As a teacher who works in special education, some people think I’m some sort of guru because I know how to navigate the basics of Google Docs, Google Sheets, as well as a lot of other websites and databases we use at work. I took a LinkedIn proficiency test in Excel. I failed miserably, which shows that my knowledge of Excel is simply basic or what I learned in high school and college.
Still, I’m reminded that compared to a lot of my co-workers, who are immigrants from foreign countries or did not have the luxury to not go to a college as privileged and elite as mine, did not get the same education in technology as I did. But it’s not these colleagues who I find really struggle to use Microsoft Word, Excel, or Google Docs or Sheets.
It’s mostly colleagues who are older than me, who are usually in their late 40s, 50s, or even older who really struggle. In education, there’s a huge age range of teachers. There are people as young as 21, and as old as their late 60s (in my experience).
I once asked one of my college professors, who just turned 70, how I could navigate working with older people better while honoring my conditioned value (as an Asian person) of respecting my elders.
“Repeat yourself as many times as you can,” he said. “Never feel like you’re talking down to them.”
To be clear, I don’t think I’m more intelligent or better than my older colleagues. I have a bad mix of being impatient and trying to be helpful. I really want to help my colleagues, and when I sense someone is struggling, I don’t like just seeing them drown. I was there before as a new teacher. And I needed all the help I could get.
But it certainly feels like I’m talking down to someone when I’m teaching them how to copy and paste without right-clicking on their mouse. It feels like I’m talking down to someone when I’m teaching them how to CTRL+F a spreadsheet. Last year, one of my supervisors was trying to manually find a student’s name in a spreadsheet of over 1,000 students. I watched for 30 seconds with my mic muted, trying to be polite.
“Uhh, Ms. Smith (not her real name),” I said. “You can find the kid faster if you hit CTRL and F.”
She said it was a skill that was going to change her life, and then we went about our day.
Still, it was the fact that something I was taught when I was in sixth grade is so revolutionary to my supervisor, but I was again reminded of my relative privilege in education compared to many of my peers.
The fact is that working with my older colleagues has been incredibly humbling because I wouldn’t have survived without them.
The soft skills I was taught by my older colleagues
I had a lot of mentor teachers early in my career, particularly in my first year teaching as a middle school special education teacher.
These colleagues weren’t necessarily old, but they were in their late 40s and early 50s. They helped me learn how to manage a classroom, and rules of how to interact with parents, rules on how to make sure I was covered from liability (i.e. “never be in a room alone with a student”).
They taught me simple classroom management strategies, including being at the door when students were lining up to enter the class, making sure students stayed in their seats, and moving around the classroom for proximity control and being able to better monitor classes. They taught me to leave work at school and set work-life boundaries that could help me have a longer career instead of crashing and burning early.
Simply put, my career would not have survived without the mentorship of these teachers.
I was a horrible teacher in my first year teaching. I was way too nice. I let my students sit wherever they wanted, be on their phones, and interrupt me and each other when someone else was talking. While I wanted this utopian classroom that broke the school-to-prison pipeline and where students could navigate freely, openly, and have a lot of fun, I did not establish the ground rules first and did not establish a safe environment.
My students from that first year are students I’ve interacted with and been responsible for again when they were in high school. They thought fondly of my first year of teaching, even though I felt like a complete failure every day for failing to keep the classroom safe and allowing a lot of altercations and a non-conducive learning environment. My students having fun and having an exciting time didn’t necessarily mean they learned to read and write better, which was my job.
At the end of the day, our kids liked me but did not respect me. By contrast, our kids did not like their stricter teachers as much but did respect them. The results were clear: my colleagues had better data, fewer disciplinary referrals, fewer altercations, and a safer environment for the kids.
My older colleagues set the ground rules, were strict, and at times I chafed against their advice early in my career. I signed up to be a teacher, not a prison guard. I was morally against utilizing the disciplinary measures of administration and support because I thought it would mean contributing to the school-to-prison pipeline.
But I was naive and overly idealistic. I have come to terms that making sure students stay in their sit down is a proactive measure that might actually minimize the school-to-prison pipeline instead of contributing to it. I have come to terms that calling a parent when a kid misbehaves in the class is a proactive measure against more severe disciplinary measures that contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline.
Overall, I’m not saying my older colleagues were always right to be intensely strict and not give the students an inch at all, but I am acknowledging I was wrong and could have taken a page out of their playbook.
I needed a middle ground between where I was and where my mentor teachers were. It took them showing me that I needed those same soft skills to be successful as a teacher instead of someone who just let the kids do whatever they want.
I had the advantages of youth and tech-savviness. They had the advantage of experience and interpersonal skills.
One day, we’ll all be older and struggling, too
I have some younger or middle-aged colleagues who are a lot less sympathetic to the struggles of our older colleagues. The biggest gripe is the lack of ability of older colleagues in their late 50s or 60s to keep up. The common complaints I hear are that the older colleagues close to retirement can’t keep up with lesson planning, and can’t keep up with paperwork, grades, and other forms of deliverables.
When I applied for my current job, as an IEP chair who manages the special education process and ensures adherence to federal and state law and regulations, I was a heavily coveted asset for three reasons: I’m young, tech-savvy, and diligent/organized with paperwork (and by extension able to keep up).
The implication was that my older colleagues were not as proficient in these three traits. Of course they’re not young, but the preference for a younger person in that kind of position is the stereotype that older people aren’t tech-savvy or able to keep up with the copious demands of that kind of position. Although I was new and lacked knowledge due to experience, I had the capacity to be a fast learner and keep up.
But it won’t always be that way.
My partner at work reminded me that one day, all of us young and middle-aged people and workers will all be the older people who truly struggle to keep up.
There are plenty of my older colleagues who don’t want any special treatment, want to be held to the same standards, and want to be able to show they can keep up with the young, shiny colleagues on the block.
But at the same time, many of my older colleagues have struggled with bereavement. They have struggled with their health, with afflictions as severe as heart disease to cancer.
At the end of the day, older colleagues can use honey more than vinegar as they navigate a much more difficult stage of life while younger people like myself are flying high and feeling invincible.
No one worker brings more to the table due to age. Everyone brings forth different skills, and at the end of the day, workplaces with a wide range of ages should be symbiotic places where young and old people learn from each other.
Working with my older colleagues has been an incredibly humbling, but rewarding experience. It has shown me I need to be more patient, and more open. It’s shown me that I, too, will one day need young people to show me the ropes of how to navigate the next generation’s technology.
It’s shown me that I need to give grace because I’ve been shown grace.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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