From chaos to healing
By Joel Richards
Can I tell you a story?
I was doing a practicum in Memphis, Tenn., during grad school, teaching an all-boy fifth-grade class, alone for the first time. For weeks the students and I learned and had fun.
Then one day, one of my best students walked into class, attacked three students and began to destroy the room. After 15 minutes, I finally got him to calm down and talk to me. He broke down and sobbed. Our anger, mine and his, turned into sorrow.
He told me through tears, moaning and emotional agony, that the police had kicked in the door to his home that morning and dragged his mother away in handcuffs. They wouldn’t let him say goodbye. Then the police forced him to come to school. They didn’t have anywhere for him to go.
The police had kicked in the door to his home that morning and dragged his mother away in handcuffs.
My students and I hugged him and cleaned up our room together. That was the first time, but far from the last time, I cried at work. Children’s behavior is complex, and after years of teaching, I have seen every level imaginable.
When society suffers, schools suffer more
As a society, we are prone to mete out punishment. We have mandatory sentencing, the war on drugs, supermax prisons and the death penalty. Politicians run on being “tough on crime.”
Now the harsh punishments of our society have become the harsh punishments of our schools. We have kindergarten suspensions, massive in-school suspensions, lines in the hallway, quiet lunches, fines, school police, arrests, 9-year-olds being body slammed. Naturally, those under the knee of such harsh punishment reject it and ask for culturally responsive environments, for social workers, for healing. Instead, the community receives apathy.
The harsh punishments of our society have become the harsh punishments of our schools.
As a society, when we can’t punish people, we throw our hands up and surrender. If we do that in our schools, we have double trouble: no consequences for bad behavior, and no tools for healing.
Can I tell you a story? I once had a seventh grader who kept coming in late and kept getting detention. One morning he sprinted late into school again. Exasperated, I stopped him and checked his phone. No alarms.
“Do you have an alarm clock at home?” I asked. “What’s an alarm clock?” he said.
I set up three alarms. If he woke up for the first alarm, he could walk to school; for the second one, jog to school; and for the third alarm, he would have to run, but he wouldn’t be late, I explained. He served his detention that day, but he was on time for the majority of the rest of the year.
This student had already faced consequences for his tardiness, multiple times. What he needed was an intervention, a strategy to help him with his lateness. Without consequences, negative behavior festers and hurts everyone. Without intervention, students lack the tools to correct their behavior. We need both.
This student had already faced consequences. What he needed was an intervention.
We can all agree that certain behaviors are absolutely unacceptable and deserve punishment. At the same time, if the behaviors keep happening there is a deeper issue that requires intervention. If a student keeps running in the hallway and the consequence is that they lose recess for the day, the hopeful logical outcome is that the student stops running in the hallway because they would rather go to recess. If the student continues to run despite the consequence, then there has to be an intervention. You are not helping the school community at all if you allow negative behavior to fester.
Apathy causes violence
“During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is a war of every man against every man,” wrote philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Without an established school culture of consequences and restoration, the students are at war, with the school, with other students, and with themselves.
Can I tell you a story? One day a boy pulled another boy’s pants down in front of a group of students. I redirected, I yelled, I did all I could to stop a fight until I was exhausted. Other students tried to assist. There was no one to call for help and nowhere to send the student who had committed the act.
After that, I spent my entire break time persuading the student who had been wronged not to use a chair to attack the student who had targeted him. He cried and told me if he didn’t retaliate, the student would think he could do it again. The students got into a huge fight later, which then prompted friends and family to join the all-day fight.
When I left my classroom that day after school, a student was waiting for me. The child kept talking to me, asking if I was walking home. This was a cousin of one of the students fighting, afraid to walk to the train alone — and he knew I walked home every day. He cried as we walked to the train together. I cried too, by this time I had lost count of how many times I had cried at work.
Without an established school culture of consequences and restoration, the students are at war, with the school, with other students, and with themselves.
Most, but not all violence stems from two things: perceived violence and actual violence. If students don’t feel safe, then they feel they have to be violent. If a student is being bullied and there is no intervention then the student feels they have only two options: continue to be bullied or violence.
We have to provide our students the tools they need to feel safe, while allowing schools to administer consequences. We need students to have the time to work through emotional problems, but we also need a school culture where a student understands certain behaviors are unacceptable.
Who is safe?
Teachers need to feel safe, too. It’s no secret that we are sometimes assaulted by students. And the student is often back in class right after the assault, whether the assault is verbal or physical.
And it’s not just our own safety at risk here. How would any student feel if the adult who is their protection figure can be assaulted with no consequences or intervention? Any student would ask themselves what does that say about my safety? What does it say about my worth?
Teachers have been sexually harassed and sent sexually explicit emails, and still there is no intervention, no consequences. If their protector can be sexually harassed, what does this communicate to the rest of the school about the safety of women and girls at the school? If there is no authority or culture of dignity, how can anyone truly be safe?
We need to address safety for students and educators in our schools, with predictable consequences and a culture that is caring and not threatening.
A culture of caring
Can I tell you story? I was once having a restorative justice circle with students. A little girl had been beaten up on the bus and was scared to ride it to and from school. Through tears, she described the years of being bullied by another girl.
All the students confirmed her story and even asked the principal to remove the girl from the bus. The students even decided and advocated for the bully to get therapy and counseling. Their requests were ignored; as a result, the bully was assaulted by a group of the girl’s family and friends, which led to weeks of violence.
We should not tolerate this neglect and violence. The children understood that the bully’s behavior was irrational and she needed care. We need the deep, systemic buy-in they demonstrated, joined with school cultures that have both restorative practices and consequences for unacceptable behavior. We need serious consequences in conjunction with serious restorative practices.
We can do this!
Can I tell you a story? I had a young girl who used to visit my class from time to time, a class where the other girls were very close. Every time she showed up, they would yell at her and tell her to get out. They were incredibly aggressive toward her. I would tell them to stop, tell them, “You don’t know her.” They would respond “Yes we do. She’s a bully, and we aren’t scared of her.”
Then one day we had a school performance. The “bully” had created an entire dance routine, taught her friends, made her own DJ mix and performed for the entire school. They gave her a standing ovation. And the next time she came to my class, the other girls treated her like a celebrity. They were excited to see her and couldn’t resist giving her a big group hug, one of the most touching things I’ve ever experienced in the classroom.
What changed? They saw her for who she truly was: a passionate child with a beautiful soul.
Imagine a school system with a culture that allows students to be their true selves. Where students can feel safe and be loved by their fellow students.
We can do this. We can make a system that consistently provides the opportunity for students to shine and express themselves. We can make schools that promote healing with constructive interventions. We can limit violence, we can implement consequences and deliver social and emotional services. We can choose to create schools that help students reach their full potential.
Joel Richards is a technology teacher at Blackstone Elementary School in Boston and a co-chair of the Boston Teachers Union Black Lives Matter at School committee. You can follow Richards on Twitter at @MrRichardsBos.
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