Educators’ Insights about Forgiveness

Everyone is doing their best, even when it seems like they are doing their worst.

Everyone is dreaming or having a nightmare, battling with pain you may never understand.

You don’t have to condone their actions.

You may not be able to wake them up.

You don’t have to like what happened.

Simply let go of the illusion

that it could have been any different.

We shared these words from Jeff Foster’s poem called “A Forgiving Moment” in a recent Greater Good Educators Community of Practice. Researchers have defined forgiveness as a process, beginning with the choice to let go of resentment, negative judgment, and negative behavior towards the person who has harmed you.

For me, “Letting go” is so much easier said than done. Thankfully, Foster’s poem also acknowledges the struggle to forgive: Accept your non-acceptance in the present./Forgive your inability to forgive. “Thank you, Jeff Foster,” I say with an outbreath of relief. (And so did many other Community of Practice participants after reflecting on this poem.) 

Forgiveness is complicated and messy–and it doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s foundational to nurturing positive relationships at work and a healthy school culture. With this in mind, we’ve been asking education professionals across the globe how they view forgiveness—and how they approach it in their classrooms and schools. Ninety-six percent of the educators we surveyed claimed that forgiveness is an important concept to model and teach. Yet, many also confess that forgiving is a profoundly challenging and humbling undertaking. 

Participants in our focus groups, community meetings, and Greater Good Educators Community of Practice Program are grappling with what it looks like and feels like to forgive themselves, other adults, and the larger systems and institutions that perpetuate harm—with 92% admitting that it is actually harder to practice forgiveness with colleagues (more than students).

At the same time, our forgiveness focus group members associated the following positive words with forgiveness: letting go, peace, heart-centered, starting over, unconditional surrender, healing, vulnerability, gratitude, understanding, honesty, acceptance, moving on, kindness, a gift.

We invite you to draw on this sampling of educational professionals’ thoughts and questions about forgiveness. Consider them as prompts and/or entry points for discussion in your own grade-level meetings or staff meetings at your school.