"Did you know that student over there is banging his head on the table?" 4/27/13

Yes, there was some head-banging happening.  Not hard enough to hurt, just enough to show off.  Four teachers had tried to talk to this student about the issue, but he would just scream and cry.  The main teacher of the student faces this behavior from this same student almost every day.  We know the personality well enough to let them calm down a bit first, then take care of whatever may be wrong, or may have been done wrong. 


At the place where I teach, there is a discipline "program" that we follow.  Let's call it "***".  *** involves rewards for positive behavior.  Many teacher hours go into creating guidelines for behavior in every area of the school; as well as the challenge of constantly being urged to come up with "new, fresh and exciting" rewards.  *** just doesn't work.  It also has given administrative staff the freedom to look at a teacher and say "you need to handle this yourself".

Now, before I expound upon a subject that is not only part of my everyday life, but what I feel is a huge contributor to the greater wrongs in this world, I will at least specify where my experience lies.  I teach elementary music, grades kindergarten through fifth, in a public school in a very large district in Texas.  Our school population for those ages I teach is a little over nine hundred. You may not get the impression from this particular post that I enjoy my career, but I do.  I think I'm very good at a) teaching music basics, b) understanding little ones, respecting and meeting their needs, when possible, and c) using humor and structure to keep order within my classroom.

It's not just bad or ineffective parents that are creating the little ones of today with the "sense of entitlement" and plain old bad manners.  Our schools, starting at the top echelon of each district, are bent on insisting that bad behavior of students is on the decrease.  Programs such as **** serve one purpose - to lower the number of office referrals.  In other words, students that misbehave no longer face consequences.  Therefore, those acts of misbehavior do not become part of the record.

The old-fashioned among you (I include myself) may ask - "What is the purpose of not punishing wrong-doers?  Isn't our whole society based on the concept of law and order?"  You may disbelieve what I am telling you:  that teachers are left to creatively discipline every child for every offense, without any backup or higher consequence.  And yes, it is definitely not a true statement that NOBODY gets in trouble.  If another child is harmed, there are consequences.  If other parents call and complain about things their innocent child is a witness to, or worse, subjected to, steps are taken. If it makes the news, a consequence is part of the press release.  In a nutshell - most things fly under the radar these days, without any serious repercussion for most serious misbehavior. Is it any wonder that some of our young adults that are facing the challenge of mental illness feel more free to act out with violence?

I did a little research - very little, I might add.  I don't know to whom state education agencies are held accountable.  The federal government, for monetary aid?  The taxpayers and voters?  I do know, simply by checking a few state education agency websites, that the public can view the discipline data by district, broken down by offense, race, and economics.  Therefore, it is clear that every school district reports its "dirty laundry" - expulsions, felonious offenses, assault of faculty, even truants and in-school suspensions - to its governing state agency every year. 

Can you imagine the picture of the superintendent of each district lining up at a confession booth?  Every suit and tie business person that runs a district stepping in one at a time to confess the 'sins' of their children?  Of course, that's just imagery on my part.  But it is all reported.  There is paperwork to be done, computer reports to submit, and, eventually, one grand table to be filled in on the state website, for all to see.  Do the results affect anything at a state level?  My research didn't give a clear answer.  But when I checked the Texas Education Agency's website for discipline subjects, I did find a link to the Texas Education Code, Chapter 37, which charges each district to have a code of conduct that specifies everything that could lead to removal from the classroom up to expulsion.  The terms are general, when you look from a elementary viewpoint.  (They also have a misspelled word, which disturbs me on a completely different level.)  I truly believe, with the wording being as general as it is in "Chapter 37", that those discipline reports could be used against a district when it came to funding decisions.  A school district's best bet is to look as perfect as possible.

Perfect?  With children?  Children are not perfect.  They run indoors, they push and hit each other, they interrupt adults, they lie, they show their privates to others, they pitch screaming kicking fits, they peel paint off walls and trash restrooms.  That's just what I could say with one breath.  I've been teaching for twenty-three years.  I'm not being mean - those are the bare facts!  Most children used to be taught to control the afore-mentioned impulses before attending school, but that's where times have changed.  With the advent of more and more working parents and electronic entertainment, over half of a new kindergarten class does not know how to look at an adult and speak their first and last name.  I'm not talking about shyness, I'm talking about social skills.  Instead of being nurtured, experienced in public behavior, learning to sit quietly while be talked to or read to, and having some small responsibilities of which they can be proud of accomplishing, many new kindergarten age (5 years old) students cannot speak their name, do not know if they are a boy or a girl, and cannot walk around the corner to use the restroom alone. Instead of teaching them to start reading and counting and sorting, the first nine weeks of school are used to teach social skills.

Do I have the perfect answer?  Of course not, or I would be in every state capital, selling my "method" to every state agency for the big bucks, like so many other companies and individuals out there.  I've heard and used many methods in all my years.  Most of them are a re-bottling of a college class I took in 1983, called Educational Psychology.  The only new things I learned after that were the changing acronyms and certain gang information that I didn't learn in college!   I know from experience, though, when the shark got jumped.  I know what caused things to head down the wrong path.  It is simply the fact that consequences were removed for general bad behavior.  If a child is nothing but talkative, the teacher must deal with it.  Silent lunch, take recess, sit apart, simple little things.  For a very talkative child (yes, he may need medication, but no teacher can even imply that....or say anything if he is supposed to get it, but doesn't!) those consequences accomplish nothing.  If sending him home would go on that state record, it doesn't happen! That child is free, with only small results, to keep all the other children in the classroom distracted.  Children today are learning that breaking little rules doesn't matter.

My heart goes out to our children that have severe problems, diagnoses, whatever their challenge may be. The child that was banging their head on the table had gotten caught in a lie and was upset with himself. I did go talk to him (again), managed to let him know I would be fair with him when he settled himself and we resolved the issue about thirty minutes later. This child was a ten-year-old.  As I said, I am kind to all and respect them as people even though they are little.  I also manage to keep the terrible behaviors at bay with humor, kindness, a little wisdom (a good seating chart works wonders!!) and a little help from my friends!  But I mourn the loss of the day when teachers, administrators, parents and the community worked as one to make sure that children learned how to behave correctly before they went on to middle school or high school.  I fear that there will be many more violent lessons before we regain the strength and fortitude to actually discipline.  I pray I'm wrong.

I'm not who I used to be - but why? 4/3/13

I'M NOT WHO I USED TO BE!!!

I may see you after 20 to 30 years, at a reunion, or while visiting my family.  I look older, not skinny anymore, and the face - still smiley.  The makeup still done.  The rings, bracelets, earrings - still the same style.  But you don't know me.  I am not who I used to be.

I may have the same smile, the same laugh, and the same old eyes.  But I'm not that person anymore.  I keep that sweet, innocent, faith-that-could-change-the-world girl in a special place in my heart.  Every now and then, she has to surface.  It may be to comfort someone, it may be to fake it through a conversation, or it may be to defuse a situation with her peaceful, positive attitude.  But she stays put away unless needed.  She is not who I am anymore.

What changed?  Whose fault is it?  I have tried to analyze it so many times.  Was it moving a lot?  Was it having children?  Was it family? Friends?  Church people?  Disappointments?  The answer is yes.  As I have traveled the road from youth through middle age, everything has affected my beliefs and my core values.  Some things that I would have condemned when I was young are now things that I can not only accept, but stand for. 

What I wonder is - does this happen in every generation?  Could a 16-year-old that was raised with slavery turn into a 50-year-old that ran an equal opportunity business?  Did a 20-year-old that campaigned for prohibition later become a middle-aged social drinker?  I'm sure it did happen.  And so...I am one of the ones that has changed.  But what about those that don't?   Really- what's it like to be one of those people?

I have many friends on a certain social network that are from my high school days.  I sometimes take a "stalker-ish" look at their particular page to see if they've changed like I have.  Sometimes I don't need to look.  Some of them are still saying, endorsing, and espousing the same ideas and doctrines that we were fed in high school.  Some of them still have that change-the-world faith.  I'm a bit jealous of them in particular.  Others drop hints that they too, have changed.  Others declare it openly.  I just wonder how I "landed" in the changed group.

"Jaded" - an older word, meaning hardened, cynical, negative.  Am I jaded?  I hope not.  My career allows me to be a positive influence on little children all day long.  I couldn't manage that successfully if I were jaded.  But then something happens.  A little five-year-old girl tells me that mom and dad were fighting all night and dad threw mom down to the ground.  A nine-year-old boy tells me that his new step dad doesn't like him and makes him do chores from the time he gets home from school until bedtime.  The special beast that is the preteen almost-middle-schooler learns to get attention by putting down others hurtfully and publicly.  I always jump in and help, bridge, strive to foster healing.  It's my instinct.  But every instance over the years has taken away my innocence and belief that I can change the world.  Therein lies the problem.  As individuals, we cannot change the world. 

I think part of my answer (to the "how did I end up this way? question) has come to me while sharing these thoughts.  The blind faith gains sight - or insight - into particular situations when they cross my path.  And I - I do the grown-up thing and allow these situations to change me in the way I think honors and protects the precious souls and feelings of the individuals in this world that receive hurt after hurt.  Whether those individuals are children or adults, I think I owe them fairness.  And kindness.  And a listening ear and understanding heart.  I owe them love.  And if love has been what changed me, so be it.