TRUST and COMPLIANCE Just a short musing today about trust versus compliance and the lessons I learned so many years ago… from my horse. It was my second year of teaching, I was working in northern British Columbia, and I was frustrated. Both at school and in the field. The students and I seemed to be on different wavelengths. I mistakenly thought that, just because I was the teacher, they had to just do what I asked, even if they didn’t really understand or appreciate it. Appreciation might come later but, for the present, they had to learn good study habits and work through comprehension and writing exercises that drilled home the essentials. However, my attempts to make them comply - to do their work - were met with resistance. The students wanted to know why they had to do the work, and I couldn’t always come up with an answer. It was the same way with my horse. He was only three or four years old and ‘green broke”. I was getting him used to having a rider on his back, taking a saddle and reacting to leg and rein commands. He was a big horse, and I was a little intimidated by him, but he was a nervous sort... and young. One day, as I was grooming and feeding him I casually slipped up on to his back and started to ride him bareback. He took off at a gallop down the fence line. It was great! Then, quite suddenly, he planted his feet, lowered his head and I went flying over his neck and landed in the dirt just in front of us. Now I was too frustrated to be intimidated! As he stood quietly looking at me with almost a smirk in his expression, I walked over and gave him a hard punch on his hindquarters. I was angry. This was not how it was supposed to go. It was the wrong thing to do. My horse would not come to me, even if I had a small bucket of oats, for a few days after that. Then it took time to build trust to where he would let me groom him, pick up his feet and clean them and gingerly put on a saddle. In the coming months, I worked with him, not on him. I discovered that he had quite the fear of cars, windblown bags and mud puddles. In each case, I had to help him past his fears, slowly building up to each challenge or encounter. In many cases, I would have to dismount slowly leading him up to the dreaded puddle and then show him that everything was safe and we would get through it. I’d splash around in the puddle and then lead him through it. After some time, puddles weren’t so scary anymore. In education, we now call that scaffolding. I learned that many of the things I had to do with my horse, I also had to do with my students. I had to see things from their perspective, not just from my own. I had to lead them through the learning, modelling, explaining, supporting. Moreover, I had to learn that real learning only happens when there is trust and a shared purpose, not just compliance based upon power or need. (This musing was adapted from a post I wrote last year for the intercultural circle. Both pictures are of my horse Cantor - a half Arab half Quarterhorse.)
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AuthorJeff Kuntz Ph.D. ImagesExcept where indicated, images used in the blog posts are personal photos, images from NorQuest College or images from Pixabay. Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright free images, videos and music. https://pixabay.com/ Archives
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