How NVC found me! -excerpt from my upcoming book

in 1996 while finishing my philosophic proposal for Temba. I was living at my friend’s Michelle and Glen’s home when I was finalizing on paper my ideas for a new kind of school I wanted to start where students experienced an integrated curriculum with a daily practice in nonviolence. One day I was sitting on their orange plaid sofa grappling with how I wanted an articulate way for people to connect with each other and tangibly practice nonviolence when my mind drifted to an experience I had had a few years back in a local public junior high.

During my credential program at San Francisco State I assisted temporarily in a sixth grade class. I attended a staff meeting in which there was discussion of how to work with students’ behaviors because recently a gun had been discovered in a locker.

The first decision made was to remove the lockers. The next piece presented by two teachers’ was the idea of a chart that would hang at the front of each classroom. The chart would have each classmate’s name with a row of boxes to represent each day of the week. The heading for the boxes were things like ‘kindness to others’, ‘right attitude’, ‘homework completed’ and ‘helpful to the teacher’. The teacher then would decide a grade for each category and write it up on the chart.

My heart pulse raced as I gathered my confidence to speak. I raised my hand and was called upon by the principal. My voice shook as I spoke, “I understand the intention here is get the kids to act more compassionately but I am concerned that if we label their behavior with a grade then we are not actually helping them. I am thinking of the student who maybe because of something happening in their home they did not complete their homework and comes to school with a full heart and mind feeling like an “F” student already. And then displayed for everyone to see is an ‘F’ on the board for ‘homework complete’. I am unclear how this will help the student rise up to their potential. The principal was the first to respond to me. She asked me if I was on staff. I replied that I was a student teacher. She then shared that the teachers presenting this idea have been at the school a very long time and were better qualified to address the issues at hand. Then another teacher who I believe was trying to offer me some connection offered that the goal at the school was academic and that emotional disorders would need to be addressed medically or with professional counslers. We were simply to see to it that children made it through their school day safely and completed their work.

I remained quiet the rest of the meeting unsure of myself. All I knew was I wanted something different and at that time I didn’t have anything to give.

Now sitting upon the sofa reflecting on this event I was imagining how I could of shared some of the philosophy I was now writing. I was picturing myself back in the room speaking about Gandhi’s ideas of moving beyond acceptance into a celebration differences where each student could be recieved for their unique talents. I imagined the scene with my confidence explaining how connection is most important to build trust and then in real time it dawned on me that they like the chart idea because it was really tangible. It dawned on me in that moment that I would need something very tangible that people could utilize with their spoken word to connect compassionately to one another…something very user friendly. It was at that very moment I looked up from my thoughts to the bookshelf across the room.

Have you ever had those moments where there is only one thing in your visual field as if the rest of the world magically melted away to give omnipresence to the one thing you are suppose to encounter? Well, this was just such a moment.

I looked up from my thoughts to a book. It was not out in any special way. Just simply among the rest shelved in hope of being read one day. On the spine written was “Nonviolent Communication:A Language of Compassion” ~ Marshall B. Rosenberg. I wish I could say the sound of Tibetian bells resounded through the room but really the only sound I heard in my head was- “DUH!”

I got the book, and I kid you not, I opened randomly to a page where in the margin in bold lettering was this quote, “Labels Block Compassion”. That’s what I meant to say at that meeting years ago!

I sat and devoured the book. I asked Glen where he got the book and since he had not read it yet was not sure but he thought our friend Berne gave it to him. I asked Berne about it and he said he thought the guy who wrote it was coming to town. I checked into it further and two weeks later found myself attending an Introductory Evening with Marshall B. Rosenberg in San Francisco.

Being a teacher I was delighted that Mr. Rosenberg filled the evening with song and puppets. But what I walked away with was fuel to ignite the engine of the new school I was about to drive.

A few years later another NVC book came into print. It still lives on my desk as a reference text. It greets me everyday, like a friend, “Good Morning, Catherine. Just a reminder- you can do it differently and it can be FUN!” This book had I had it at that Junior High meeting so many years ago would have been the antidote to the chart proposed. The Compassionate Classroom: Relationship Based Teaching and Learning by Sura Hart and Victoria Kindle Hodson not only forged a path of understanding the application of NVC in schools but also designed the possibility of the classroom as the launching point for compassionate action in our society.