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My Barbaric Yawlp
When
the Pupil is Ready
by Michael Partie |
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“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable.
I sound my barbaric yawlp over the roof-tops of the world…”
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
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Over the years I’ve been blessed with great teachers.
Paul Fleming, my 12th grade English teacher, taught me the language
of classical rhetoric. We would write arguments based on an
assigned piece of British literature (“Resolved: Hamlet
Was Mad”) and then read the paper in front of our classmates
who would then challenge each premise, clause, qualifier, and
conclusion. When the class finished with us, Mr. Fleming would
begin. In all honesty, I don’t remember particularly liking
Mr. Fleming, but I was aware, even then, that he was providing
a remarkable educational experience. Mr. Fleming taught a method
of thinking and speaking and writing that has served me well
my entire life. |
In
my junior year at the University of South Florida Professor
Jack Sandler introduced me to behavioral psychology, to the
puzzle of autism, and to methods of applied research with children
and families. In later years, during scenario-based trainings
in which he demonstrated an uncanny ability to create a host
of believable characters, he taught subtle and fluid applications
of behavioral techniques for working with young people.
During my senior year, I joined the peer counseling unit of
the University Counseling Center. There were two programs at
the Center. Mine was the unfortunately named Peer Management
Program, which sounds like a fascist youth organization but
actually offered behavioral techniques to help fellow students
with study skills, smoking cessation, and weight management.
The other program was called the Rap Cadre and was staffed primarily
by students from the Rehabilitation Counseling department who
were heavily into Fritz Perls.
Apparently, I chose the right program. The screening process
included a stress interview with a professional staff member,
and mine was with the resident Freudian analyst. During the
debriefing she told me – in what I presume was an authentic
Viennese accent – “Well, you are completely out
of touch with your feelings. I ask you what you feel and you
tell me what you think. Behavior modification is ideal for you”.
Ouch. I felt that.
When I became coordinator of the entire unit, and responsible
for both programs, I was anxious about the Cadre folks. I didn’t
know much about Gestalt Therapy, and I represented a model that
people misunderstood and tended to regard with antagonism. I
turned to Jack Sandler for advice. “How can I coordinate
the whole program when the Cadre people are so dismissive of
behaviorism? How can I convince them to listen to me?”
Jack said, “You don’t have to convince anyone of
anything. Just be a person they can like and respect and then
naturally they will want to listen to you.” And it
must follow, as the night the day… That lesson has
stayed with me my entire professional life.
More than a decade later, after moving to Delaware and taking
a job in the adult mental health system, I came under the tutelage
of another great teacher. Mario Pazzaglini, with doctorates
in both psychology and neuroscience, was erudite, impish, and
perpetually amused by life. If you spent any time with Mario
you got smarter. He was the high tide that raises all boats.
He was not only a walking reference library on neuropathology,
psychopharmacology, and psychotherapy; he had an earthy wisdom
that informed everything he did. He once said to me, “Never
confuse having a credential with being competent. There’s
a world of difference between knowledge and skill, experience
and wisdom, and between knowing how and being able.”
These teachers have been just where I expected them to be; in
classrooms, laboratories, and clinics, and they were the kinds
of people I expected them to be – instructors, professors,
and supervisors. But teachers often appear unlooked for and
in places we don’t expect.
A few months ago I met a woman named Mary who attended a training
I was leading. Mary owned and operated a group home for adults
with cognitive disabilities. Mary didn’t have extensive
education or much formal training, but she had a good heart
and a lot of quiet wisdom. After my presentation on functional
assessment – a term she had never before heard –
Mary told me the story of a woman who had recently come to live
in her group home. This woman wouldn’t eat anything that
didn’t come from McDonald’s. She refused all other
foods, despite encouragement from Mary and her staff. Attempts
to serve other food were met with anger and unpleasant behavior.
Mary and her team became increasingly concerned about the woman’s
health (did you see “Supersize Me”?) and were getting
pressure from state monitors to provide this woman with a varied
diet.
Mary was facing a classic support professional dilemma, how
to honor a person’s preferences but encourage healthier
choices. How do you do this while navigating conflicting policies
and fending off attacks by quality assurance hit squads? Some
people’s response would be a tough love approach and it’s
easy to imagine the resultant conflict, frustration, and unhappiness
on all sides.
Mary’s answer was to figure out exactly which
features of McDonald’s food the woman found so essential.
Was it the saltiness? The grease? The aroma? The special sauce?
The sesame seeds? The wilted lettuce? The charming ambience
of the restaurant itself?
Mary was determined to see past the obvious, superficial aspects
of the situation. This is sometimes hard to do, especially with
something as ubiquitous in human services as McDonald’s.
It seems like everyone, no matter the level of cognitive impairment,
recognizes McDonald’s. Consequently, trips to McDonald’s
are used as reinforcers for people with disabilities all across
the country thousands of times per week. Over the years, McDonald’s
french fries have been incorporated into so many treatment plans
that they could probably be regulated as pharmaceuticals.
With no training in behavior analytic methods, Mary conducted
an informal and intuitive functional analysis by presenting
various combinations of foods while isolating differing sensory
aspects of them. She discovered that the key experience for
this woman was the act of opening and removing the food item
from the paper wrapper in which it came. Mary’s staff
simply began serving the woman a variety of foods in paper sandwich
wrappers. Her solution was simple, elegant, and produced no
conflict or strained relationships. Some might argue –
and I’m sure they have – that it is not “normal”
for someone to eat all her foods from sandwich wrappers. Okay,
but with the nutritional alarms silenced, Mary’s staff
now have a place to begin a calm, respectful process of supporting
this woman to expand her flexibility with food over time.
Mary taught me an important lesson about the power of compassion
and the will to understand. Because Mary was humble
enough to accept the woman she was supporting as her teacher,
she was able to go further in understanding than I might have,
despite my extensive training. Sometimes in conducting functional
assessments we do not look deeply enough and assume we understand
something when we don’t. This can lead us to make erroneous
conclusions that result in ineffective interventions.
Lucyshyn, Horner, Dunlap, Albin, and Ben got it just right when
they identified “humility” as an essential component
of positive behavior support with families in the chapter they
wrote for the book Families & Positive Behavior Support
(2002, Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.). Without the humility
to accept the people we support as our teachers we compromise
our ability to help. By allowing them to teach us we are better
able to truly identify people’s strengths, talents, and
gifts on which to build our services. Not in some cynical fill-in-the-blank
paper compliance way either, but in a genuine way that leads
us in healthy directions of support and growth.
Mary was my teacher that day. She was there for me with the
right story at the right time, and because she was I came to
see with more depth a process I thought I understood. Life surrounds
us with such teachers, although they often go unrecognized.
They are our children and students, our friends and co-workers,
they are people for whom we provide services, they are our neighbors,
and they are strangers. Sometimes they care about us; sometimes
they dislike us and wish us harm. They may be people we meet
one time in passing or they may be people we have only read
about. Sometimes we learn lessons from people whose names we
will never know, and they will move along without any awareness
of the wisdom they impart. Just staying alert to those opportunities
invites teachers into our lives, and our openness prepares us
to receive their lessons.
There’s a Chinese proverb that says, “When the pupil
is ready the teacher will appear.” Humility creates that
readiness. Wisdom is the gift our teachers give us. Being ready
is the gift we give ourselves.
-February 2006 |
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