unedited for the benefit of ultimately making the group as a whole stronger?

Perhaps if taking the time to read this, you can get the gist of what's bugging me, but these questions have been rolling around in my brain for over a week now. I don't know how I would frame things if the girls I teach dance to chose to compete and came away with some very negative comments. I think it would hurt my feelings and I think it would hurt their feelings too. They say that that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, that adversity breeds toughness and any other manner of such things. How does an educator frame such a thing, when given feedback by another educator, when imparting this information, to allow those they educate to continue to love what they are learning? To keep at it? To get better?

Getting that kind of feedback feels bad, though. Do you deny that it feels bad and move on? Do you acknowledge that it feels bad and move on?

Ultimately, I think we are all responsible for our own general mental health and well-being, but I just wonder at people who seem to find it necessary to injure someone else's psyche or to hurt someone's feelings simply because they can. Without knowing any of the circumstances of a given situation. When things happen, especially bad things, there is ALWAYS a story. I tend to give folks the benefit of the doubt, and have often paid perhaps a greater price for that, but I've not usually been sorry. Because I care how people feel. I care about the affect my words and actions have on them. Sometimes it's not about them, it's about me, and they've had an affect that I need to respond to. If that's the case, though, I try to say that up front because I don't like hurting people. I don't like being hurt.

I look, curiously, at people who do. Do they just not know or realize it? What must it be like to live like that?

I can't imagine....

And then there were many amazing and beautiful things about this years experience, and only a few sad ones. I think there is something within me that craves to find the beautiful and the positive even in horrible things. Eternal optimist? Maybe.

 ~Peace.