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Pedagogical responses to expressions of anger andsorrow: Sensible reflectionKaryn Cooper a & Anne Hill Edmonton ba Ontario Institute for Studies in Education , University of Toronto ,b Public School Board , Alberta, CanadaPublished online: 20 Jan 2010.

To cite this article: Karyn Cooper & Anne Hill Edmonton (2002) Pedagogical responses to expressions of anger and sorrow:Sensible reflection, The Teacher Educator, 38:1, 1-15, DOI: 10.1080/08878730209555303

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The Teacher Educator, vol. 38, no. 1, Summer 2002

PEDAGOGICAL RESPONSES TO EXPRESSIONS OF ANGER AND

SORROW: SENSIBLE REFLECTION

Karyn CooperOntario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto

Anne HillEdmonton Public School Board, Alberta, Canada

Abstract

A professional legacy has sustained the conventional thought that schoolsare no place for expressions of anger and sorrow, and yet these emotionsare forever present, brought to the fore in tragic and sometimes violentforms. In this article the authors attempt to articulate a theoreticalframework that enables teachers and children to reflect on and respond totheir experiences of anger and sorrow. This theoretical framework isestablished by recovering the original meaning of aesthetic, "to perceivethrough the senses, " and integrating this understanding into reflectiveteaching practices in an elementary classroom. This process reconciles senseand reason, and creates possibilities for "sensible reflection. "

A Sense of Anger and SorrowHe walked into die school office, sent there by his teacher. Slouch, clop,shoes too big. Dressed in his loose, wrinkled clothes (they're his dad's), heslammed his books on the desk and, like a bag someone threw on a chair,he collapsed into the seat. The parent in the office looked at me. I lookedat her. She had just said goodbye. As I walked with her to the door Icould see the tears welling in her eyes. She said, "He's so unhappy!" Inodded. She left and I walked into the photocopy room, trying to hidemy own tears as I bent over the photocopier. Another teacher came in,looked at me, and I started to cry. I talked about what had just hap-pened. The secretary heard us talking and added, "He's been stabbing athis wrists with a pencil!" The room collapsed. I felt like I had fallen into achasm, (classroom teacher)

Many who teach in schools will recognize the sense of angerand sorrow experienced by the teacher and student in this anecdote.Teachers in schools, and many researchers too, frequently relegatesuch stories to the backrooms of teaching reality, in part because the

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professional legacy of education has sustained the conventionalthought that schools are no place for expressions of anger and sorrow.And yet, as the anecdote above illustrates, these emotions arepresent, compelling a response.

This article, written by a teacher-educator and a teacher-researcher from the school where this narrative occurred, attempts aresponse. This article considers whether there might be a theoreticalframework that would help teachers effectively respond to the senseof anger and sorrow in classrooms. It begins with the experiences ofteachers and children in schools because, as Smith (1999) noted,"classrooms are crystallization centers for the broader tensions atwork in the culture" (p. 91). It is this crystallizing quality of life inclassrooms that establishes a rationale for the focus of the ensuingresearch.

Interpretive Inquiry

The methodology that supports this research is interpretiveinquiry. Interpretive inquiry has three primary characteristics. Textsmay be presented that will surprise or disrupt conventional think-ing. Differences in views may be revealed through the social andcultural patterns of daily life. Interpretive inquiry also makes itpossible to understand the scripts people live by and to effect whatchange is possible. The intention of such research is not to articulatesolutions, but to make it possible to search "for new presentations,not in order to employ them but in order to impart a stronger senseof the unpresentable" (Lyotard, 1980/1991, p. 80-81). Interpretiveinquiry may make it possible to circumvent what Taylor (1987)referred to as instrumental and atomistic understandings that leaveepistemology as unconnected with life as a "corpse." It is a researchof reflection within the relation of engagement and encounter.

In education, researchers (e.g., Clandinin & Connelly, 1995;Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Smith, 2000; van Manen, 1988, 1991)offer interpretive inquiry as an alternative to the singular focus of thetechnical-rational methodologies. Recently, Collie, Davies,Pritchard, Rose, Waldron, and Clandinin (1999) engaged in aninterpretive inquiry into disruptive behavior and violence in schoolsin an attempt to "get away from violence as an event to violence that'sa process [italics not in original] . . ." (p. 157). Through classroomnarratives that function as texts of interpretation, this article reports

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interpretive inquiry, juxtaposing sense and reason in an attempt torespond to anger and sorrow in classrooms.

A Narrative of Awareness

In the narrative that begins this article, the teacher-researcherbecomes aware of her own sense of frustration and sorrow. In schools,hidden from public view, teachers often struggle with emotionalissues that are not acknowledged as a significant part of the curricu-lum, except as they might relate to classroom management. To talkof what is hidden in schools is now familiar in discourse related tocurriculum. Ivan Illich (1970) was one of the first to name thesehidden realities of classroom life as the "hidden curriculum," and inspite of the years that have passed, many educators teach and talk asif they still believe the "myth that bureaucracies guided by scientificknowledge are efficient and benevolent" (p. 106). Illich's message,that there is more to teaching and learning than scientific knowl-edge, is reiterated in the teacher's sense of frustration. Teachers areaware of a tension between their emotional responses and profes-sional knowledge. The image evoked by the word "chasm" is of asense of separation. It is this sensibility, or awareness, that is critical.The so-called "virtue" or "advantage" of awareness is described byMerleau-Ponty (1968) when he talks of people knowing throughtheir embodied being, a knowing that is a perception of all senses,intertwined, a knowing of subject and object. He said, "Like thelight, these levels and dimensions, this system of lines of force, arenot what we see; they are that with which, according to which, wesee . . . . There is an immanent logic at work in the sensible field"(p. ii). It is this logic that this article will endeavor to reveal so as tochallenge the professional legacy of a

deep cultural logic of fragmentation [being lived out in education] thatdistracts attention, that is cynical about devotion or depth, and thatmocks any talk of good work, that identifies settling and quiet andmediation with passivity, and that cannot imagine how one could wantanything but business in our classrooms. (Jardine, LaGrange, & Everst,1998, p. 128)

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Challenging a legacy of fragmentation is not an easy task.John Ralston-Saul (1995) described the difficulty of this task. Hesuggested that in "fractured fields of learning," it is difficult to makeintellectual advances, difficult in part because of the presence of"multitudes of specialized gatekeepers [who make it such that] noone can produce integrated thought. Such intellectual splinteringexplains some of academias passivity before the crisis of the societythey ought to be defending" (p. 174). He suggested the juxtaposi-tion of the paradox of part and whole, self and other, reason andsensibility, which will enable people to become more aware.

Ralston-Saul (1995) is certainly not the first to make thissuggestion. In his poem, In a Schoolroom, Yeats (1928/1961) asked,"How can we know the dancer from the dance?" This poem canillustrate the rhythmic relation of child and teacher in the classroom.The psychologist, Gendlin (1981), used the term "felt-sense" todescribe awareness of the whole body/mind. He suggested thatbodily awareness is essential for the integration of thought. Since hewrote, there has been increasing attention paid to the significance ofembodied awareness. Scholars from varied disciplines, (e.g., Berman,1990; Hogan, 2000; Levin, 1985; Várela, Thompson, & Rosch,1991) have advocated an integration of sense and reason. In educa-tion there is some evidence of an attempt to integrate sense andreason, and yet it is the embodied context of the knowing that isoften obscured through the privilege accorded to technical-rationalthought. For example, educators often appropriate the writing ofother disciplines through the technical-rational paradigm. InDiscipline Without Tears, Dreikurs and Cassel (1974) suggested thatteachers should be "sensitive to [their] own feelings or reactions tothe child's behavior" (p. 43). What begins as an interest in under-standing the relationship between a teachers's own feelings and achild's behavior, concludes with an outline that prescribes appropri-ate responses. These responses are presented to the teacher in a formsimilar to the following:

Probably the most accurate clue to discovering the young child's goal isto observe your immediate response to his behavior. Your immediateresponse is in line with his expectations. Thus:

If teacher feels annoyed - indicates Goal 1 -Attention-gettingIf teacher feels defeated or threatened - indicates Goal 2 - Power

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If teacher feels deeply hurt - indicates Goal 3 - RevengeIf teacher feels helpless - indicates Goal 4 - Display of inadequacy

(Dreikurs &Cassel, 1974, pp. 40-41)

More recently, popular teacher resource material, such as The ToughKid Book: Practical Classroom Management Strategies (Rhode, Jenson,& Reavis, 1992), instructs teachers in the implementation ofpractical techniques to help them manage and control particular,excessive behaviors of children described as "tough kids." "How ToBoxes" and "Pointer Boxes" offer additional, similarly designedresources and step-by-step instructions for designing and imple-menting particular techniques. Although helpful such materialsshould be used cautiously. The language form of the technical-rational sustains a problem-solving approach that fails to acknowl-edge the need for a "relation of trust" and that focuses the shape andfit of responses into the "plot-lines of power and control" (Collie etal., 1999, p. 180). This article proposes an alternative to frag-mented, technical-rational knowledge that is insufficient in thecontext of the classroom.

An Aesthetic of Sensibility

In an attempt to respond to the sense of anger and sorrowdescribed in the first narrative, we followed a thread that ledthrough a labyrinth of modern and ancient thought regardingembodied knowledge. Michael Polanyi, in his book Personal Knowl-edge (1958), described embodied knowing as a knowing that is morethan a person can tell. He described what he calls "tacit knowing," asa form of knowledge that becomes personal and embodied "not bylooking at things, but by dwelling in them [understood through]their joint meaning" (pp. 17-18). Further research regardingembodied knowledge, or tacit knowing, led to Langer's writing onsensibility. Langer (1988) noted that the branch of inquiry thatbegan as "an analysis of sensibility" (p. 49) is the aesthetic. Almost300 years ago Hegel (1886/1993) claimed that if people were tounderstand the meaning of aesthetic perception "in its naturalsense," they would know that it "means more precisely the science ofsensation or feeling" (p. 3). The very word itself, "aesthetic" has atdifferent times

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been variously identified with one of three main ideas: the perceptual,the beautiful, and the artistic. There is hardly anything of the first, theperceptual, surviving in contemporary usage, except in the negativeform, "anaesthetic".... The term "aesthetic" was originally derived fromdie Greek word "aesthes" meaning "to perceive," . . . .(Diffey, 1995, pp. 61-62)

To perceive is currently defined as meaning "to apprehend throughthe mind, . . . through one of the senses" {Oxford English Dictionary,1964, p. 819). Interpreting the meaning of "to perceive" to includeall of the senses, and not giving primacy to the visual, it is possibleto "come nearer to the language and the sense of the ancients" (Kant,as cited in Diffey, 1995, p. 63). It is this interpretation of theoriginal meaning of "aesthetic" that offers so many possibilities inthe search for reforming teachers' tacit knowing and for developingeffective pedagogical responses to anger and sorrow in the classroom.

Sensible Reflection

Following the lead of Hegel (1886/1993), Langer (1988),and Diffey (1995), who turned to the original meaning of theaesthetic, we turn to the story of Narcissus at the pool as a classicalmetaphor of reflection. Ovid (8 A.D./1986) said that Narcissuslooked into a pool of water and fell in love with the image he saw.When Narcissus reached out to touch the image, he first thought hewas reaching out to another person. He wanted to possess thisperson and continued to reach, even as he realized it was himself hewas attempting to grasp. Narcissus saw himself reflected in the stillwater, as anyone would looking into a mirror. However, Ovidexplained that the water was disturbed by Narcissus' tears and thestill image faded in response to the falling of tears. Narcissus felt hisaching heart, his reddened skin, and his sorrow as the tears fell. Theimage rippled. If this classical metaphor is interpreted through theancient understanding of aesthetic perception, the meaning ofreflection becomes an organic, sensuous, and dynamic act of recipro-cal relation. Narcissus dies because he has failed to understandhimself (his Self) in relation to an Other (the image that ripples andshifts from his grasp - that will not stay still). He understands theimage as himself but cannot understand the reciprocal nature of the

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response. He continues to reach, not understanding the nature of hisrelation with the water. Death is the result of the failure to under-stand the nature of this relation.

Ovid's (8 A.D./1986) ancient, organic, and sensuous image ofreflection has been replaced with the "technik" of the reflectivemirror in the literature on education. However, following the lead ofHegel (1886/1993), Langer (1988), and Diffey (1995), and usingKuhns (2000) insight regarding the "recovering of older meanings. . . as a process of language learning" (p. 91), it is possible todeepen the understanding of reflection. To recover the originalmeaning of the aesthetic enables a re-interpretation of Ovid's taleand the reclamation of an understanding of reflection that has beenlost because precedence has been given to the technical-rational andprimacy to the visual. Marcuse (1978) claimed that as a society, wehave allowed ourselves to "abandon this understanding of theaesthetic fand] to reveal ourselves as a society in which subjects andobjects are shattered, atomized, robbed of their words and images"(p. 49). For example, in education discourse reflection has beenpresented as a metaphor that is primarily visual. Schon (1991)spoke of a "Hall of Mirrors" (p. 355). The metaphoric value of"mirror" is helpful, but it is insufficient for the classroom wherereflection is an experience of embodied relation, or a "felt sense," notonly a visual perception. Schon's conceptualization of reflection-in-action comes closer to an understanding of sensible reflection aspresented in this article. His concept of reflection-in-action incorpo-rates Polanyi's (1958) description of tacit knowing and the relationof experience with personal knowledge, and has thus contributed tothis research regarding the importance of reflection in educationalpractice and research.

As the teacher in the first narrative demonstrates, reflection isa necessary aspect of teaching practice. However, reflective, thought-ful teaching is more than looking at oneself and becoming aware ofone's tacit knowing. Like the teacher who felt her own tears in thesorrow of a child, reflected vision has meaning through the relationwith the child. As Buber (1965/1988) said, when he quotedLevinas, "the encounter, the relationship, the between—the call ofbeing, defined as presence or co-presence, itself breaks through asthe 'ultimate support of meaning'" (p. xix). It is this relationshipthat is the call to pedagogical possibilities. The narrative that began

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this article, described the teacher's intimate relation of her emotionsand the child's expression of anger and sorrow. Now, with an under-standing of the aesthetic as a perception of the senses, and recogniz-ing the work that Schon (1983, 1987, 1991) has done regardingreflection, it may be possible to return to the classroom and followthrough with a plan of action that reconciles sense with reason.

Narratives of Anger and Sorrow: Sensible Reflection

The following narratives describe a plan of action thatemerged in the teacher-researcher's Grade 3 classroom as shestruggled to respond to her students' expressions of anger andsorrow. Although these are not stories of tragedy or great sorrow,they are examples of the multitude of little sorrows and frustratingmoments that are significant in the daily lives of the children. Thesechildren lived in a Canadian city, in a community labeled by themunicipality as "at risk." The children's daily lives involved issues ofunemployment, transiency, substance abuse, and poverty. Experi-ences of anger and sorrow are not unique to children living in suchcommunities, as demonstrated by an incident in Taber, Alberta,Canada. Such incidents may perhaps demonstrate the need torespond to emotional issues in all schools.

The narratives presented here respond to Miller's (1981/1990) challenge regarding the absence in western culture of a"framework within which the child could experience his feelings andemotions" (p. 34). She claimed that avoiding recognition of theseexperiences, that is, hiding them away in language forms that makethem abstract, is one reason why suffering continues. In her bookThe Drama of the Gified Child, she challenges people to reclaim aninner sense of who they are through an understanding of their ownnarratives. It is the conceptualization of sensible reflection presentedin this article that may enable teachers to help children becomeaware of their feelings and reflect upon their responses to anger andsorrow. The teacher-researcher chose to help the children becomeaware by allowing them to offer their own narratives, thus ensuring alanguage form that did not abstract their experiences.

In the classroom, many of the children's actions and theirfacial expressions were interpreted by the teacher as expressions ofanger and sorrow. The children frequently called out put-downs to

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each other. Their faces were often scrunched, foreheads furrowed.Their eyes darted across the faces of their classmates, their shouldersoften turned with a jerk up to one side, so as to emphasize theirattempt to isolate themselves from other children. They seldomseemed to laugh. They often expressed distress over the actions ofothers, sometimes with sorrow, in a whimpering or tearful voice,sometimes with anger in profanity. The children had difficultystaying on task and did not complete short homework assignments.The teacher's awareness of the children's expressions and gesturesand her own felt-sense of their anger and sorrow, prompted her toform a pull-out group so the children could become aware of theirown feelings. She did so cautiously because she did not want toencourage what the authors (Rhode et al., 1992) of The Tough KidBook described as groups of children who learn more mis-behaviorsfrom each other. However, she thought it was necessary to take a riskand present her feelings about their behaviors. She was hopeful that,in this way, as Buber (1965/1988) suggested, within the encoun-ter—the relationship between—some meaning would be achieved,and she and the children would, with better understanding, be ableto make appropriate changes.

The discussions began by snatching 15-minute blocks of timefrom housekeeping, classroom chore time, and initially involved 5children sitting around the computer with the teacher. In the sameway that teachers set up small reading groups to guide childrenthrough particular reading strategies, this group was established tohelp the children understand their feelings of anger and sorrow andto develop strategies to cope. Just as the teacher found it helpful toattend to her own sense of awareness, she hoped to help the childrenbecome aware of their expressions of anger and sorrow. In order tofocus the task in a way that would be manageable and somewhatfamiliar for the children, the teacher made use of text and illustra-tion. The children took turns telling about a recent experience thatmade them feel angry or sad at home or at school. The teacher wrotethese narratives on the computer as the children watched the screen.Some of the children chose to illustrate their stories. At first thegroup resembled a small reading group. However, in this group, itwas the children who chose and told the stories. They became, asZipes (1995) described, storytellers of their own lives:

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We all want to narrate our lives, but very few of us have been given thetechniques and insights that can help us form plots to reach our goals.We need to learn strategies of narration when we are very young in orderto grasp that we can become our own narrators, the storytellers of ourlives, (p. 4)

The children became aware of their own feelings when theytold their stories, as the teacher had when she told hers, and, as theteacher had, they began to reflect on their sense of anger and sorrow.Through sensible reflection, they were able to call upon a sense oftheir feelings, their own embodied, tacit knowing. They began torespond in a problem-solving manner. Boundaries were establishedregarding turn-taking and interruptions, but there were no bound-aries regarding the topic of conversation. Taking a turn to speak wasencouraged but not required. Later, as the children decided thatthey wanted copies of their narratives in print, boundaries weredefined around what they considered to be public and what theyconsidered private. The children edited the final, written narrativesto establish anonymity when they were given the opportunity topost their narratives on a bulletin board. In this paper, the names ofchildren who offered these narratives have also been changed.

In the first session, the teacher said simply that she had beenwatching and listening to them and that she sometimes felt angrywith things they said and did, and sometimes she felt sad for them.She told them that she thought some of their behaviors were gettingin the way of them getting dieir schoolwork done. Without hesita-tion several of the children began to talk.

Marie: My mom is crying every night when she does the dishes. I feelsad for her. We've moved so many times. We had to come out herebecause my dad got a job. I miss my friends. I had lots of friends at myother school. I have no friends here. I want to go back. It's like this year isruined.

Sharon: My little brother tells my dad I did that. I was really mad. Justbecause I got grounded I couldn't do anything. I got grounded and Icouldn't do anything all night. My whole night was ruined.

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Nancy: Today at recess she wouldn't let me have my turn skipping. Shesaid she wasn't out. I didn't get a turn and she's not my friend anymore.

Anna: When someone doesn't stop bugging me I try and walk away. I tryto ignore them.

The teacher did not ask for explanations to clarify whatSharon meant when she said her brother told her dad she did that(whatever "that" was), or to whom Nancy was referring when shesaid someone would not let her have a turn skipping. However, asthe conversation continued, the teacher kept hearing the word"ruin." She said to the children, "I keep hearing you say 'ruin.'" Sheasked them more specifically, "How is the year being ruined? Howdid being grounded ruin that night? What could you do to make itnot so bad?" On die first meeting die children just sat and looked atthe teacher without responding to these questions. In the short timeavailable, there was little opportunity to pursue these questions. Itwas time to return to the routines of the curriculum, with a promiseto meet again in a week. With no script to follow, the teacher couldonly hope that die children would become aware of their ownfeelings. If this sense of awareness could be accomplished, she washopeful diät the children would understand the ways in which theirfeelings influence all aspects of their daily life.

During the second conversation, the teacher sat with akeyboard on her lap and wrote the children's conversations as theywatched the computer screen. As die narratives appeared in the formof text, the teacher asked each child, "What could you do to makethis not so bad?" This time the children had the opportunity torespond. At the end of 15 minutes, a decision had to be made whenthe computer screen flashed the box "Save As." This "document"needed a name. At once two children said, "Ha! Ruin my Day, NoWay!" The document was named "Ruin my day."

The language forms of these children were direct. Theirdialogue enabled them not only to become aware of their feelings ofanger and sorrow, but also to become aware of a feeling of empower-ment. They began to feel capable of responding to these littlesorrows and moments of frustration in their daily lives.

For 6 weeks, in 15-minute blocks of time, die teacher and thesame group of children sat around the computer, watching the.

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stories take shape on the screen. Very often, short, two and threesentence stories satisfied the children. The children dictated theirexperiences of situations in which things were looking pretty bad,but they were able to turn these situations into something not sobad. (Nothing had a happily-ever-after definite conclusion.) Some ofthe children continued to illustrate their stories, and some of thechildren chose to contribute their stories and illustrations, with editsthat afforded them some degree of anonymity when the stories wereposted on a bulletin board entitled Problem Solving.

The children who told and re-told these narratives discoveredthat it was worthwhile and often possible to make something badinto "something not so bad." For example Anna, who was recoveringfrom severe injuries sustained in a traffic accident, and never took anactive role in resolving challenging situations, would walk away fromplayground conflicts without asserting herself.

Anna: When I'm really mad at someone and they won't stop even when Iyell "STOP!" then sometimes I have to tell someone I can trust. I toldsomeone I could trust. This is when I tried to make my day better. Iwanted her to leave me alone. I tried to do it myself, but it didn't work sothat's why I had to tell someone I could trust. The story isn't over yet. Wehave to wait and see if she does leave me alone and not try to be the bossof me.

Anna began to understand how she could, as Zipes (1995)said, become a storyteller of her own life. She learned to includeother characters in her story because she still needed help at times.Anna began to see that she could try to rewrite some, parts of herown life story and thus make changes in plot lines that were makingher unhappy. An awareness of her feelings enabled her to thinkabout changes she might make. In a similar way, Marie, who hadmoved frequently and was returning to her previous home, becameaware of her feelings about moving and thought of ways to cope.

Marie: The good thing about having lived here is that I made somefriends. I got to go to the Space and Sciences Center and the water park,and I loved being here for a little while. It's a good thing I gave it achance so I could do these things. The bad thing about moving now isthat I have to leave my best friend. But the good thing is that I get to seemy family. I haven't seen my family in 2 years.

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Marie has learned that there are "good" things and "bad" thingsabout her life, and that she can look at the good things and enjoythose. She still recognizes her sense of sorrow, but she has nowcreated a sense of satisfaction as well. When she says that she "gave ita chance," she expresses a sense of ownership and empowerment.Some aspects of her sense of sorrow and of satisfaction are within herown influence.

The teacher found that these children responded to theopportunity of telling and retelling their stories by changing manyof their classroom behaviors. They took responsibility by resolvingtheir own conflicts more often, by initiating positive interactionswith classmates, and by getting their homework done without chartsand checklists. As the children's narratives show, an awareness offeelings, and die questioning and dialogue that follow, may behelpful in the formation and re-formation of their responses to thesefeelings.

Conclusion

So what can be done when children express anger and sorrowin schools and teachers ask, "What can I do?" The teacher andchildren in this article discovered the power of becoming storytellersin their own lives through sensible reflection. In this article, theterm "sensible reflection" has been developed through a recovery ofthe original meaning of aesthetic, "to perceive through the senses,"and by applying this meaning to a reinterpretation of reflection inteaching practice. An understanding of sensible reflection as areconciliation of felt-sense and reason will create possibilities forteachers and children to respond to challenges in their daily lives.Sensible reflection is essential if teachers are to respond to children'sfeelings of anger and sorrow in ways that are pedagogically appropri-ate. However, such reflection is only possible if a teacher is able toacknowledge her own felt sense and to find ways to create spaces forchildren's feelings in the classroom.

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