writing – Edcouragementor

July 23, 2026

Sometimes I find myself justifying with logic what I feel in my gut, translating the body’s knowledge into words. My mom would often say “trust your instincts” when I was growing up, when I was torn between what I thought I should do versus what I felt pulled to do. This phrase applied to a multitude of moments.

Sometimes it was whether to take a trip to see friends that seemed superfluous or too expensive (just about always worth it if I’m on the fence, true then as now).

Sometimes it was whether to follow up with someone, a student or friend or colleague, about a conversation that had drifted off, felt unfinished, or was replaying at double speed in my head (yes, if I’m still perseverating the next morning).

Sometimes it was as big as whether to take a job or move apartments (it all depends).

In the School Setting

At school as an academic administrator, I find my instincts are not always spot-on. (Whose are?) However, especially when meeting with someone who promises to be transformational or could have an immensely positive effect in our community, I often feel a rush of emotion. It’s like a washing over, taking the form of chills or sitting up straighter or a lump in my throat.

In watching a demonstration lesson for a potential faculty member — the best lessons often reveal themselves within the first couple minutes — this reaction takes the form of wanting to cry because the teaching is so good, then holding my breath, hoping that the rest of the half-hour will pass with similar confidence in craft.

What does “good” look like? An eager and easy connection with students, a settledness of spirit. A confidence in one’s own quirkiness, a desire to hear the people in the room and lead them to learning. It might be a smile, a name unexpectedly remembered, a pause to create suspense while asking for a component to a mathematical equation.

When conducting interviews for a non-teaching position, especially when talking with several candidates, this instinct feels more like an actual gut sense, deep in my abdomen, that this person’s impact will be vast and that we would be fortunate if they turned their face toward our campus. Sometimes I need to argue against myself: This candidate has less experience in independent schools (not always a drawback, actually) or wrote a less elegant cover letter. But there’s a spark, an ethic, a mission that draws me in.

Beyond School

This sense of instinct appears in my personal life, too, most notably at moments of transition or change.

At all the Back to School Nights for my two sons, now grown, I looked for the joy of a teacher rooted in their practice who welcomed everyone coming through their door: a middle school English teacher talking about the importance of rotating seat partners, or a fifth-grade teacher describing her students weeding the school garden. These many educators who shaped my sons’ learning created their own classroom-sized gravitational fields that grounded me.

In the late stages of my dad’s life, four years ago, I had to look at the last minute for an assisted living community that would care for him upon discharge from the hospital. With declining health, he had more profound needs than several months earlier, and it was hard to find the right spot. I visited a board-and-care home with six beds that whiffed mortality — then a resort-style retreat too luxury for my dad’s tastes or means.

But then, after filling out a form online from A Place for Mom (well, Dad) at 4 a.m. one night, pretty desperate, I was surprised when a representative called me later that day. She suggested a place across from a teriyaki/burger joint I’d gone to years ago when my husband was in grad school for physics, which offered broccoli and brown rice instead of cabbage atop your chicken bowl, for just a little extra.

When I visited the recommended retirement home at the end of a long school day, after the traffic had taken longer than I’d ever anticipated, I sat in the friendly sales agent’s office and heard: We have space for your dad. We can take care of him. I went through this with my dad. We have your back. Did she say those words? Did I only imagine that she did?

Whatever she actually said, when I stepped into the foyer and saw the open carpeted staircase and sunny dining room, I felt a contracting of my dad’s life but also an opening. I didn’t know then about the coffee klatch of guys at my dad’s table who would trash-talk each other over donuts on Saturdays, and I couldn’t foresee the guiding light of a nurse who would hold my dad and me in her twentysomething presence as I played Spotify favorites in the dark of his studio apartment.

Was “instinct” in this case a comfort or familiarity, a sense of déjà vu? Was it a message from something beyond words? I don’t know if I believe in that kind of kindred spirit or guardian angel. But I know enough to listen

Sarah Cooper

Sarah Cooper is the Associate Head at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Canada, California. She is the author of Creating Citizens: Teaching Civics and Current Events in the History Classroom (Routledge), and her recent writing can be found at sarahjcooper.com.

This article originally appeared on Well-Schooled: The Site for Educator Storytelling.

Website: https://www.well-schooled.com

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.

Tag: writing

A Gut Sense

Sarah Cooper

Staying Human in Education Right Now