Nice Teachers: Managing Reward and Punishment in School (revisited)

One of the really beautiful things about having been at Cottage for a couple of years now is that I have some school-age alumni kids now and I get to hear from them, and from their wonderful parents, about how it’s going for them now that they are integrated into another school, or more to the point, another kind of school. Usually the kids tell me the things you would tell an adult that you haven’t seen in a while, like a distant relative who has to ask how old you are now and comment about how tall you are. They generally tell me that their school is “good”, their teacher is “nice”, stuff like that. 

But when I get to talk with their parents, I really love that, because they tend to give me a much more rounded assessment about how it has been going: the parent-teacher conference where they were confronted about what their child is doing or not doing that falls outside of the class’ expected norms, the refusal to do homework, the after school crying, how they got “put on yellow” for talking, or had to sit out recess. These examples are all from my own kids, in case you think these things might be unusual, or something that would only happen with a child with a history of behaviors adults find objectionable. These are just my fairly typical, relatively low-key kids. They have big feelings too, and they find standing in lines and not talking to their friends just as annoying as we do. 

There are so many things about the way conventional education is set up that go against the research on how learning really happens, which involves the curriculum being relevant and meaningful to the learners, fostering warm relationships between teachers and students, and being hands-on and using our body to learn. By contrast, so much of our education policy is really just about selling tests and then selling the textbooks and prepackaged curriculum that teaches to the test. It is a capitalist system, within a capitalist system, designed to produce workers who will do what they are told. The thought of immersing our kids in that mess is pretty terrifying. None of us went through childbirth with the goal of producing a productive worker. 

And yet, most of us endured that system, which has been the dominant course in place in this country for over a hundred years. Maybe not all of us are living our dream, maybe we resent having to monetize our hobbies and pay down student loans that got us jobs just above minimum wage, but we all have enough sentience left that we chose this way of parenting. We each got here, somehow. All the standardized tests in the world could not extinguish who you are, you, who came here and produced these incredible little humans. No behavior chart is going to crush our kids, either. It might hurt their feelings, throw them off balance, but it is not who they are. You will tell them.

Early in my son’s kindergarten year, I picked him up, and he got in the car, gave me the “fine” when I asked about his day. And then a few beats later, he tearfully told me he was “put on yellow” that day for talking. My heart broke a little, thinking about my own memory of being shushed and given “the look” by my own kindergarten teacher. At the time, I felt completely bewildered, because I was just saying something to my friend next to me, as one does. It did not seem like I was doing something wrong. I tried very hard to be “good”.

But I was five. Being quiet in a room full of your friends is extraordinarily difficult task, even for an adult. I consider it absurd that we ask kids to do this all day, every day. Kids will talk to one another. As a teacher, I know that I can plan for this, by making sure there is lots of time for interaction and collaboration, and that makes it possible to endure being polite while a single person has the floor for brief periods. And when someone speaks out of turn, as people will, we can provide redirection to the task at hand without shaming or punishing. 

My son’s name on a laminated slip of paper had been moved to the yellow circle on the board, where everyone could see it. He felt both embarrassed by his mistake, and ashamed of being called out in front of his whole class. He was crying on the way home, after having to suck up his feelings at school, where he did not feel safe to express his emotions. I felt sad, and defeated for a moment about the system that endorses this model of behavior modification as a kinder, gentler way to get across what would have been done with a paddle in years prior. 

I pulled over the car. I turned around and spoke to my child. I told him that I was so sorry that that happened today. I told him that his teacher, who I loved, and he loved, and my daughter loved three years later, did what she thought she had to do, but that it did not mean anything about who he is. I don’t pretend to know what it is to have 24 kids and a bunch of direct instruction to get through. It does not sound easy. She did what she thought would help the class, but it did not mean he was in trouble with me. I said, “at home, you’re always ‘on green’”. 

This came up again, when my daughter was in the same class. She started, as my son had, by describing the behavior of other kids who had had their names moved to red or yellow in the first few weeks of school. She described them as “bad” because they “got on a color”. I argued with her, defended those other kids, the ones yelling curse words at the teacher, standing on desks, and whatever all she described, because as we know, kids do well when they can. I told her, that kid must have been having a really hard time to have done that. That must have been scary for him. I hope everything is okay for that kid. 

I do care about those other kids who I never met, but also, I wanted my own kids to hear that there is nothing they could do, nothing in this world, that would make me not love them. Nothing could get them “on red” with me. And that nothing those other kids could do would make me agree that they are bad kids. There are no bad kids. There are hurting kids, misunderstood kids, but not bad kids. No such thing. Bad guys are not real. 

Bad guys are not real, I don’t think. There are just bad choices, some of them really bad choices that come with serious consequences. We have been laying the groundwork for this conversation not just since they started kindergarten, but since they learned about bad guys when they were two or three, and started playing superheroes and villans, or cops and robbers, to figure out what that word meant. Kids wonder a lot about bad guys around age three and four. They often worry that they will be put in jail, for doing things like pushing their brother, or throwing a shovel in anger. We talked then, at Cottage, about how that is not what is going to happen, that actions have consequences, but that adults are responsible for kids’ safety, and we would never let that happen. We talk in gradeschool, with the increased understanding and awareness that children have as they get older, with more nuance. I hear the communication behind the action I don’t like, in this case, putting a kid “on “yellow”. I translate: “Your teacher feels it is important for you all to be quiet during reading time. I bet it makes it hard for people to concentrate when there’s talking. Can you please do that for her?”

You and I know that kids who talk during reading time are not bad kids, but our kids don’t know that. We tell them. We make sure that the voice in their head affirms them, recognizes their humanity, and is generous enough to be polite when the teacher makes a request of them. We teach grace by giving grace. 

Further reading, for kids first grade and up: 

Sideways Stories from Wayside School  by Louis Sachar (and the two sequels)

https://www.amazon.com/Sideways-Stories-Wayside-School-Sachar/dp/0380731487

The genius of these far-out and a little bit unnerving books is that they take all the conventions of elementary school, that kids have acculturated, and turn them, well, sideways! There’s the kid who always has to write his name on the chalkboard under the word, “Discipline “. There are only a few playground balls, and some are better than others. Cafeteria food is frighteningly gross. And the teachers, well, you’ll have to read past the first part to get to nice Mrs. Jewls. My kids and I have read these many times now, and we are in hysterics every time. Happy reading!