What did we learn from the confrontation between school personnel and a non-compliant student at Spring Valley High School (South Carolina)? You may remember the CNN, Google News and tabloid coverage of this story; it was their headline for a day. Six things, I think, need to be learned and each of the six triggers its own pyramid of discussions and lessons.
First, the erosion of authority and respect in child/adult relationships that presents so many dilemmas to contemporary parenting now lives large in school classrooms. Where once the teacher enjoyed the status of “respected” adult, teachers now are just one more neutered adult responsible for but not empowered to address an increasing level of child issues including recalcitrance to follow adult directives.
The causation of child misbehavior has been well studied and many of the root causes for misbehavior are common to home and school. Linda Albert cites four generalized causes for misbehavior that apply to both home and school. These are generic and are manifested in many child-child and child-adult relationships, often in healthy ways. It is when the child moves from making a statement to deliberately causing a problem that any of these four becomes conflagratory.
- • Attention-seeking
- • Power-seeking
- • Revenge-seeking
- • Avoidance of failure.
https://prezi.com/t_m2imirzl4o/copy-of-linda-alberts-cooperative-discipline-theory/
Child misbehavior also may be school-specific. “Garner interviewed disruptive students who told him the reasons for their behavior were generally tied to disliking a teacher’s instructional style, personality or the subject that was being taught.” The small and petty can be made major and life-changing. In these instances, the purpose of the behavior is to affront the teacher.
A less extreme factor is the effect of a low-lying yet constant distracting presence in a classroom. Even if a teacher is able to continue to teach and even if other children do not join the disruptive behavior, one or both may be distracted from the lesson because of the misbehaving child.
How often does student misbehavior occur? More than we think and with enough frequency to cause significant losses of instructional and learning opportunity. “In a poll of AFT teachers, 17 percent said they lost four or more hours of teaching time per week thanks to disruptive student behavior; another 19 percent said they lost two or three hours. In urban areas, fully 21 percent said they lost four or more hours per week. And in urban secondary schools, the percentage is 24.”
Second, a student’s “no” can create a nuclear event in the classroom. Historically there has been an assumed student acquiescence to directions given by a teacher. Most children still comply readily. However, once the “no” is out there, all energy in the classroom is sucked into the resolution of the “no.” And, depending upon the resolution, the perception of all children for the locus of leadership of the classroom hangs in the balance. Students today are well aware of the snarky-voiced characters in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The Hollywood-glamorized sex, drugs and rock and roll student life style posed copycat problems for some teachers in many classrooms across the states following the 1982 movie release and, as a teen cult movie, snarky talk rears itself now and again.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083929/
More problematic today are characterizations of the dark, quiet and ephemeral Ally Sheedy character in Saturday Morning Breakfast Club who refused to engage with her teachers and principal. Her passively defiant behavior was much more difficult for school personnel to deal with compared with the aggressiveness of Emilio Estevez, the clandestine actions of Judd Nelson and the small-time truancies of a spoiled Molly Ringwald. Classmates today see the quiet refusal of a student to comply with teacher directives as a statement of individualism against the conformity demanded in high stakes schools. Small-time classroom heroes emerge from the Sheedy-likes.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088847/fullcredits/
A teacher’s toolkit is large and potent in dealing with children who want to engage in their learning. It remains potent with children who have a variety of learning difficulties and distractions. The toolkit is theoretically rich but realistically limited when a student turtles-up into a “no” position and refuses to negotiate a strategy toward learning. Stalemate becomes checkmate.
Third, nothing in our communications-rich world lives in isolation. The Spring Valley student who demanded to use her cell phone instead of doing the classroom assignment wasn’t the only child in the room with a cell phone. Once the “no” escalated to action, the “story” was recorded by other students on their devices and immediately broadcast to the world. Schools have glass walls and every teacher and principal must be super aware that they and all that they do are on universal public display.
The argument about whether or not children can have cell phones at school has passed. It is a given that cell phones with cameras are present everywhere. Teaching children that there is a time and place for them to use their devices is the current work before educators. No tolerance policies have shape-shifted to “when and where” policies. That said, any and every confrontation between children and between children and adults at school is a child’s definition of “when” pull out and use their cell device. It is a new era and teacher behavior must be shaped by the fact that what they say and do in a child’s “when” will be recorded and may become viral.
Fourth, the adage that children need the best teacher available in order to advance their educational future, although still true, has been flipped in the era of performance-based teacher evaluation. Teachers now need the best students available to them to bolster the data of their professional work. Every hour of instruction in which a student(s) is inattentive to learning puts the teacher’s statistical effectiveness at risk. Today, a teacher who is mindful of student inattentiveness must be a master tactician in incident management. Keep in mind the AFT poll cited above and the hours of lost learning time that plague so many classrooms. When children are inattentive or “turtled up”, they cannot be productive learners. And, when inattentive and recalcitrant behaviors are present a teacher is not able to provide “best instruction.” Everyone loses. And this leads us immediately to number five.
Fifth, keep the DEFCOM scale in mind and assure that levels 1, 2 and 3 are kept in the “once every other century drawer.” Most school discipline problems need to be handled at DEFCON 5, the lowest level of response. And, one valuable variation of DEFCOM 5 is “ignore the problem for the time being.” Every child behavior does not require management or immediate intervention. Letting one child be herself for a class period while all other children can be engaged in learning is much more profitable for all rather letting your Dr. Strangelove loose on the problem. Strangelove’s work guarantees a nuclear event and everyone will be scorched.
The confrontation at Spring Valley defined its faculty and its students in the public mind and, although public attention is fickle and short-lived, for months and years to come that confrontation is all the public will know about Spring Valley High School. A good reputation takes years and even decades to accrue. Damage to a reputation can happen in a key stroke.
And sixth, Etta Jackson, a very insightful school counselor, schooled me decades ago in this truth: If a person who belongs to a protected class is involved in a problem, the issue immediately focuses on that protected class. The problem remains the same, but it becomes secondary to the issue. In Spring Valley, the issue the world observed was about race, treatment of a child, and gender. All that the national media wanted to talk about were the issues of race, age and gender. The problem of how adults today can deal with a child who willfully chooses to refuse direction remains the overarching and pervasive dilemma for everyone, including Spring Valley High. The issue will overwhelm and bury the problem if we ignore Etta’s wisdom. As Etta told me, when every child is a protected class of one we can help them the most with the goodness of our best daily and usual practices.
Hindsight, of course, always is clear and perfect in discerning what should have happened. Learning from our experiences or from the stories of others can give us the opportunity to play in front of hindsight. Rub your own magic ball and forecast what you will do when a child willfully chooses to push your DEFCOM buttons.