Animation Series, Rap Songs and Latent Issues

Nina Luckner says: «When it comes to questions of shaping relationships, I like to follow Martin Buber, whose description of the educational relationship is more helpful to me than Steiner, whom I don't consider to be an expert in this context.» The secondary school teacher decided to work at a Waldorf school after completing her Waldorf education. She was familiar with it from her own school days. Today, as a member of the team leading the college at Campus Mitte-Ost in Leipzig, Luckner also trains younger colleagues alongside her work as a class teacher. When she looks at the relationship between teachers and students, the key question for her is who establishes, shapes and takes responsibility for the relationship. For Luckner, this is clearly her and her colleagues. She characterizes the relationship between teachers and students as «equal but «asymmetrical. «Equal means that students and teachers meet as free individuals. Asymmetrical because this does not automatically mean that they are on an equal footing, as we have in friendships or partnerships. «It is the teacher's task to actively strive for the relationship and give it a healthy framework – comparable to doctors and their patients, for example», explains Luckner.

Letting go and trusting

Curative educator Florian Steiger has a similar view. He now accompanies young people as a class teacher in Munich and is also a consultant for school development at the Association of Waldorf Schools. Steiger likes to take his lead from Hartmut Rosa and drew a lot from his book Resonanz im Klassenzimmer when he took over a colleague's seventh grade class at the beginning of the current school year. «Basically, we spent six months working almost exclusively on building a relationship with each other. The content of the blocks was less important», says Steiger. After all, he asks rhetorically, how could he convey anything to the students if they weren't connected to him? He is convinced that relationships develop in free spaces, and that the rules could follow later. In concrete terms, relationship work with Steiger and his students meant plenty of space to talk, to get to know each other, to play games, to agree on what the class representatives' tasks are and to negotiate the rules for their small community. Chewing gum – yes, no, when? Wearing a hood – can't, sometimes, no problem? And it meant repeatedly designing seating plans that turned out to be unsuitable and then finding and trying out new ones. «In the end, the students did it all on their own and did a great job. They simply know each other longer and better than I do», reports Steiger. And so for him in Munich, relationship work also means letting go and trusting ...

Be interested in the interests

Philipp Kleinfercher has experienced that so-called latent questions can be a key to a good relationship between teachers and students. He was a class teacher in Vienna and has been a lecturer in youth education at the Freie Hochschule in Stuttgart since 2019. «Children and young people carry unspoken, often unconscious questions with them at various stages of their development. If teachers succeed in recognizing these and aligning their teaching and personal interaction with them, a very important need of young people is met. Then they feel noticed and recognized and that in turn creates a relationship», explains Kleinfercher. Students are often unable to verbalize their lingering questions themselves. Instead, these questions are reflected in their behavior, their interests and their inner experience. This is precisely why Florian Steiger finds it important as a teacher to «be interested in the students' interest in the world». «That means I sometimes listen to a few songs by the rapper XXXTentacion – even if hip-hop isn't my style of music – or I watch a few episodes of Paw Patrol», he says.

Relationships need time

For Kleinfercher, discipline problems in the classroom are often an expression of a lack of relationship. At this point, Steiger emphasizes the reciprocity inherent in the idea of resonance, as also described by Hartmut Rosa: «On the one hand, it is important never to be resentful, but to look anew every day at who I have in front of me today. On the other hand, I have to admit to myself that I also have trigger points that sometimes make me emotional. Then I have to stand up in front of the class and say quite clearly: 'Hey, that didn't work at all. I hadn't slept well and was irritable. But that shouldn't be an excuse. I'm sorry!‘» According to Rosa, resonance occurs when individuals enter into a lively, reciprocal exchange with their environment instead of just controlling it functionally.

This is in contrast to the alienating acceleration of modern society. Although it is not discipline problems that cause Luckner problems, she is also facing challenges despite her many years of experience: A few months ago, she also took over a few blocks in the parallel class of her own seventh grade and was surprised by how big the difference is in the relationship with the young people. «I deal with this age group through my own seventh grade and am familiar with their world and even the students are a bit familiar with me from the last few years. That's why I didn't see how challenging it could be», she explains. For Luckner, the current situation shows once again the secret power associated with being a class teacher. The seventh grade, which she has accompanied from the first day of school, feels completely unquestionably like it belongs to her – an unchallenged naturalness surrounds her and her class. With the parallel class, on the other hand, she has an established relationship that has a lot to do with the personal relationship with the individual young people and that only grows through shared experiences and over time. «Both relationships have their qualities and represent the range of bonds in a teacher's life», says Luckner.

Knowing strengths and weaknesses

Taking things seriously, but not personally – this is important for overcoming crises at school. For teachers to succeed in this, they need to be aware of their own needs and deal with them professionally. «School should not be a place where teachers try to fulfill their need for closeness, recognition and love. Unfortunately, this happens again and again», says Luckner. She advocates looking much more closely at those who are interested in the teaching profession and making excessive personal needs a criteria for exclusion. Kleinfercher also reports that those who fail in the profession «basically often fail because of their own needs». This is why even more attention needs to be paid to this in training. In this context, Steiger particularly remembers units on self-education and biography work. «I found it incredibly valuable and also necessary to look at my life, to look for the kinks in it, to ask myself how they have shaped me, what strengths and weaknesses I bring with me», he sums up. After all, your own bonding experiences can also be decisive for shaping relationships in everyday working life. For Luckner, however, no bonding experience is problematic per se, on the contrary. «In terms of diversity, I even think it's important that teachers have as many different attachment experiences as possible. It's unlikely that a bunch of ideal-world people will provide sufficient resonance for reality. The decisive factor is what someone makes of their bonding experiences. Reflection and transformation are important», she says. Kleinfercher even goes one step further and describes it as true «relationship artistry» when people consciously learn to place themselves in dissonant relationship spaces in order to have a healthy effect.