I was in a community of schools meeting yesterday morning, and it was quite insightful hearing some of the challenges that my colleagues are facing with respect to student behaviour. From elementary principals right up to high school, behavioural concerns of students has been concerning this year. Social-emotional dynamics are not as well managed by kids of all ages, as compared to just a few years ago.

Post-pandemic or endemic times are not the same as pre-pandemic times. Where this is most noted is in the social construct of what ‘normal‘ behaviour looks like. It’s different in Kindergarten classes when more students have been home with limited other-student interaction, especially when compared to a kindergarten class a few years ago where more than when 2/3rds of students had already spent 2-3 years in pre-school.

It’s different in middle schools where students can feel isolated not only in school, but also online. Or students showing behaviour that is usually something seen with much younger kids. High schools are noticing this too. Grade 12’s having social dynamic challenges normally seen with younger students, and behaviours that seem immature happening far more frequently.

We sometimes forget that ‘normal’ behaviour is learned. We don’t realize that an expected culture is no longer expected when it hasn’t been practiced for 2+ years. We aren’t just experiencing a blip in the norm, we are experiencing new norms, and if we don’t like what we see it’s going to take both time and effort to change. And if we don’t explicitly think about how we want things to change, and work on making those changes, then we probably aren’t going to see the results we are expecting or hoping for.

The exciting thing is that we don’t have to go back to how it used to be. The challenging thing is that we need to spend time developing the positive norms we want to see… Or we can get stuck just being reactionary to the negative behaviours we don’t want, but are happening while there is a void of positive norms being practiced.