Giving an A makes it possible for you to speak freely about your own thoughts and feeling while, at the same time, you support others to be all they dream of being.
It transports you from the world of measurement to the universe of possibility.
When you give an A, you find yourself speaking to people not from a place of measuring how they stack up against your standards, but from a place of respect that gives them room to realize themselves. Your eye is on the statue within the roughness of the uncut stone.
The practice of giving the A allows the teacher to line up with her students in their efforts to produce the outcome, rather than lining up with the standards against these students.
We give the A to finesse the stranglehold of judgment that grades have over our consciousness.
Since the teacher’s job is to help the students chip away at the barriers that block their abilities and expression, she aligns herself with the students whom she has given an A, and lets he standards maintain themselves.
The freely granted A expresses the vision of partnership, teamwork, and relationship. It is for wholeness and functionality in the awareness that for each of us, excess stone may still hide the graceful form within. It declares and sustains a life-enhancing partnership.
The practice of giving the A both invents and recognizes a universal desire in people to contribute to others, no matter how many barriers there are to its expression. We can choose to validate the apathy of a boss, a player, or a high school student and become resigned ourselves, or we can choose to honor them in unfulfilled yearning to make a difference.
Starting from the conviction that adolescents are looking for an area in which to make an authentic contribution to the family and to the community, the first thing we would notice is how few meaningful roles are available for young people to fill. Then we might see how, in the absence of a purpose greater than themselves, adolescents retreat to the side-lines as though their existence were inconsequential.
No behavior of the person to whom you assign an A need be whitewashed by that grade, and no action is so bad that behind it you cannot recognize a human being to whom you can speak the truth.
It is only to a person to whom you have granted an A that you will really listen, and it is in that rare instance when you have ears for another person that you can truly appreciate a fresh point of view.
The freely granted A lifts you from the success/failure ladder and spirits you away from the world of measurement into the universe of possibility. It is a framework that allows you to see all of who you are and be all of who you are.
That adage is true, of course, in the world of measurement, where people and things are fixed in character. However, in the universe of possibility, you certainly can change people. They change as you speak. Who is doing the changing? And the answer is the relationship.
- The Art of Possibility by Rosamund & Benjamin Zander
