Education in Human Values works! I started sharing the human value of the week in my class back in 2017 and I immediately started seeing results in the confidence, joy, and academic achievement of my high school students. I will jump on any opportunity to spread the love so I began sharing the value of the week in our daily all staff newsletter. I thought that other teachers could present the value of the week to their students or at the least they would read the message and take a moment to reflect on humanity and how they are showing up as examples of goodness in their classroom. Many teachers were happy to read the value of the week and would share how it helped them remember what was important and why they became teachers in the first place.
A couple years ago our school started a student newsletter that also goes out weekly to students. So I decided to share the value of the week there as well. My thought was that I wanted to provide this teaching to students who were no longer in my class. I did not imagine that parents would be paying so much attention. During the first semester parent teacher conference this year I was visited by a mom and dad of one of my homeroom students. Although I don’t grade this student, his mom just had to stop by and share with me how important it was for her to read the Human Values every week. As she was sharing how much the messages of love and acceptance impacted her she got emotional and started to cry. Dad and son looked predictably uncomfortable but I really welcomed that expression of gratitude. It felt like a big relief for her and an important realization for me.
I do honor my role in this work. I accept that I am the one creating the value of the week alongside a dedicated group of staff at the Human Values Collective. I am the one that shares the value of the week in class every week: including my homeroom where I am just supposed to let them study… oops! I am the one driving the human values school bus so to speak. But, before I formulated my response to the mom’s gratitude , I started to reflect on a very useful teaching that I learned from my human values teacher. “I am not the doer.”
We live in a meritocracy right now that is very much reinforced in schools. We learn to find our own acceptance in the comments of others. We are controlled from a very young age and learn to do anything we can to gain acceptance and do anything possible to avoid punishment. Then we spend adolescence and even adult lives unconsciously operating under this programming. This makes it a very rare message when someone says “I like you as you are,” or “you are perfect just the way you are,” or even “I like me.” Self acceptance is so foreign because we are programmed to receive it from outside of ourselves. Self-rejection on the other hand is so common and accepted that we have collectively agreed that self-deprecating humor is a good way to relate to each other. This may seem like small potatoes but little things become big things. How you do anything is how you do everything.
At this point in my life with all that I have learned I would rather avoid the ego trip of praise and rejection altogether. In my inner voice I just remind myself that “I am not the doer.” I did not do the human values but it does get done. In other words I do the best I can with the job I choose to do but I am not attached to the outcomes. I do not take it personally if students, parents, or fellow staff members don’t get what I am trying to do. In the past I could go a whole year being paranoid about the effectiveness of my human values work. It may look like nobody's appreciating what I do. And then all of the sudden a mom shows up at parent teacher conference to remind me of what is important.
I respond to her by saying “I receive that and I am at your service.” She said “Thank you!” once more as she left my classroom as I wondered how many more examples of success I would need to finally keep my faith and trust that Education in Human Values works!
If you would like to learn more about Education in Human Values and how you can help your students, children or community members you can find a list of our programs and resources. Here:
With unconditional love,
Javier Payano
Co-founder
President
Human Values Collective.
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