The Ego in the Classroom

 “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” ~William Arthur Ward

Research has suggested rather strongly, that the one factor most responsible for the increase in academic achievement over time is the quality of the classroom teacher. That is why I am beginning this trek into the world of the ego with teachers for it is located in each individual the seeds for growth. As awareness grows, so will the power of each individual schoolhouse to motivate students to learn and to maximize their potential, for that is really the purpose of school. Yes, we want children to be prepared for life, but what better way to shove them out of the educational womb than with the confidence and tools to learn anything.

My first encounter with a teacher’s ego was in my first year of school. In first grade, I remember that we started the day with a prayer; I believe it was the Lord’s Prayer.  At the time, that was not offensive to the predominately Catholic and Protestant makeup of our small town.  For some strange reason, I thought God resided in the heavens, which, of course, were above us. So when instructed to pray, I looked up – this just seemed logical to me at the time. I was immediately chastised by Miss Martin, who demanded that I bow my head. That was not a problem; kids got yelled at all the time in those days – Dr. Spock’s book, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care was still in its first edition.

What made this event stick in my memory was when the itinerant music teacher arrived, Miss Martin, in front of the entire class, asked him what he thought of a young man who did not bow his head during prayer. I had to be embarrassed; heck, I was only six years old. I’ve often looked back on that scenario and wondered what would motivate a teacher to do that to such a young and impressionable child. Since then, I have seen much worse and for a long time, I stopped asking that question, because I thought for some, it was just human nature; a product of nature or nurture.

A teacher has power and the ego loves that. Much like a judge in a courtroom, you would hope that, intrinsically, teachers would know that they have a responsibility not to abuse that power -- not to take anything personally. But it is all personal with the ego! Putting down others is a way the ego reinforces the fact that it is better than someone else. Prejudice and bias are a byproduct of the ego and to a lesser degree this is the same cause for student maltreatment in school.

Several years ago, I coauthored an article about the power of personal relationship building, because I felt then and even more now that this is the gateway to learning. If a student feels wanted, cared for, and that his/her teacher really wants and expects them to do well, that young person will attempt anything. Likewise, if that same child feels unwanted, uncared for, and that his/her success is not something the teacher wants, that student will not achieve. In my opinion, this is the key to motivating the unmotivated; to open the door for the struggling student to enter the exciting world of learning.

The first category of this powerful teaching strategy is “knowing your students and allowing them to know you.” Think back on that teacher you felt was special. Did he or she invite you in to see a glimpse of their life outside of school? Did that person occasionally share family milestones or an event? As a student growing up in the 50s and 60s, my classmates and I often conspired to get the teacher off the subject and to tell us something personal. The motive was twofold, of course – one to get out of doing work, but the other was more under the surface – we wanted to connect with that teacher; we wanted to know that they were real, like our own parents were real to us.

We did not do this with all our teachers – as most students do, we had built in ego-meters. We knew what members of the faculty might relax a bit and share with us. For the ego is the great distance keeper in education. It unconsciously acts to form a divide that reminds us not to get to close. After all, we have the power and do not want to abdicate it or create the illusion that we are not in control.

This whole process begins on the first days of school. In my teacher education classes I often refer to the beginning of Dead Poets’ Society, where there is a vignette of three different teachers on the first day of school; one jumps right in and begins declensions of the Latin noun for farmer; a second warns what will happen if a homework assignment is not handed in; and Robin Williams character, of course, urges his students to “seize the day.” Ironically, in the end, the teacher who built personal relationships and who motivated his students to go above and beyond the curriculum gets fired; an interesting educational metaphor – one that resonates with most people who watch the film.

I encourage my veteran and prospective teachers to get to know their students in the first few days of the school year, but some resist. “But Dr. Tom,” they urge, “if I do that, they will expect me to be nice all year. They will take advantage of me. I will get fired for not being tough.” That’s the ego talking – it fears losing control. It wants to spend the first day going over the rules like the geometry teacher in the film clip. It doesn’t want to smile until Christmas. It confuses being stern and tough with “rigor.” It keeps saying, “When I was a student …” You get the picture.

Beginnings are so important – I often tell the story of my daughter, who as an elementary student had an ego barometer built in. I knew when she arrived home after that first day whether it was going to be a good year or an unproductive one. My advice to teachers, don’t let your ego dictate what kind of year a student will have. Make that first day one of promise and fun!

The Ego Unmasked

“He who dies with the most toys wins” – saying on a bumper sticker

If I want to leave my ego at the door, whether it be at the yoga studio door, the schoolhouse door, or the door to my own house, I need to know where to find it. I need to know what it looks like; the signals it gives just before it springs into action.

This is not an easy task for the ego is connected to thereptilian and limbic brains; the former is over 300 million years old and contains what we need for survival, while the latter is only 100 million years old and handles complex emotions like love and hate. In Freudian psychology, the ego is responsible for reason and sanity; it is the face of the id onto the real world. But today, spiritual instructors like Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra believe that the ego is something quite different.
The ego is that part of us that identifies with what it sees in the mirror. It compares itself with what others have, what others look like. It is the “I” factor. It is constantly crying out, “what about me!”

When I was a young man in my first (swab) year at the Coast Guard Academy, we cadets were told that we were nothing; that we were lower than “whale shit” which lies at the bottom of the ocean. This was what I consider a medieval process of tearing down and building up that still goes on in military indoctrination. The concept was that our egos were transformed into a collective ego, “I am waiting for my classmates” type of group think. We looked alike, acted similarly, and were expected to all end up in the same place – an officer in the Coast Guard.

For many of us, this was a continuous struggle; the ego was resisting this control, this attempt to reconfigure itself. The ego does not like change – that’s why you often hear people both young and old, talk about the “good old days.” At the Academy, it was voiced by upperclassman, only a few years removed from the bottom of the ocean, who echoed the sentiments, “When I was a swab…” This was the rationale for perpetuating a system of degradation and mindless power over others that was uncovered in the famous Stanford prison experiment where typical college students became sadistic to their classmates when playing the role of jailor to their friends who were the inmates. Fortunately, this methodology has long been removed from the training of perspective Coast Guard Officers.

It was at the Academy that my own ego began to take control over me – it was a powerful force that was not congruent with the complicity that was required to survive at a military academy. It began to scream, “I am more than just a cadet, you know!”

It was during this first year that I experienced some success on the football field. My name was in the paper; upperclassman would stop me and ask if I was that “football player” followed by some extra hazing just to insure I remembered my place in the food chain. My friends reacted to my notoriety by drawing a picture of a football player with a tiny body and a huge helmeted head and hanging it on my door. Even though the change was invisible to me, they saw my ego growing.

It is difficult to survive in an institution that encourages compliance when there is a driving force emanating from within that is crying out for approval. It happens to all of us at some point, just in different degrees. The ego wants recognition; it is constantly reacting to those primordial urges of “I’m somebody – look at me!” My personal struggle was complicated by my introduction to alcohol. The ego loves beer. It fed mine like some sort of limbic fertilizer.

If the ego was only about recognition, it might be easy to discover in oneself. The ego is much more than that. The ego is constantly comparing, always identifying with the next “big thing.” When I was a young adult, my friends and I went out every night. There was this motivating force that we would miss something if we stayed home. It continued into my married life; then it became “keeping up with the Joneses.” My wife and I were seldom satisfied.” Look our friends are going on a cruise! Our neighbors have a new car! Why aren’t you making more money?

There was a time when I felt happiness was all about rewards. I was driven to make more money, to look good, to be a respected member of society. It wasn’t until I stopped drinking and participated in years of psychotherapy that the control my ego had over me began to diminish. It allowed me to see its power and how it was responsible for most of the suffering in my life.

Much of what we do is unconscious, automatic, and done without a great deal of awareness. Stephen Covey reported that one of his greatest discoveries while doing research for The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, was that there is a “gap or space between stimulus and response, and the key to both our growth and happiness is how we use that space” (p 310).

The ego does not like this gap, it functions at it most efficient capacity when this space is minimized. The ego is impulsive; it creates a stabbing feeling inside. It is the stimulus receptor. It keeps one from widening that gap; the gap where awareness lies.

Chopra (2006) gives what I feel is a perfect description of the ego when he writes, “Behind the curtain of your intellect and emotions is your self-image or ego. The ego is not your real self; it is the image of yourself that you have slowly built over time.  It is the mask behind which you hide, but it is not the real you, but a fraud, it lives in fear. It wants approval. It needs control. And it follows you wherever you go” (p. 81).

Approval and control – these are the two characteristics of the ego that I will try to expose in this writing. I will try to uncover the many faces of the ego, what it feels like when it begins to kick in and take over and how many of the impediments to educational improvement are because of the need for power and control that the ego requires.

Of course, this is really not about education, but of the process of waking up, of experiencing the freedom that comes when the ego does not really define who we are. I hope you will take this journey with me.

Leave Your Ego at the Schoolhouse Door

"The ego is the prison you have built around yourself, and now it holds you captive within its walls" – Deepak Chopra

I am embarking on a journey with the writing of this article, one of personal discovery and awareness that I want to share with other educators. I have been a teacher/administrator for over forty years, which does not give me legitimacy; it just means I have been long suffering, both personally and professionally.

A few years ago, I began taking yoga classes with my wife, who has become my personal life coach, and the first thing the instructor advised us was to leave our ego at the door. Wow, I thought, what a wonderful concept. I wasn’t sure of all the intricacies of that statement, but it felt right. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else – what you do in here is OK.

That day was transformative for me as it made me think back to my years in the classroom and as an educational administrator. How would schools be different if I had left my ego at the schoolhouse door and if my teachers had done the same? Would I have been more effective? Would they?

Eckhart Tolle, the author of A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose believes that the ego is responsible for most of the dysfunction in the world and that becoming aware of one’s ego is the first step in dissolving the illusion that it creates.  He made me examine my own behavior and how my sense of “I” has gotten in my way of being a successful leader of others. It made me reexamine many of the leadership and teaching improvement advice I had received over the years and filter it through the perspective of one’s ego.
My conclusion, like Tolle’s, is that the ego is the biggest impediment to school change for the better. We now have a wealth of research-based strategies that work; that have been demonstrated to improve achievement when implemented with fidelity. So why are schools stilled mired in the past? Why is it so difficult to, as Wilson-Phillips sang, “To break free of those chains?”

The ego is very comfortable with the past and resists change. Some say this is just human nature, but I argue that there are many individuals who embrace change; feel comfortable with the unknown and the mysteries that it holds. Are these people anomalies; rebels who miraculously have stepped outside of their own human bondage? Perhaps, but I sense that we are all capable of these quantum leaps.

I am going to attempt to look at the literature and use my own experience as a way to bring ego awareness to others. If we can become aware of the signs, the feelings that foreshadow the ego’s intrusion into our actions, we can be the change we want to see in the world. It will also help me become the person I was meant to be.