Curiosity, Dignity, and Mattering in Unsteady Times
By Rob Evans, Ed.S.
A few weeks ago, I listened to a conversation between Debra Wilson, President of NAIS, and Jennifer Breheny Wallace about her work on mattering. Later that evening, I began reading Donna Hicks’ Leading with Dignity. Different voices and different frameworks, but both circled the same essential concern: the conditions that allow people to feel seen, valued, and fully human in the spaces we teach, lead, and inhabit.
This concern feels especially urgent right now, particularly for newer teachers. Many are navigating parent anxiety, polarized school communities, social media scrutiny, AI disruption, and the quiet pressure to “get everything right” while still figuring out who they are in the classroom. Under that kind of strain, teaching can subtly shift from a human practice to a survival exercise.
When this happens, something essential begins to erode. Curiosity fades, dignity gets compromised, and mattering disappears. Classrooms start to feel more like performance spaces than learning communities.
I have spent much of my career paying attention to the difference between classrooms that feel alive and those that feel brittle. Often, the difference has little to do with the lesson plan and everything to do with three deeper conditions: curiosity, dignity, and mattering.
Curiosity is not just about whether students are engaged; it shows up in small, everyday moments. It’s in the teacher who pauses mid-lesson to say, “That’s a great question. I don’t know the answer yet; let’s figure it out together.” It’s in the student who feels safe enough to say, “I’m confused,” instead of pretending to understand. It’s in the classroom where discussion drifts slightly off-script because students are genuinely wrestling with ideas, not just chasing the “right answer.”
New teachers often feel pressure to appear fully in control. But students can tell when curiosity is real and when it is performative. When adults model genuine wondering, classrooms become places of exploration instead of compliance.
Dignity operates just beneath the surface of every interaction. It shows up when a teacher corrects a student privately instead of calling them out publicly. It shows up in how sarcasm is used or avoided altogether. It shows up when a teacher says, “You’re not in trouble; you’re in process,” after a mistake. It shows up in whether students’ names are pronounced carefully and consistently.
Students notice these things, and so do colleagues. Dignity is not communicated through posters on the wall; it is conveyed through tone, pacing, attention, and presence.
Mattering is what happens when dignity is consistently honored over time. A student feels they matter when their idea genuinely shapes the direction of a discussion. A quiet student feels they matter when the teacher intentionally creates space for their voice. A struggling student feels they matter when a teacher says, “I’m not giving up on you,” and follows through. A first-year teacher feels they matter when a mentor asks, “What are you noticing about your students?” instead of only offering advice.
Without mattering, even high-performing classrooms can feel hollow. Students comply, teachers function, but no one feels fully alive in the work.
Two Frameworks, One Truth
Engaging with both Hicks’ and Wallace’s work highlighted how naturally their ideas fit together. Donna Hicks names the ethical foundation: every person carries inherent dignity, and leadership fails when that dignity is violated through exclusion, silencing, humiliation, or disregard. Jennifer Breheny Wallace names the lived experience: mattering describes how people come to feel that their worth is recognized in community when they are noticed, valued, and meaningfully needed. Put simply, dignity is what is owed to every person; mattering is how people know they are receiving it. In schools, this distinction matters deeply. We can claim to value dignity in theory, but if students and educators do not experience that they matter in practice, the culture quietly erodes.
You can often see the absence of mattering, too: the student who stops raising their hand because their participation doesn’t seem to change anything, the teacher who stops trying new strategies because no one seems to notice, and the classroom where participation becomes transactional instead of relational.
What Schools Actually Need Right Now
In moments like this, schools often reach for new initiatives, new programs, and new tools. But what’s usually missing isn’t innovation; it’s attention to the human conditions that allow learning to take root.
Curiosity has to be protected, especially when pacing guides and testing pressure make exploration feel risky. Dignity has to be practiced, especially when frustration runs high. Mattering has to be cultivated, especially when teachers are juggling too many students and too many demands.
For Newer Teachers Especially
Staying human in education right now does not mean lowering expectations or avoiding rigor. It means recognizing that rigor without relationship collapses under pressure. It means remembering that every classroom is, at its core, a web of human relationships and that how those relationships feel determines how deeply students learn.
For newer teachers, this can be both grounding and freeing. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to have all the answers. But you do have to attend carefully to the humanity of the space you’re building.
Protect curiosity.
Honor dignity.
Cultivate mattering.
When those three elements are present, classrooms don’t just function; they become places where students grow academically and personally and where teachers can sustain themselves in the work over time.
Everything meaningful in education grows from there.
Rob Evans is an educator and writer with more than two decades of experience in classrooms, school leadership, and nonprofit education spaces. He is currently writing and reflecting on curiosity, dignity, and mattering in education, drawing on his lived experience working with students, teachers, and school communities. Rob lives in Los Angeles with his wife and is the father of four children, two of whom are adults.
He welcomes conversation at rob@evansstrategic. com.
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