My second year of teaching had me in an inner city school in Brooklyn, NY. I was very young, very inexperienced, and, really had no idea what I was doing. The school was a safe haven for most of the children, who came from broken, drug filled, homes. It was a daily occurrence to have a child come in upset because a family member was killed or arrested the night before. And my job, my ONLY job, as I was told often by my principal when we butted heads, was to teach these fifth graders the curriculum. I failed miserably in doing just that job. But that is a story for another day.
The principal believed that the only way to control the children - yes, I really meant to say control - was to have complete order. That meant silence in the classrooms and hallways, scheduled bathroom breaks, silence in the cafeteria, chained and locked doors during school hours, and lock step teaching from the staff. The environment was not conducive to learning for either me or my students, which was the main reason my principal and I did not always get along.
I had 35 children in my class that year. I started with 30 but got more throughout the year. On any given day, another teacher would be absent and that class would be split up among the rest of us. So there were usually about 40 children in my small room at one time. And, because I never believed in following rules that made no sense, my room was noisy. Controlled chaos is what I called it because the children would always talk and discuss and help each other out but, when the principal made her rounds, we would get silent instantly and I would take my place in front of the room. The kids loved being part of this deception and they learned. They learned the curriculum, they learned they could teach me a lot (like Spanish or like that the stationary store across the street was a place to buy drugs), they learned to be a family.
So one day, I get a new student, Harry (not his real name). Harry came with his dad from China. He spoke almost no English. He was very small for his age and loved being in the classroom. Harry's dad thought I, as his teacher, was the best thing that ever happened to him. I learned that China treats teachers much differently than we do here in the US.
Harry fit in well. He loved math (very little language needed) and worked hard to learn both English and Spanish. He made friends in class. I thought things were going well and then the principal called me to her office.
It seems that Harry had come to school with a switchblade knife. This meant instant suspension. There was a No Tolerance policy about bringing weapons to school. And Harry had shown one of his neighbors that he had this knife in his backpack. So Harry's dad comes to get him and he is gone from my classroom for 10 days. I asked the principal why Harry had the knife but she didn't know. She never asked. He had the knife, he gets suspended. Period.
When he came back, I decided to find out why Harry brought a knife to school. "Did you know," I asked, "that you weren't allowed to have a weapon?" He did. "So why did you bring it to school?" Harry told me, in his broken English, that there was a boy who was bullying him before school, while he waited for the doors to open and let him in the building. He tried to tell the teacher on duty but couldn't get himself understood.
My first thought was, "Why didn't he tell me or another classmate?" And then I started thinking about Harry coming to school. One day he had a small cut over his eye. He told me he fell. One day his hand was bruised. He told me he was playing ball and got hurt.
My inexperience was showing. I have since learned that I cannot ignore all the cuts and bruises. I have learned to spend more time listening than talking. But that day, I learned about the unfairness of a No Tolerance policy. Harry was not a bad kid, nor was he a danger to anyone. He didn't even take out the knife when the bully confronted him. But Harry got suspended. And the bully? He went to class, never met with a teacher or the principal, and kept on bullying other children.
Harry didn't get bullied anymore because my students, his classmates, came to the rescue. They told me about the bully and told Harry how to avoid him. They protected Harry before and after school from then on. I never went to the principal with my new information because, well, she scared me (she was a bully, too) so I talked to her as little as possible.
No Tolerance policies don't work. Children do things for reasons. By ignoring the reason and only doling out punishment, we are telling children they are powerless and we don't care about the why. And suspending a child from school takes that child from the one place that is stable and puts them in a home situation that very well could be the cause of the problems to begin with.
The start of teaching Empathy is teaching Responsibility. Children need to learn that they are responsible for their actions. But if we dole out punishments without giving them an opportunity to take that responsibility, we have taught nothing.
When my students heard why Harry was suspended from school, they rallied behind him. Their empathy was clearly showing. Before we knew why he brought in the knife, rumors were flying about what a bad boy Harry was. No empathy at all. But Harry took the responsibility of his actions seriously. When he came back to school, he stood, this tiny little boy, in front of the room and told the class that he did something wrong. And then he answered all their questions about his why. It gave them the chance to empathize. And they did.
Teach Responsibility and you begin to teach Empathy. And turn punishments into Logical Consequences. (More on that in my next blog.)
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