At this very moment we are missing something. It is inevitable that we miss something, because there are too many things in the world at too many levels for us to be able to see them all. So we will miss things, possibly even very important things.
For those of us who pride ourselves on our ability to see, this can be a difficult truth to accept. Surely if we look harder or farther or deeper – perhaps faster – we will see everything we need to see. A moment’s consideration suggests this is unlikely. There are simply too many things happening around us, to us, and inside us, at varying levels of specificity and detail, for us to take them all in. Indeed, the harder we look, the more intensely we focus, the more likely we are to miss something else.
Where does this realization lead us? If we cannot help but miss things in every moment, then as we teach, we also miss things. What important cues are we not seeing? What is there about the student, the subject, the school, that we might be missing that we and the student would benefit from us seeing?
Part of teaching is learning to look, not always with a narrow focus that reveals details, nor with a many-shot focus that attempts to take in everything, but also with a wider, softer focus that lets us see the shape of things rather than the details. What does our peripheral vision reveal?
Because our expectations drive what we can see and where we look to see it, we may also need to soften our expectations, perhaps let them also become a little fuzzy around the edges as we seek to improve our vision.
My offered practice: take a moment in teaching to notice what you see. For the sake of the exercise, accept the possibility that at least one of your students is giving you an important visual cue that you are missing. Consider the possibility that the classroom also holds some important information that you are overlooking. Try looking at your students, space, and subject matter in a less focused way. What do you see?
