When school became parentis in absentia, educators co-opted the need to understand and respond to student behavior. School was no longer just about reading, writing and arithmetic. Quickly, we learned that when “Johnny was good, he could be oh so good; but when Johnny was bad, he could be oh so bad.” We could handle the good, but the bad has forever been a problem.
You have to be of an age to remember these strategies for responding to bad. School justice was resolved on a child’s backside with a paddle or the sole of a “Chuck Taylor All Star” Converse gym shoe. Teachers, especially male teachers and coaches, acted as the local sheriff and meted out punishment in the hallway or the locker room. Other students observed Johnny going to the hall and heard the smack and silently vowed that they would never be made to assume the position against a long row of lockers. A Chuck Taylor waffle welt lasted about an hour but was remembered for years.
Rights and wrongs were discerned with authority by a principal standing in the office doorway with arms folded across the chest and a serious frown on his brow. A principal’s frown could last for weeks and haunt the cafeteria and playground, as well as be seen looking through classroom doors at bad-doers. Often, the frown was handed down through progressive siblings and felt more like a label than a look.
School discipline in those times and places was abrupt and expected that Johnny would return immediately to the norms of the school. The only kept records were mental and emotional. Paternalistic teachers, coaches and principals dealt with the issue and/or transferred their story about bad Johnny to his pater familias. If behaviors were changed, it was due to a fear of Chuck Taylor or of a delayed justice through the student’s transcript or of what would happen when Johnny got home; if not, behaviors hardened or were stored up for potential review in the child’s adulthood.
Corporal punishment slowly was abolished by legislation and policy in many locales and an era of referral was popular at the end of the last century. When Johnny’s misbehaviors reached an indeterminate number or frequency, Johnny was referred by his teacher to the “specialists.” School counseling fell somewhere inside that indeterminate number and provided assistance in interpreting and “dealing” with Johnny. Counseling validated a need for the services of the specialists. Referral moved the problem from the classroom to another venue and once referred the initiator was relieved of the onus for responsible action. Educator pedigrees became specialized with titled positions, such as school social worker, behavioral disabilities teacher, multi-disabilities teacher, and school psychologist. The era began with Johnny being sent from the classroom for treatment and ended with the classroom being part of Johnny’s treatment.
Today, we address Johnny’s behavioral needs on the mirrored pyramid of RtI and PBIS triangles. Interestingly, no matter the era in which Johnny’s behaviors caught our attention, we faced a common dilemma in each and every instance. Or, at least, we had the opportunity to contemplate this dilemma. “What is Johnny’s choice of behavior about?” Simple question, but the coach in the locker room was more interested in quick law and order and the frowning principal needed to prevent Johnny’s behavior from infecting his classmates and a referring teacher saw a referral as a chance to spend more time teaching good Johnnies. However, “what is this behavior all about?”, remains Johnny’s persistent and haunting issue.
Belatedly, we can count and record all of the efforts expended in dealing with Johnny’s behavior against an often insufficient effort at parsing out the reason for his behavior and treating that reason(s) with a directness and compassion that Johnny may not have been able to request in his own words. This type of response typically must come from the person who deals with Johnny when and where his “badness” is exhibited – back to the educators in the classroom and playground and cafeteria and hallway. This type of response typically is very personal, as in listening to Johnny, letting Johnny’s behavior diminish from his running out of gas, confronting Johnny in non-confrontational ways, being personally direct with Johnny and spelling things out that other students may clearly understand, and protecting others from Johnny’s behavior while not ignoring Johnny. And, most importantly, a persistence and commitment to Johnny that often seems disproportionate to the distributed time devoted to all other children.
In the society of a school, upholding rules and behavioral expectations is a never ending story. In these societies, misbehavior dwells amongst a very large volume of good behaviors. Our professional value is remarkably enhanced when we are able to move Johnny’s or Julie’s behavior from problematic to acceptable. We know that no student must be angel every hour of every day, but we also know that we can help Johnny find his halo by working with him and not on him.
In 1959 I stood in a snowballer’s ambush of my fellow sixth graders on a great winter day. She came upon me from behind and I turned and threw as hard as I could, hitting Miss Knurr in the chest of her thick parka and double-layered sweaters with my best snowball. She demanded suspension, but Miss Phillips had me write “I will not throw snowballs” on tear-stained paper until Miss Knurr huffed out of the office. Then, she told me to stop writing, took my hands in hers and told me how she watched her sixth graders play baseball at recess each spring. She talked about throwing baseballs and games and she smiled the entire time and kept smiling when I apologized to Miss Knurr. Miss Phillips assigned me to dust Miss Knurr’s chalkboard erasers every day after school for the remainder of the winter and that was okay, because in happier times I would have volunteered to dust a teacher’s erasers. I know my story would have been different and properly handled had I hurt Miss Knurr, but Miss Phillips dealt with the facts and not the might-have-beens. Somewhere in that dusty time, Miss Knurr also helped me with fractions and her frown inverted into a smile.
Miss Phillips lingered with me during my 38 years of principalling. She worked to understand me and was not swept up with the mistake of a weenie-armed snowball thrower. All of my Johnnies deserved the best Miss Phillips interpretation I could give them. I constantly wondered, “Who and why are they rather than what have they done now.”
An excellent tool for understanding what bad behavior is about is “Your Can Handle Them All” by Robert DeBruyn and Jack Larson. This resource is delivered as a book or in a quick-action card deck by The Master Teacher.