Honesty with ourselves is essential to developing both self-compassion and humility. Honesty with a kind and generous self-awareness can help us see our own imperfections and accept where we may have gotten something wrong. In being honest with ourselves, we take the courageous step to acknowledge that being imperfect, failing, and experiencing life’s challenges is inevitable and part of the human experience. In turn, these habits of honesty and humility prepare us to be both truthful and truth-seeking in life’s high-stakes moments.
Honest communication between teachers and parents — about both student learning and the shortcomings of the learning environment — can sow the seeds of change. Yet, if that honesty is not coupled with humility, these key partners in the learning process can lose sight of the ways in which they themselves may contribute to the problem, hinderingtheir efforts toward meaningful change. If they fail to couple their words with civility, the message they want to communicate can be lost in the words and delivery they choose to use.
Honesty is a fundamental building block for equitable learning systems. For equitable change to take place, we must be both honest and humble enough to consider the way that the systems in which we work may sustain unfair conditions or drown out voices who are underrepresented or do not hold power in decision-making processes. Honesty, paired with humility, allows us to gain clarity on values, challenges and effective solutions that might otherwise be hard for us to witness or hear.
