“Discipline
comes from the word Disciple, which means to subscribe from the teachings of a
master”
Janice
Loomis
By Tommie Saylor
Kennedy
High School Principal
Ms.
Loomis shared this article with me, and now I wish to share this article with
you. Read and absorb what Ms. Elizabeth Peyton, the author, has to say. It can
make the difference between begrudging coming to work each day, and truly
loving being an educator…
I’ve
been teaching middle school for 12 years. I’ve been in an urban school in which
99 percent of students received free lunch for nine of those years. And I’ve
tried a lot of classroom management strategies with varying degrees of success.
Administrations
told me to sweat the small stuff so I wouldn’t have to sweat the big stuff, but
I just ended up losing my mind about how many girls were wearing nail polish
(forbidden by the uniform code). I tried establishing clear classroom
procedures and sticking to them, but I could never remember if two fingers
raised meant a student needed to use the restroom or had a question. I set up a
positive reward system and gained five pounds from fun-size Hershey bars, which
aren’t even all that good unless they’re the almond kind.
These
strategies work well for some teachers I know, but here’s the secret I’ve found
for working with poor kids. You ready? It’s pretty simple.
Always
default to compassion. A kid shows up late. “Everything OK? We missed you.” A
kid doesn’t have his homework for the fourth time this week. “Hey, is something
going on that’s making it hard for you to get your work done? This is really
important, and I want to make sure you’re able to do what you need to do.” A kid
throws a tantrum in class. “Wow, you’re really struggling with self-control.
Can you tell me why? Are you hungry or tired?”
Because
here’s the thing about poor kids: Their lives are hard. Poverty is linked to
childhood trauma. Some experts consider poverty itself to be a form of trauma.
If a child’s family is struggling to make ends meet, there’s a good chance that
Mom and Dad are under a lot more stress—if Mom and Dad are both around. The
kids are likely expected to take on much more adult roles at home, making
homework difficult. There’s also the fact that it’s tough to sleep if people
are constantly screaming or shooting off guns in your neighborhood, and it’s
hard to concentrate when you’re hungry.
Starting
with compassion increases the odds that you’ll find out what’s really going on
and be able to actually help your students. A couple of years ago, one of my
girls stopped doing her homework and paying attention in class. As a new
teacher, I’d have assigned a detention and hoped that solved the problem.
Instead,
I asked her what was going on. I found out that her dad—her sole surviving
parent—had been arrested the week before for driving without a license. This
seventh grader had been living on her own for close to a week, and getting
herself to school on time every single day, but the food was running out and
she was hungry and afraid. We bought her groceries and bailed her dad out, and
her grades went right back to where they should have been.
Compassion
also builds relationships with your students, when a more aggressive approach
might burn bridges. Will they see you as a sucker? Yeah, it’s possible. But
they’ll know that you’re a sucker who loves them and cares about their needs
outside of school, and that counts for a lot.
You
might worry that defaulting to compassion will encourage kids to make up a sob
story to get out of doing their work or behaving. And I’ll admit that this has
happened to me once or twice. Last year, a kid explained that he never had his
homework because he was in charge of looking after his little brothers at night
and putting them to bed, and he didn’t pay attention in class because there was
never food for breakfast. We scheduled a conference with his mom. She brought
in a delicious homemade breakfast burrito—which he refused to eat because he
doesn’t like black beans—and informed us that he didn’t even have little
brothers.
As
long as you follow up with what the kid claims he or she needs, you’ll
generally find the truth. And I’d argue that if you’re going to make mistakes—and
you are definitely going to make mistakes—it’s better to err on the side of
understanding than to be overly harsh.
We
read a lot about the school-to-prison pipeline and the needlessly punitive
discipline policies we often inflict on our most vulnerable students.
Compassion is the way out. I don’t promise it’ll solve all your classroom
management problems, but it’ll go a long way. Treat a kid like a decent person
and, more often than not, he or she will act like one.
Helping
students to find their greatness. Making Kennedy the school of choice. Excellence
by design.
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