As We Start the School Year: Get to Know Your Students

I had the privilege of seeing the King and I at the Kennedy Center last evening. And, quite the performance it was.

I thought I remembered this mainstay of musicals. I had distinct recollections of Yule Brynner playing the King of Siam. My memories suggested he was stern and unfeeling. I remembered a sad ending that left me crying; I recalled unrequited love, and I completely forgot the King died.

I completely lost track of the feminist aspects of the story -- a strong female willing to stand on her principles, speaking truth to power at considerable risk. This performance showed the weaknesses of my memories and the distinct and different ways in which the characters in this musical can be interpreted and portrayed. Time for me to read the original book (and true story) on which the musical was based: Anna and the King of Siam.

What I just described is already a lesson: don't always trust one's memories -- they can be flawed, changed by the passage of time, youthful perspectives and limited life experience.

I could wax eloquent about the relationship and deep love between Anna and the King. I could describe their mature love, realized too late to be enjoyed to its fullest. I could describe how they had a love that only comes from respect and a willingness to learn from each other and adapt to different cultural norms. I could describe how their love left me crying this time too -- it contrasted the other types of love depicted in the musical, most especially young love. Perhaps, now that I am older, I get the value and the accidental nature of finding unexpectedly true and new love when one is no longer young and carefree and devoid of life's many experiences.

But here is what I truly forgot. I thought the song "Getting to Know You" was all about a couple getting to know each other. Really, I did. It isn't. Not even close. It is about a teacher getting to know her students and learning from them -- not just teaching them. And, it was a teacher-student relationship that was written about decades ago that has extraordinary relevance today as we move from teachers and professors being sages on stages to guides on the side.

In this version of the King and I, Anna was portrayed as an extraordinary teacher who expanded the world of her students, who gave them time to warm up to her, who had patience and understanding, who tolerated a bit of disrespect and caution, who brought joy to the classroom and vitality to her work. She used singing and art and a play to encourage learning. She allowed her students to grow and come to realizations on their own.

It seems the notion of reciprocity that I share in my new book, Breakaway Learners, can be identified in the King and I, written and produced for the first time in 1951 (close to the year of my birth -- which dates both me and the musical).

But, to pinpoint one of the musical's themes, in the process of teaching, Anna acknowledged learning about her students and the culture in which they lived. She took the time to teach "each" student --- not the collective. She understood that teaching and learning are happening within every person in the classroom. And, she was open to her own growth. She got what Paulo Freire was complaining about in education (and his famous work Pedagogy of the Oppressed was written well after the King and I).

I leave you with the first stanza of "Getting to Know You," with all its sentimentality and with the hope that teachers everywhere will read the words (and remember perhaps the music) and enable their students to grow and flourish under their watch as we launch the 2017 -- 18 academic year.

Wherever you teach along the K-20 pipeline, these words can guide you in the year ahead.

"It's a very ancient saying 

But a true and honest thought 

That if you become a teacher 

By your pupils you'll be taught." 

Note: A special thank-you to MW who enabled me, for the first time, to understand this well-worn musical and see the value and experience the joy of late-in-life love. And to Ro who talks through with me the meaning of life and the many experiences we have had and continue to have as friends.