The honeymoon is over. As we near winter, we begin to see more challenging behaviours, more conflict in the classroom. It is so interesting. So many bizarre events take place in the course of a school day. Teachers are constantly faced with decisions around what to deal with - in a fleeting or substantial way; what to say publicly and what to save for private conversations with students; how to "read" behaviour and match it to the need that is not being met. Here is an example:
Student A is sitting beside Student B who is autistic, not very verbal and highly impressionable. Student A shows Student B pictures of ladies in the Guinness Book of Records and gets Student B to put his finger on the chests of the ladies. Girls sitting in front overhear this and report to the teacher. Teacher does not quite "get" what is going on, really wants silent reading to continue without fuss, tells Student A to read and leave B alone. Then Student A calls one of the girls a b&^%$. She reports this to teacher who calls both students into the hall, along with a witness. Student A denies calling the girl a b&^%$, says she must have misheard him. He called her a "ridge." Good grief!!!
Where to start? It occurs to me that there are a lot of trust issues here. If there was more trust, more sense of community and shared interest, the girls might have been able to intervene without needing to report A to the teacher. Student A might not have attempted the stunt in the first place. It all comes down to this: Can our students do the right thing, even when nobody's watching? If not - how do we help them learn to do so? I'm pretty sure it takes at least a village, probably more.
