We Teach What We’re Still Learning
by Teresia Smith
“We teach best that which we need to learn.”
It sounds like something you’d see on a poster in a classroom.
Easy to agree with, easy to read and move past.
But when you think about it in the context of sexual assault and domestic violence, it hits differently.
It feels less like a slogan and more like a quiet admission: we’re still figuring this out.
A lot of the conversations we hear today about consent, boundaries, red flags, and what healthy relationships look like, aren’t coming from a place where society has already gotten it right. They’re happening because we haven’t.
Take consent. It’s now a word that shows up in school programs, workplace trainings, and public campaigns.
But many adults never had that conversation growing up. Not clearly, not directly, and they don’t understand consent.
So, when people talk about teaching consent today, they’re often learning it at the same time while unlearning old ideas, filling in gaps, rethinking what they once thought was normal.
The same goes for domestic violence. Most people still picture the most visible forms such as physical harm, and obvious danger.
But ask anyone who works closely with survivors, and they’ll tell you how much of the work is about explaining the less obvious patterns such as control, isolation, and emotional manipulation.
Things that don’t always leave bruises, but still leave lasting damage.
Teaching others to see those signs usually means recognizing how easy they were to miss in the first place.
That’s the uncomfortable part of this quote.
It suggests that the people speaking up like educators, advocates, even friends having hard conversations aren’t standing on solid ground looking down.
They’re in it too. Learning, adjusting, sometimes realizing they got things wrong before.
And honestly, that’s probably why the message lands.
Because one of the biggest obstacles in these conversations is the idea that the problem belongs to someone else.
Someone extreme. The stranger in a dark alley. The headline-grabbing case. But most harm happens in familiar spaces with familiar people.
Reality is often messier and harm often shows up in ordinary spaces, in relationships that don’t look like the stereotypes.
So teaching about abuse, trauma, consent and other issues that have been ignored, whether it’s in a classroom or just in a conversation, becomes a way of closing that gap.
Of making it harder to say, “this has nothing to do with me” and making it harder to just turn away.
None of this means everyone is equally responsible for causing harm.
But it does mean we all have some responsibility in challenging the culture around it.
And that usually starts small.
It involves questioning jokes that once went unchallenged, rethinking dynamics that once seemed normal, and listening, really listening, to experiences that may contradict our assumptions.
Questioning something you might’ve ignored before. Listening without getting defensive. Speaking up when it would be easier not to.
It’s not neat work. It’s not quick, either. But maybe that’s the point.
If we teach what we need to learn, then these conversations aren’t just about passing along information.
They’re about change happening in real time.
People learning, then turning around and helping someone else learn too.
Not perfectly.
Not all at once. But steadily.
And in a space as complicated as sexual assault and domestic violence, that kind of ongoing, honest effort might be the most important lesson we have.
Crisis Services of North Alabama Jackson County office offers free and confidential services to survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence.
You may reach our office at 256.574.5826 for an appointment. We also offer teen and adult support groups. Reach out. You are not alone.
