Theory in Practice: Relationships and Rights

January has been a month of traversing some rocky, dimly lit terrain within myself. My highs and lows have been grounded in the spiritual realm, involving my relationships with certain students or the way I live out my personal values through teaching moments.

I noticed this round of highs and lows that A LOT of my lows centered around my floundering relationship with a particular student. It's getting worse and worse. It's almost to the point that I feel like a kid anxious about going to school because I know there is a bully there waiting for me. Logically, I know that such thinking is not helpful, and perhaps even absurd. How can a grown woman feel so intimidated and antagonized by a 9 year old? But when I try to put my anxiety about working with this particular student into words, a bully at school is the best way to capture my feelings. Interestingly, this is my second year teaching this student but the first time I have felt such obstinance and aggression from him. Some specific examples of the behavior that is troubling me: When redirected, he becomes sharply defensive, often snatching his body away and saying "Don't touch me!", turning away while you are talking and saying "okay okay got it", and crossing his arms and glaring very icily while you speak. On more than one occasion I have reminded him that he is not on the beanbag list (yet he has a beanbag), and he responded "thanks for noticing." He minds other people's business constantly yet flies off the handle if a peer minds his business. Similarly, he teases and jokes around with peers but has a very low threshold of tolerance for receiving the same treatment. We call it "rock brain" when a student is having a hard time escaping a cyclical thinking pattern that is getting them no closer to solving their problem, and this is a major hurdle we are working to jump with this kid. He instigates many conflicts by making accusations of others and dealing with them in a verbally harsh way either through word choice or tone. All of these things in mind, the cherry on top of the cake of insufferableness has to be this habit he has developed with a peer of looking at each other and laughing or acting like they are about to burst into laughter whenever my co-teacher or I redirects either of their behavior. This last part I find truly TRULY maddening.

Of course my next job is to try to unpack these feelings of mine. Why does this last behavior get under my skin so quickly and efficiently? What is it about being laughed at that can cut us so deeply? Turning to Bailey for reflection, the first and most obvious reality is that I am mentally engaging in some catastrophizing thought patterns, or what Bailey calls "magnification," (Bailey, 2000, p.31). Of the triggers she lists, I can check many of them as thoughts I have had in dealings with this one student, such as "I can't stand this one minute longer", "This behavior is intolerable", and "How dare you speak to me like that, look at me like that, etc." (Bailey, 2000, p.31). Bailey recommends using calming self-talk to counteract the trigger thoughts or to "talk back to the trigger thoughts and perceive the situation differently" (Bailey, 2000, p.32). I am having an extremely difficult time attributing positive intent to the behavior at hand, but if Bailey is correct, it has to be there somewhere. I think I really need to take this problem to some other educators whom I respect and get some feedback on how to handle it. I also took the time to complete the activity that is supposed to "remove your 'buttons' children push" (Bailey, 2000, p.32).

1. I seem to be upset because my trigger two students laugh when I redirect them.
2. This triggers my feelings of anger and bruised ego.
3. My trigger thoughts that cause this feeling are: they are disrespecting me, they are not listening, they are making my job harder, they are deliberately being rude, I can't stand another second of this.
4. While upset, my inclination is to publish by reprimanding the rude behavior or get the child to feel bad by banishing him from the room or taking away something pleasurable or to blame him for trying to make me upset/his parents for not teaching him respect.
5. I want to feel better. I accept and let go of my feelings of anger and bruised ego, my thoughts that cause them: He is trying to push my buttons, etc. and my need to be right and punish by banishing student/taking something away.
6. I want to be responsible, happy and peaceful.
7. What I really want to happen is for these two students to comply with redirections in a respectful manner that shows they are taking the redirection to heart. I want them to want to make better choices that reflect that they value their education.

It's interesting that "All anger is really fear in disguise" (Bailey, 2000, p.110) because I am having a hard time pinpointing the source if my own fear. What makes me afraid when the boys laugh at me? Am I afraid that they won't listen and comply with the redirection I am giving? Am I afraid that other students may pick up the behavior I dislike? Am I afraid that if they laugh at me than they are in control? I really don't know, I just know it's an ugly feeling in my heart and one that I want to take ownership of and hopefully eradicate.

I have tried other Conscious Discipline techniques with this student with mixed results. I use lots of "I" messages, for instance pulling the student into the hall and saying "I feel upset when you and ____ laugh at me; please say "yes, Katie" when I tell you to do something." Often this gets met with protests like "I couldn't help it! Really! I tried not to laugh!" My response to this is that its his responsibility to remove himself from a situation if he can't control a reaction that might hurt another. I've been using I-messages because according to Bailey, "it communicates the way the child's behavior has impacted you. It tells the child, 'You have the power to influence other people by your choices.' I-messages are nonjudgmental statements that allow children to cognitively reflect on their actions and find their own ways to choose to change" (Bailey, 2000, p. 118). Perhaps I need to give it more time, but to be quite frank, I am not yet seeing results from the I-messages. Perhaps I am executing them incorrectly, or perhaps it is not enough consistency for only one adult in his life to take on this technique.

Many of my highs are instructional, and are the proof of the pudding that I am learning things through this program! I launched a large school-wide unit on Chinese New Year, and have worked hard to make it child-centered and an integrated curriculum. One of my favorite parts has been linking my students up with their own pen pals in China (students of my Chinese friend from when I lived there), and seeing the learning really come alive in this opportunity to talk with REAL other kids. It's an authentic purpose for reading, writing, and inquiring, and I think is one of my best inquiry methods to date. As Flint says, “The inquiry model values and affirms the cultural knowledge and language practices students bring to the classroom. Literacy is not a competitive enterprise where some kids succeed and others fail; but rather literacy development is collaborative with students working together on various questions and projects” (Flint, 2008, p. 9). I feel that through letting kids collaborate with pen pals and ask questions and get excited about sharing the answers they find, I have honored the inquiry model practice Flint references. While many of my lessons are still far too teacher-centered, I have developed a sharp eye in reflectively recognizing this fact more quickly, which is an indirect sort of high. At least in seeing the problem in my instruction style, I can more quickly address it. I am much more adept in turning my lesson around when I make such a discovery than I was at the beginning of this program.

I've also been thrilled to finally be trying some of the critical literacy practice we learned about last semester, and let kids start talking about concepts that deeply interest me, such as power and equity. One of my best lessons this month was taking a small group and reading a story about MLK Jr, having them keep in mind the questions: who has power? Who doesn't? Who has a voice? Who doesn't? What can be done? We talked about how having a voice can be a form of power, and the different ways people went about getting heard, such as through boycotts and marches. The students amazed me with their insights and observations, and I mostly shut up and let them talk. I literally got goosebumps when one girl said "But why did they have to kill him?" and a little boy answered "Maybe they were scared of his voice." Many subsequent conversations have come up since, also quite interesting. When we talked about slavery, it prompted many of the students to say what they would have done if they lived back then. It's been fascinating to guide them into thinking deeper and deeper about these issues, and even seeming to see them accomplish new depths of thought with my own eyes. For instance, in the slavery discussion, some of them were saying things like "I would buy all the slaves I could and let them live how they wanted and never force them to work." Which brought up the question of what it means to really be free. I started it by playing devil's advocate with their suggestions, asking things to poke holes in their perfect plans like, "is that enough to just not have to work? What if one of the slaves you bought WANTED to work? What if he or she wanted to be a doctor? It wouldn't have been allowed by law, even though you would technically let them. Are you free if you can't choose the job you want to do when you grow up?" Soon they were doing it to each other, and the probing questions were making them rethink their original action plans. Organically, they started thinking on a larger scale and making plans that involved changing the whole system. By the end of our conversation, I had a whole class of formidable abolitionists. My next move is to encourage them to apply this same thinking to all sorts of issues, not just famous injustices in history. I think literature is a terrific starting off point, like in the article Walking in Their Shoes: Using Multiple-Perspectives Texts as a Bridge to Critical Literacy. The authors make so many great arguments for the importance of a crit lit curriculum, like when they say “Getting students to see beyond their own lives is one of the difficult but most essential aspects of critical literacy… Through these texts, students can consider how power and positioning impacts how different perspectives are listened to and represented, not just in thee texts but in their lives as well” (Clarke and Whitney, 2009, p.534). I think this is the meat of why I do what I do, which explains why these experiences with my students excited me so much.

Indeed, there has been some interesting uncharted territory this month: the darkness of my own inner ego and the blossoming critical thinking occurring within the student's minds. While sometimes frightening, and sometimes painful, these journeys are always terribly exciting.