January 4th, 2019

           Another subject to highlight in the empowerment process is how it makes us feel, that is, what does it bring us?

When you give students the opportunity to choose who they want to work with, who they want to sit at the table with, who they want to be in the physical education teams with, etc. we encounter different student profiles.

Some students always like to choose. The way I interpret this is that they like choosing because it makes them feel “powerful”, the leaders… Others, however, feel like choosing makes them be “between a rock and a hard place”. They don’t like it and it makes them feel defenseless, so they choose randomly and as obligation.

Lastly, there are the students that are indecisive or that they don’t want to choose, showing indifference for the situation. Sometimes these students are really not capable of choosing anything because they consider that everything is fine for them. Experience tells me, however, that these students that we consider “neutral”, once they get home to people they trust, that’s when they “complain” or comment on the things that they don’t like or bother them.

Beyond valuing what profiles are more empowered, I would like to emphasize on these people that are not capable of deciding because of “apparent indifference”, but at home they tell who they would and would not work with, and they complain about the person they ended up with, even when they had the

chance to choose. This fact makes me think that trust intervenes in the ability to choose, since I think that if they do it in some contexts than others, the reason could be that they don’t trust others.

Behind our decisions or behavior, there are many more arguments hidden that we don’t show or make visible. It’s important to learn to be aware of this, so we can find a little bit more of personal comfort that sometimes makes us feel bad or that we are not able to manage.