Teacher you taught me wrong

John Morgan (posthumous), UK

At a workshop in Sochi, North Caucusus, a Russian teacher of English told us a harrowing tale. One of her "best" students came back from a trip to England very angry after discovering she "couldn't understand a word" of what was said to her. The teacher, who said she had taught happily for 20 plus years, had never before had such an experience and felt personally invalidated.

I asked the group what they would say to the student. After two or three energetic contributions, a silence fell. Instead of following my usual practice of allowing the silence to extend, I intervened quite quickly: looking slowly and accusatorily round the group to catch as many eyes as possible, I slowly repeated the phrase, "Teacher, you taught me wrong!" The effect was electrifying, and two more participants volunteered passionate answers/explanations. I repeated the phrase on four more occasions, and each time more participants spoke out, often very personally. After 75 minutes, 15 out of the 25 or so present had made a substantial contribution.

I have no idea what prompted me to adopt this way of working, or choose the particular form of words I used. It was certainly unplanned. Once the process started, however, it developed a life and rhythm of its own. In feedback a few days later, participants were unanimous in saying it was the best session we'd had together on a course that had had a fair number of high-energy points. Again, I have no idea why this was so. Clearly the initial story was a very powerful one, but I feel the floodgates would not have opened without my intervention. Though initially framed as a discussion, the whole session had a strong psychodrama feel to it, and in retrospect reminds me of the "seed sentences" and "things adults were always saying to me" kindling devices.

Incidentally, this now becomes in some way a looped situation for me, because my behaviour was diametrically opposite to my preferred group-leader style. Looking back over the years, I now ask how many times might this [usual] superficially facilitative style have blocked important events-how many colleagues and trainees might justifiably say, "Morgan, you facilitated me wrong!" (September 1994)