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Memoir: Shrink

Almost everything I know about teaching? I learned it from my therapist.

He is not a teacher. He charges far, far too much money. I have seen him regularly for many years--perhaps more than would count as a healthy therapist/patient relationship. (Though who would define that?)

My impression is that a conventional therapist does not offer advice, prescriptive statements; if you asked for that advice, the therapist might say, "What do *you* think you should do?" Or: "Why do you think you are asking me for advice?" Not my therapist. He is extremely prescriptive. He will say: "Do X. Do Y." He will get as specific as the exact wording you should use in a negotiation.

Recently, he actually ventured into unsolicited-advice territory. I was describing an acquaintance with a budding interest in musicals, and my therapist said: "Get him the classic recordings. Get him 'Brigadoon.' Get him 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.' Ah, 'Brigadoon'--!" And then I listened patiently as my therapist launched into the title number from that dusty Lerner and Loewe extravaganza, and thought about how I would never follow this bizarre advice, and about how much the advice was costing me. But I also felt fondness for the lunatic on the other end of my Skype "session."

My therapist's big mantra, in the early years of my teaching career, was that you can't actually offer anything to others if you are constantly at war with yourself. If you are wearing a hairshirt, you're not going to be the life of the party.

This directly contradicted a certain kind of martyred Catholic philosophy I had soaked up years earlier--a school of thought that seemed to equate virtue with misery, and that said you're nothing if you don't have multiple crosses to bear. Therapy is responsible for my movie addiction--because, repeatedly, my therapist said, "If you're choosing between a stupid movie and the prospect of four more hours at home having obsessive, unproductive, circular thoughts, choose the stupid movie."

"Well, what else are you going to do?" he asked, once, giving me a no-nonsense look. "Are you telling me you would consider going for a long, vigorous run?" And then he snorted.

My therapist's patience and gentleness made me a passable teacher. Not an inspired teacher--I wasn't on that particular road--but one who could be grounded and sane around children. When I finally left the profession, with a sigh of relief, I was surprised and touched to hear colleagues use those two adjectives. They weren't saying I had rocked anyone's world. But I was startled--and proud--to realize I had at least given a gift of stability and (intermittent) mindfulness to the children I saw in my final classroom years.

So many of the things I heard in therapy were also things teachers regularly trotted out for children. "Use your words." As if this were an easy commandment, or something adults did well on a regular basis. "Share." (And my therapist did this so beautifully, allowing me to have tantrums, no matter how irrational or unfair. He wouldn't get dismissive or defensive during these tantrums. Instead, he would make an effort to understand where they were coming from.) "Take a time out": He wouldn't use those infantilizing words, but he valued silence, and did a great deal to make me see that sitting quietly and taking deep breaths are rarely, if ever, bad choices.

One of my favorite moments in my tortured teaching career was when I had to endure a "scheduled observation" from a tyrannical administrator. This woman was a train-wreck and frequently a terrible influence on children, though her heart was often in the right place. Her insecurity was palpable; she would infect you with her anxiety and her need even before she had opened her mouth to make her next (inevitably cutting, backhanded) comment.

And the shrink I saw had the most helpful sentence for me: "You have to teach under her watch? Take a Xanax." He thought for a moment. "You wouldn't climb Everest without some supplemental oxygen. So pack the oxygen tank."

I took the Xanax, and sailed blissfully through my demo lesson, which was workmanlike and even boring. And who cared? My assessment was fine, not glowing. I felt so relaxed, I actually fell briefly asleep, later, in a faculty meeting. Such are the mixed blessings of Xanax.

My shrink had had mortifying lapses in his own early life; he had hurled himself from one disastrous decision to another, and he had relied on legions and legions of helpers to get on his own two feet, to start his business and to become the person I saw across from me, week after week. And he would speak about his past disasters with humor and total candor. This regularly seemed, to me, to be one of the most courageous things I'd ever seen.

That's how I really became a teacher, or at least a moderately competent faux-teacher. Not grad school. Not "Teach Like a Champion." Not via supervision-and-evaluation. You take what you can get, wherever and whenever you find it, and then you keep moving on.

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