There are fettered and unfettered responses to discipline problems. A fettered response would take into consideration all sorts of factors like who said it, the tone of voice, the history of the kid’s involvement in class, the kid’s grade, who their parents are, if the administration likes them, if they are a cheerleader or a football player, what they were wearing the day they chose to say in class the word “faggot” in class or some other equally horrific word about another human being.
Unfortunately, most of us make the fettered response. Our response could even go so far as to be related to the weather conditions that day, or even our own mood. In that reasoning, if it’s a beautiful day in spring and we are having a good day and some kid calls a classmate a faggot, but it’s Friday afternoon and there is a big dance that night and everyone is happy, and the kid “really didn’t mean it”, did he, because he apologized on the spot, by that line of reasoning, calling a classmate that name just doesn’t look like it does on a Monday morning in January.
The unfettered response to the above situation is the machine-like response. In this response, it doesn’t matter who said it, the tone of voice, the history of the kid’s involvement in class, the kid’s grade, who their parents are, if the administration likes them, if they are a cheerleader or a football player, what they were wearing, what the weather was like that day, or the teacher’s mood that day: the word was used in class, people heard it, the teacher heard it, someone suffered, and the teacher acted in an unfettered way, a way worthy of a fully functioning adult human being whom society has entrusted to make such decisions.
We spend a lot of time thinking about how unjust everything is. We need to start thinking about how unjust we are when we fail in our professional obligations to the society that has employed us, by allowing children to hurt others in our classrooms or in the hallways but we let it go because we have a “class to teach”. There is nothing more important than a child’s safety than our acting in each moment of transgression, whether they are a perpretator or a victim. In either role, they are still children and they need our guidance, not our fear, and certainly not our glossing over of the situation, even it was less than one second long.
Many teachers don’t get that. It’s time we got that. It’s time we got our professional priorities in order of their real importance in our quickly crumbling society, crumbling because there are no leaders left anywhere.
Let me share this, with apologies in advance if I offend. I don’t like the feel of this discussion. I sense a generalized kind of fear in teachers to do what is right concerning their students, their parents, their bosses. Teachers seem to be afraid of everybody.
I challenge them to do let that fear go and show up for their jobs. Before it’s too late. Sure, it’s scary, but the alternative is a lot more scary, a society where fifteen year old kids get to do what they want and speak to adults and peers in whatever way they wish. In my view, that is the worse option than just being an adult in any given situation.
One reason some of us are still in school is because we never grew up. It’s time we did that.