Genuinely Helping the Humans in Our Classrooms to Grow: Part 2

I'm getting ready to return to school on Monday. I have a lot to write about last semester, but first I'm going to venture further into the question:  how do we help the kids who feel unreachable, the ones who seem driven to cause chaos, pain, and suffering to everyone around them?  For me, this has been a week of learning about the toughest kids we have and it started in an unlikely place:  with witch doctors.

I'm often reading four books at any given time:  one adult novel beside my bed, one adult novel on my iPad for reading on the treadmill (in the snowy winter); one book to listen to in the car; and one YA novel as a classroom modeling book.  My in-the-car book is usually nonfiction, sometimes biography (I listened to Michelle Obama's Becoming recently); sometimes self-help and motivation (like Good to Great by Jim Collins); sometimes something historical like The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown.  And sometimes, a book for no known reason crosses my path and I feel like I need to choose that.  Enter the witch doctor.

About two weeks ago I came across Bob Goff's book Love Does:  Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World. I'm not churchy-Christiany at all and usually a book like this would slide on by, but for some reason, I felt this was what I should listen to next.  I listened and loved Goff's upbeat, persistence, outside-the-box way of doing what he wanted (Who gets into law school like that??), and his message about love being an action.  It was a simple, when you see a problem and you might be able to actually help, do it.

The book resonated so much that I finished it quickly and downloaded Goff's second book Everybody Always:  Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People.  This was the book I really needed to listen to: it's all smiles and balloon bouquets when students are kind and say thank you and genuinely want to learn, but what about those students who seem driven to resist everything?  I can be all Erin Gruwell Freedom Writers Diary with the right group of kids.  But what about the other kids?  Do I have a responsiblity to help the ones who are not motivated, who are resistent, or downright scary sometimes?

According to Bob Goff, yes, everybody always.  So, OH MY GOD, what might that mean as a teacher?

It might mean we have to set our fear aside.
It might mean we have to think of solutions and try things no one has done before.
It might mean we have to use restorative justice with everyone always, not just those we're pretty sure it will help.
It might mean that we have to invest in ways we have not invested before.
It might mean we need to deeply listen to all kids.
It might mean we have to meet them where they really are, in a place that's really scary.

It might mean we have to admit that we have not always done enough, or done it right, and that now we commit to change and grow ourselves.

Bob Goff does a lot of work with the children of Uganda. He has helped in all the usual ways with love, meeting basic needs and education. But when he realized that it was still common for children to be stolen and sacrificed by witch doctors, but that no one dared prosecute the witch doctors, he decided it was time to do more.  He successfully helped a boy named Charlie who had survived a brutal attack by a witch doctor and he successfully prosecuted the case of getting the witch doctor put away for life.

And then he helped the witch doctor, but visiting him in prison and helping him to grow and change too.

Helping a witch doctor in a prison in Uganda is way outside my comfort zone.  But helping tough, traumatized, seemingly unreachable kids in my community find ways through the difficulties they're facing? I can say yes to that.  People ask me all the time, "Don't you think you're putting yourself in danger by helping those kids?"

Yeah, well, in 2019, aren't I putting myself in danger every single time I drive my car?  How about every single time I fly?  How about going to a movie?  a concert? an office building?  the post office?

How about every single time I teach a class in my classroom in a country that experiences school shootings with such regularity that it's not a shock anymore?

Yes, there is danger in all these things.

And, the funny thing is. My toughest kids' behavior?  It makes sense.  There is a reason for a kid skipping class.  And for the verbal argument that sprung up in the hallway.  And for the fight. A specific, identifiable reason, knowable to us clearly when we have a relationship. When we ask.  We're not talking the senseless violence of Sandy Hook Elementary or the Las Vegas concert shooting.  We're talking about kids making choices based on the concrete reasons of personal survival, belonging, and loyalty. Known reasons, not random, senseless violence.

And, if Bob Goff can help a witch doctor, then I can commit to helping teenagers.

[Note:  helping troubled teens does not mean we sacrifice a safe school environment. Those ideas are not binary opposites. Sometimes we help a student and we temporarily remove them from school at the same time. However, we cannot continue to remove students and think that is a sustainable solution. It simply is not.]

Thinking on my own, here's my non-negotiable list of things all teachers and administrators must commit to if we are going to make headway with our toughest kids:

1.  Real relationships come first.  When I'm at my new post in the morning in the freshmen hallway, I know I have to make a lot of deposits with a lot of kids that I've never seen before before I will ever successfully make any kind of withdrawal.  This means:  I smile and talk to kids a lot.  I learn their names (while carefully noticing the loudest leaders, the chronic late kids, the ones seeking and getting the most attention). And I cheat the system. I'm supposed to escort all the kids, no questions asked, to the office where they have a consequence and then take them to class.  But I use my own judgment to decide what is going to help the most in the long term with a kid.  Super belligerent, independent, defiant power struggles never end well when I add my "authority" to the mix. So I use my authority to win over the kid instead.  We become co-conspirators, we talk, we break the rules the first time they're late by me delivering them to class instead of the office.  I make a new friend, the kid calms down, feels they've won, and cooperatively goes to class.  Money in the bank for the next encounter which I know is coming.  They'll remember how I treated them and they'll be nicer.  Can I guarantee they'll be ready to be swep to the officet?  You know what?  No.  Life has no guarantees.  But in my experience, I have less kids to sweep in the few weeks I've been assigned to this hallway; and for sure, when I see my new friends, I can give them the look, point to their classroom before the bell rings, and be way more likely to get compliance than if I hadn't made those deposits.  And if not, isn't it possible that the kid needs a few extra minutes to talk with a caring adult more than they need to be in their classroom listening to the morning announcements? Radical, I know.

2.  Listen first always.  With every student in my classroom, every student that I meet in the halls, I have to be genuinely curious about their story.  And yes, this takes more time than I want it to.  And sometimes kids lie (let's be real, sometimes adults do too).  But my chances of them being honest with me decline significantly if they perceive that my only motive is "to get them in trouble".  On the other hand, real relationships take time and way more than one encounter.  If every encounter begins with genuine listening (and the courage to hear the truth), we have a chance of establishing new patterns.  We have to know the underneath issues honestly to find real solutions.  Otherwise we're putting band-aids where WE think they need to go. And then those solutions don't work, we say, "I tried" and blame the kids.

3.  Take purposeful action.  If you watch the Facebook Live video, you'll see that my word for 2019 is action.  I'm done just talking about solutions, and I'm committed to doing something.  Newton's first law of motion states "An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force (physicsclassroom.com).  I believe that taking action opens up more possible actions. If you try something and it doesn't work, you can try something else.  If you just talk about solutions (or worse, declare there is no solution), you do not more forward. Fear holds us back and produces lots of excuses.  Action moves us forward and puts us in problem-solving mode.  We need action. Our students need our action.  The young man who wanted his phone in the last post needed my action. I listened, we talked, and I realized that to achieve the goal of getting him to class, he didn't need a consequence, he needed a solution to his problem. Teachers have the power to help, we do not just have the power to follow rules.

4.  Dedicate the necessary time.  It's really easy to look at the Gen Z kids and their constant need for sound-bytes and quick answers and judge the heck out of them. Real thinking is deep and takes time, we pontificate.  Kids today have no attention span.  Phones are ruining classrooms and real learning!  At the same time, if a student is doing the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place, we demand an immediate solution.  "NOW! Listen to me!  NOW! Go to class!  NOW!  Say you're sorry!  I told him to put away his phone and he didn't.  I told her to get out her homework and she didn't.  I told them to leave my classroom and they walked as slowly as they could."

Dudes, real help takes time.  Relationships with the easiest of kids may not be as deep as we believe they are.  Those kids are just willing to comply because they have a goal.  Relationships with kids who hate school (sometimes generationally hate and distrust school) and teachers and authority, take repeated positive encounters, days, months, years, to build.  If we're lucky.  So, that one kid you don't know who is being defiant in the hallway?  That's normal, not crazy.  You want to disrupt that kind of forward motion?  You have to dedicate a lot of time and positive energy.  No silver bullet. No magical answers.

5.  Follow through post-consequence:  In our current system, there will still be kids who serve lunch detention, in-school suspension, out-of-school suspension, long term suspension, even expulsion. These same students are growing up and will be adults, with children of their own, living in our neighborhoods in our community.  We are all one. We owe every student the time and effort towards real healing and solutions when they are young.  We cannot think some magic will occur outside of us, or that it the problems will go away when they leave our building. A rich community is built when people care about everyone else in the community. 

Consequence do not fix problems. Finding a lasting solution means healing and true helping must occur. This might mean an alternative plan for academics; it might mean resources like food, shelter, clothing and safety need to be secured; it might mean counseling.  It might mean restorative justice needs to happen--mending relationships between students, faculty, administration, or others.  It might mean something completely different that only the student can help us identify.  All behavior is communication.  Are we willing to dig in and follow through all the way to a lasting solution?  Even for wicked problems?  If we as adults don't have the strength to do this, how in the world do we expect students, who are living this trauma, to have the strength or tools to solve these problems?  If we want resolution, the adults are going to have to lead the way, machete in hand through unknown jungles. Who else is it going to be?  We need to step up and be the helpers.

*****

If you've hung in there until now, wow.  You've probably got some solutions and ideas I need to hear.  I'm so open.  The thoughts and ideas I've poured out on this page are my attempt to start a meaningful conversation.  They alone are not enough.  We need dialogue, collaboration and dedication to long-term solutions that impact the students who need us most.

I stopped blogging last year because things were so messy that I kept thinking, "Who am I to say anything?" But, you know what?  We all have something to contriubute. Maybe me sharing the messiness of my life will get others to share their experiences and all our tool boxes will grow.  We're teachers! And we have the ability to make a difference with our students.

I'd love to hear your questions, critiques, comments ideas and anything else that furthers this conversation.  We cannot do this work alone.


Lynn