We Need to Change the Story

Let me start by saying that schools are not the problem when it comes to gun violence taking place in our schools today.  I want to be clear on that from the beginning.  At the same time, I believe we should continue to look to schools for help with the solution.  This is especially true when it comes to working with all types of young people, including those who struggle with mental illness.  Although I have believed this for a long time and have addressed these thoughts in a number of posts on this blog (Schools as a Greenhouse, Change a Practice-Change a Life, Raising Young People as Human Beings…, and others) the idea of the importance of nurturing our students roots hit home when I opened the paper this morning and saw this political cartoon that was just too analogous to the “roots theme” from our district to not address.

It is not the best picture, but hopefully you can see the title “The Root of Evil” below the picture with the “roots” growing underneath the most recent school shooter’s identifying traits including: indifference, detachment, disaffection, ambivalence, etc. all growing from mental illness with the culmination or “fruit/product” being the school shooter.  When I saw this image, I immediately contrasted it with this image taken from a T-shirt our high school staff have worn over the years emphasizing the importance of focusing on “nurturing our students roots”.

What stood out to me was the contradiction of  the “roots” descriptors:  empathy, compassion, sacrifice, collaboration, problem solving, critical thinking, etc. between the two images and what role we as educators can play in helping our young people grow as they travel throughout our schools.  

There is no such thing as 100% guarantee of safety in schools and as we fielded calls concerning questions about metal detectors to A.L.I.C.E. training this week I go back to the “roots” and what we can control.  In my mind, the best thing we can do is to create and support a school culture which focuses on nurturing the roots of our young people.  This will create a culture which provides a “mentally and emotionally” safe place for all of our young people, no matter their background, and will naturally lead to a more “physically” safe place as well.  One example of how we are trying to build such a culture took place yesterday (2/16/18) during our most recent Professional Development Day.  We invited  Dr. Jay Berk  in as a guest speaker  to address students struggles with mental illness.  As expected, he did a great job of helping us to become more aware of what our students might be going through and gave many great insights and suggestions.  I highly recommend inviting him in to speak with your staff.   I am also in the middle of reading a book titled “Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges Are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them” by Ross Greene who just posted this editorial on “Why We Shouldn't Always Expel Kids…” on the TIME Magazine website.

In “Lost at School” Greene points out three ways we tend to address kids when they are a behavioral issue in class.  In short they are:

Plan A (Which we often start with, but shouldn’t be our go to.)

-Impose your will on the student as the adult and solve the problem unilaterally.

Plan B (How to pull this off is the focus of the book.)

-Work collaborative with the student to solve the problem together.

Plan C (C doesn’t stand for “caving”, but more prioritizing)

-Triage the problem and potentially set it aside temporarily.

I bring up the book because it goes a long way in providing ways to help both educators and students develop a culture of caring.  Most times students understand what the expectations are in schools and when they become a behavior problem it is not because they are trying to cause a problem.  Many times it is because they are not equipped to handle the problem as it is currently presented.  How we help our young people to develop the skills to handle the problem (nurture their roots) goes a long way to helping them mature (grow emotionally).   As a small example, when using Plan B there are three steps  to address a behavior, Greene points out that “Plan B always starts with the Empathy step, continues with Define the Adult Concerns step, and is capped off with the Invitation” (Greene, 2014, p.133).  

The empathy step is basically hearing the young person out in order to understand their concern.  It is a step that can not be skipped, but is most often done so because we are pressed for time to solve the issue or want to tell the students our expectations. Once you do complete the empathy step, you have a better understanding of what the student is thinking and the next step is to share with the student what you are thinking via “define the adult concern” step.  Finally, in the Invitation step, the teacher allows the student to have the first opportunity to develop a solution and the two work together to finalize a solution that they both agree to try.   You really need to read the book to get the full picture, but what I am trying to emphasize here is that school should be an environment which allows our young people to develop the skills they don’t currently possess and isn’t that why they come to school...to develop skills they do not currently possess?

   I think that goes back to the purpose of schools.  If we approach schooling in the light of a “preparing for life model” over a “curriculum transfer model” (see “What is Your One Wish for This School Year?”) we will work toward nurturing our students roots.   Emphasizing  meeting each of our students where they are and building those skills as needed will go a long way toward meeting all of our young people’s needs.  Our story can’t be about testing and accountability, it has to be about the responsibility we have to nurture our students roots which will help us to work toward changing the story for all of our students.

References

Greene, Ross. (2014).  Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges Are

Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them. New York, NY: Scribner.