Tag Archives: expectations

The 4 ‘D’s leading to office discipline

It was early on in my first job as a vice principal. The position was in a middle school just a few kilometres away from the middle school I taught at for 9 years to start my career. Our secretary came to tell me that a student had been sent down to the office. I sat down with him in my office and he told me why he was sent there.

“Really, that’s all you did?” (I was sure he was leaving something out, I’d never send a kid down to the office for this.)

“Yes!” He said defensively.

We worked out an apology, and rehearsed it, and I sent him back down to his class. Minutes later he was back up at the office. I looked at him quizzically and he quickly responded to my unspoken question, “Mr. Truss, I did exactly what you told me to!”

After a bit of back-and-forth I took him back down to the class and waited for a an appropriate moment to talk to him and the teacher together. It became very evident that she had no interest in letting him back in the room. This surprised me for two reasons:

First, as mentioned, this minor altercation was nothing me or my peers at my previous middle school would ever have sent a kid to the office for. In my eyes, sending a kid to the office was essentially telling the kid, “I cant manage you,” which takes away any leverage I may have the next time this student has any challenging behaviour.

Secondly, why not take him back? I verified with the teacher that the students wasn’t downplaying the behaviour, he was apologizing, and he wanted to come back to class. But the teacher was not interested. I offered to come in with him and that got us passed the impasse.

When I started writing this, my intention was going to be on empathy and growth in understanding that not every student, teacher, or principal is just like me, and how important it is to understand this. But as I was sharing the story above I remembered my 4 D’s that led to the rare occasions I’d send a kid to the office. I wrote about this back in 2008, and I’ll share them here:

________

In 9 years as a teacher I have made very few classroom issues into office issues. I have 4 D’s that I think are issues that should be dealt with at an office level. The first two D’s are cut-and-dry/immediate office issues. These are ‘no-brainers’, you break these rules and you go to the office!

1. Drugs- Alcohol is included in this category;

2. Dangerous- Not just weapons, but physical violence too. The best policy is a zero-tolerance policy… We don’t solve problems this way.

The next 2 D’s have some grey area between being an issue for the office and being an issue that I handle myself. They are:

3. Defiance- an absolute refusal to participate and/or co-operate. If you don’t come to class prepared to learn, or if you aren’t willing to participate with the class… If you can’t offer me 5% of what I am offering you, then that probably hinders my ability to give everyone else the time and attention they deserve. I obviously can’t help you, so there is no reason for you to be here. I’ve only ever had one student absolutely refuse to engage in learning to this point. I honestly felt that it was a disservice to keep him in the class and made this the reason to send him to the office. (I have used this as ‘leverage’ with other students in the past- not an ideal strategy, but sometimes a student needs to know that you have limits);

and the final ‘D’,

4. Disrespect- If you are going to treat me, or others in a way that is hurtful, if you are going to ‘injure’ others emotionally/socially… then we have a problem. Hitting someone, or physically hurting someone puts you in the ‘Dangerous’ category and becomes an immediate office referral. Disrespect on the other hand is a little different. If you emotionally or socially injure someone then you are defying one or two of our school beliefs : Respect and/or Inclusion.

________

In ‘administering’ these rules, #3 and #4 had to be pretty extreme to get sent to the office. Otherwise, I handled them myself. But that’s me. Some teachers would be faster to send students away to be dealt with out of class. I just always felt that the most important relationship was between me and the kid. So, while #1 and #2 were likely immediate grounds for an office visit, #3 and #4 only resulted if the relationship was broken such that the defiance and/or disrespect didn’t allow me to be the teacher anymore. At that point the student is clearly a disruption to the class and I’m unable to manage it.

I think in my time as a teacher, I could count on one hand how many kids I ended up sending to the office, but looking back now, I probably should have asked for help a few more times. It’s good to try to hold on to the relationship with a kid, but sometimes a little help and support could go a long way. And I think having clear lines of what constitutes needing that help is a good place to start.

Kids will rise

We held iHub Annual last night. It’s our combined grad and award ceremony. Being a small school, we combined these two things so that our grads would have a larger audience. We’ve grown a bit and this year we decided that our grad families would be the only ones invited to watch live, and we hosted YouTube Live video show as well for the rest of our students and families.

Overall the event ran very well. I’m so often impressed by the students who run these shows in the background, the presenters, and the performers. There’s a certain feel these shows have when they are student run. Kids aren’t perfect, but the step up, they rise up to the occasion… and frankly, they often do so better than the adults. Case in point, I had the biggest flub of the night, not any of the kids.

One of the things about our award ceremony that I like is that we focus the awards on how students contribute to the community. Using our motto of ‘Dream, Create, Learn’ we title the awards under those words, looking at: how students Dream up ways to make the school and world a better place; how students Create outstanding projects; and, how they demonstrate their Learning.

Looking at a school with just 81 students, it’s great that we had 24 of them nominated for awards. Seeing the kinds of things they do in school is nothing short of amazing. These kids really put efforts into their projects and their passions. They are all on journeys to do great work and share their accomplishments.

This isn’t a school where kids spend all day following their teacher’s assignments and handing in work that looks like everyone else’s work. This is a school where students get to explore interesting self-chosen projects, and the results show that this is what’s valued at our school.

I was originally against the idea of holding an award ceremony. They are often just about highlighting the already successful kids that get recognized by their marks, and everyone knows who will get an award. But last night, and at our previous award events, there were students mentioned that normally wouldn’t be recognized in a traditional award ceremony. Students who have been given the freedom to explore their interests and students who step up to make the school great… even if they don’t shine academically.

By showcasing that contributions to our community matter we get kids wanting to contribute to our community. By sharing how important that is to us, other students see that we value it, and they too rise up.

I was worried that after 2 years of pandemic mode, and keeping kids separate in individual classes, that we’d lost the community feel of the school. But a couple weeks ago we had a cross-grade project that all our students participated in. Then last night seeing the students work together to run the event, and seeing the student projects shared, and the performers giving their all, I realized that we still have a strong community. And, our students are still stepping up and contributing to be creative and do good work.

If you create the time, space, and expectation for students to be creative and do great work, they will. I can’t wait to see what’s possible next year, when things go further back to normal. I suspect that next year the kinds of things we’ll see from our students will be far from normal… they will be exceptional.

The unwritten rules

I have three unwritten rules:

1.

2.

3.

🤣

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Jokes aside, there are certain unwritten rules and expectations we follow that have evolved over time. Here are 3 examples:

1. People used to pop by unannounced. There would be a knock on the door and the explanation would literally be, “I happened to be in the neighbourhood and thought I’d drop in.”

No cell phones, no way to give advanced notice. No social awkwardness that would surely come into play if someone did this now.

2. Don’t leave me a voicemail, leave a text.

Quite literally, the only time I leave messages now is because I’ve called someone and I’m driving. Besides that, the etiquette is to hang up when you hear the message, before you get to the beep, then text your message. Or don’t leave a message because you know the person saw your unanswered call on their call display. That’s enough to get a callback.

3. Don’t ‘Reply All’ to an email. I was tempted to say, “Don’t ‘Reply All’ to an email except when…” but just don’t.

Some people didn’t get the memo on this unwritten rule. I think it needs to be written.

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It’s funny how etiquette changes over time. I wonder what things we do today, that will just seem wrong to do 10 or 20 years from now? What new unwritten rules will there be?

Wanting to connect

This is one of the headlines that came across my news feed several times yesterday, “Ontario to maintain group size restrictions amid rising COVID-19 cases, crowded parks”

It seems that many people wanted to take advantage of the great weather and social distancing took a back seat to social gathering, despite an uptick of COVID-19 cases in southern Ontario.

This isn’t unusual behaviour, with similar things happening in parks and on beaches across North America. It isn’t something that bodes well when considering that economies are opening up and people are beginning to be exposed to more interactions with others. Social distancing needs to be something that we continue while things open up. So, why are people behaving like this?

We have a natural affinity to want to spend time with people and to be social… well, most people do, definitely not everyone. This is the typical overreaction we see with teenagers, when they get new freedoms and want to push the line. How many times have you heard a phrase like, “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.” Well, seems like this is as true for adults as it is for kids.

People want to connect. They want to congregate, they want to celebrate.

I know many people that have had to cancel travel plans. My own summer plans with my wife and two other couples is no longer going to happen. I know of two cancelled weddings, one was a local celebration and one was a destination wedding. These are big events to change! These are celebrated gatherings that will not happen for a while yet. This is tough to miss out on.

But it’s not as tough as not being able to visit another country to say goodbye to a loved one who is dying, it’s not as tough as knowing you are the one that spread a virus to someone that didn’t recover like you did. It’s not as tough as shutting down the economy a second time, when the curve isn’t flattened enough and there is a fear of hospitals being overwhelmed.

The economy has to be opened up. We need to be returning to some sense of normalcy, we need to create opportunities to connect with others in our communities, to work along side each other, and to do things that are more social than they have been. But we need to do so in recommended and respectful ways.

We need to accept some risk, but not be risky. We need to connect, and not crowd each other. We can’t wait for a vaccine, and we can’t stay shuttered in place indefinitely. We need to connect responsibly, and in ways recommend by experts. We can’t ignore the need to engage in our society, but we also can’t be reckless.

Just one more thing

Where does the drive to continually ‘do more’ come from? I can’t help but wonder what we fail to accomplish because we choose to do so much? When we add something new to our metaphorical plates, do we take the time to ask, ‘what am I going to take off of my plate so that I can add this new thing’?

Are we cogs in a wheel?

Is it our job simply to keep up as best as we can?

When layers of bureaucracy are added, our productivity decreases. When obligations increase what happens to innovation? Where does creativity go when a calendar gets filled? When we are asked to do more and more, and we comply and fill our days, what gets lost?

What are we letting go of when we keep doing more?

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Here is a a fable from Joe Hyams book, Zen in the Martial Arts



TRY SOFTER

A young boy traveled across Japan to the school of a famous martial artist. When he arrived at the dojo he was given an audience by the sensei.

“What do you wish from me?” the master asked.

“I wish to be your student and become the finest karateka in the land,” the boy replied. “How long must I study?”

“Ten years at least,” the master answered.

“Ten years is a long time,” said the boy. “What if I study twice as hard as all your other students?”

“Twenty years,” replied the master.

“Twenty years! What if I practice day and night with all my effort?”

“Thirty years,” was the master’s reply.

“How is it that each time I say I will work harder, you tell me that it will take longer?” the boy asked.

“The answer is clear. When one eye is fixed upon your destination, there is only one eye left with which to find the Way.”

Related: Less is more. Teach less, learn more.