What Your Dog Has To Teach You About Real Teaching And Learning

I was sitting in the easy chair as I do, wrestling with an impossibly long and complex research paper I have been trying to finish for a while about how to create a sense of student connection and trust at school, when I was disturbed by the dog. She let out a few rounds of light growling that I shushed.

She is a new dog for us, a two-year-old, three-pound, miniature chihuahua with the softest fur ever, loving eyes and shifty ears. She is alert and aware, possibly the smartest dog we have ever had. Xixi is her name (pronounced the Basque way, where “x” sounds like “ch”). Though she is a good one, she gets her back up around strange people and dogs, which means almost everyone. She might not make a great school dog unless you carried her around all day.

So then, we have a house cleaner who comes every week or two and it was her day to clean. Xixi had sensed someone approaching the front door and began with a soft growl and, by the time the cleaner came in the front door, Xixi was on to a full-on snarling, barking objection. “Shushhhhh!” “No bark, Xixi!”

It kept up. The cleaner went about her work while I grew increasingly unable to do mine as I made repeated, unsuccessful shushes, and I was getting a little disturbed. Eventually I got the “Stop Woofer,” one of those high-pitched sound makers that is supposed to quiet the dog. Every time Xixi growled, I gave it a zap while pretending that I was still able to write. I was growing, well, maybe not angry, but frustrated and by now I was only pretending to have concentration on the complicated, long research paper that I knew would have to become simple if I was to do my job properly. But Xixi continued unabated till I was clearly not in a Zen state.

Presently I was amazed that my morning discipline was agitating me just as much as it was quieting the dog, and the woofer felt all wrong, like the use of force. I stood up, lumbered over there, and picked her up not even knowing my own purposes. And I don’t know why, I hugged her.

Then I brought her over by my side, snuggled her next to me on the chair, and petted her. Before long, Xixi and I were both calming each other and I started to feel peaceful, smoothing out the complexity.

It dawned on me then that it took me over 10 minutes of disturbance to do what I keep saying all teachers and parents need to do right away. I was practicing what I incessantly preach, but almost as an afterthought. 

Yes, corny as it sounds, love was the answer to peace of mind, and the actual, factual only path and solution. Being mad and frustrated had the opposite impact on me, the dog, and the whole situation. She was just doing her job, and I had a choice of either appreciating what she was doing and why, or attempting to forcibly shut it down.

We all experience these underlying and conflicting emotions and states of mind that diminish our teaching and parenting. We range from peace of mind to the whole anger-frustration-blame cloud. We have full access to both, and, however accidental, remembering to step back and identify which one we are accessing is the way to go. And this has everything to do with teaching and learning. 

Real teaching and learning are not the same as accessing the information that is immediately in our face, or the same as stating just the facts. That is not the way we grow or form intentions. Teaching and learning occur only when we access not the thoughts and behaviors of our students, but the reasons for those thoughts and behaviors, and pursuing those underlying reasons is something that takes our constant practice.

Danny Kahneman got the Nobel Prize for saying much the same thing in his work on decision-making and behavioral economics. His book, ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ describes the “two-track mind.” The human brain operates on two levels of thinking: System 1 (fast, intuitive, and automatic) and System 2 (slow, deliberate, and analytical). Behavioral techniques that appeal to System 1 thinking may be effective for changing someone's mind in the short-term, like yelling at a dog or class, but they are unlikely to result in the long-term transformations great teachers and parents intend. System 2 is the deeper view, that seeks the often subconscious causes of our behaviors, often masking pain, pride, fear, or unmet need.

I got a complementary theory when I did a ChatGPT artificial intelligence search of the fun question: “How does the great educator Stuart Grauer explain how to persuade students to learn?” The chatbot answered: “Ultimately, Grauer believes that the most effective way to persuade students to learn is to create a learning environment that is collaborative, supportive, and empowering.” So now I’m worried about publishing this blog. What will the chatbot think now that it knows about my Stop Woofer, or about how long it took me to get to System 2? Shushhh!

The point is, to create real, long-term, intended change in someone’s beliefs or behavior, we have to appeal to to their System 2 thinking. It is lovely that I was able to arrive there, eventually. Intuitively, Xixi was just protecting the family, which is her instinct. She calmed right down once I acknowledged that. 

But the real lesson here is not just what I could do for Xixi but for myself as teacher or parent.  Only once we become aware of our own mental disturbance and surface frustrations, and acknowledge that the emotions students trigger in us are a (subconscious) choice we are making, are we able to slow down and show them the acceptance they need to change their intentions and behaviors, on their own. I apologize for that long sentence, but it is the key. This is what is happening whenever real teachers teach.

With Xixi snuggled up against me, fragile and soft and sleeping sweetly, her gigantic tiny heart beating, and the cleaner upstairs working away, it kind of broke my heart to think of how many times I might have driven people half-crazy if not scared when all I thought I was doing was protecting the school, doing my job. Thanks to many of you for the hugs at those times. I can’t even count how many times I have had this same, Xixi experience as a teacher, particularly in teaching middle schoolers, who are puppies, especially when they are understood. 

That is the story of how I was able to calm my little dog and we both got back to doing our jobs with peace of mind, side by side. I think we are in love.

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