Tag Archives: students

Blind spots

I’m dealing with an issue between two students right now and the challenge is that both of their opposing views are valid. The challenge isn’t the points of view, it’s the current climate that makes one view insensitive to the other view. There was no intent to harm, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t harm. Poor communication is another issue, and it might seem like therein lies the problem more so than the stances themselves. However this just amplified the problem.

I can get the students together to eliminate the communication issue, but first I needed to show one of them how their perspective could be perceived differently than intended… I had to show this student how their perspective came from a place of privilege. I shared how I was once blind to my privilege and I think the student understood. Was this student’s statements ‘wrong’? No. Was this student’s statement insensitive? Yes. Could the other student have approached the concern differently? Yes… but here’s the thing, I don’t think it would have been settled any better if the issue was addressed in-person rather than publicly online. When a concern is in your blind spot how are you expected to see it?

Privilege creates blind spots. Politics creates blind spots. Religion creates blind spots. Gender creates blind spots. Anger creates blind spots. Culture creates blind spots. Language creates blind spots. Wealth creates blind spots. Trauma creates blind spots. Power creates blind spots. Ignorance creates blind spots… and the list can go on and on.

We can’t know that we have blind spots until they are shown to us. We don’t see them unless we can be shown things from a different perspective. We need to be empathetic. We need to be open to alternate views. We need to understand that our blind spots don’t inherently make us bad people, but when we are exposed to our blind spots our egos, our sense of right and wrong, need to be tempered.

When we are faced with a perspective that was in our blind spot we need to be open to seeing things from a perspective that’s not our own… and here’s the hard part, not to be judgemental but to be compassionate, empathetic, and willing to see the bias we hold. This is a big ask. But it builds character and helps us grow.

In the student issue I’m dealing with the onus to make things better lies on the person who was blind to their privilege. If that student can’t see the other perspective, if the blind spot remains, well then we have a disagreement that won’t be settled well. But if that student can see the other perspective, then maybe we can come to a satisfactory conclusion. We can focus less on intent and blame, and more on making things better. We can have an honest conversation about how our statements could be seen as insensitive and biased, even though that wasn’t the intent. There was no intention of harm, but harm was done, and if that harm is recognized, well then we can move forward. It becomes a learning experience and not an issue of right versus wrong. That’s one less blind spot, and one more opportunity to help us all get along a little more compassionately.

The gap

I was one of those kids. I got the report card comment that basically said, ‘Not meeting his potential’ on a regular basis. I got ‘A’s if I really enjoyed the class or the teacher, and ‘C’s if I didn’t. Not just in high school, for my undergrad degree in university too. Well, at that point I wasn’t getting the comments, but my marks followed the same pattern. A’s and C’s, and hardly a B in sight.

This is a tough learner profile to work with: “If I care, if I’m interested, I’ll do the work… if I’m not, I’ll do the minimum.’ It’s not inspired. It’s also not bad enough to raise too much concern. Just flying under the radar, doing what needs to be done.

But when I was inspired, I was really inspired. I would go deep, dig right in and learn as much as I could. I’d create projects that teachers would ask to keep as examples. I’d spend 2 hours in the library just perusing books on the bookshelf related to the topic I was researching.

The gap between studying what interested me and what I was doing because it was required by school was massive. I was essentially a light bulb, either on or off, with no dimmer switch. No motivation (off) or fully engaged (on). And not a care about what my marks looked like as a result. I’d look at a ‘C’ and think, ‘Yeah, that’s about right,’ in the same way I’d look at an ‘A’ and think the same.

It took me going back to school at 29 years old to change this. Only heading into teacher education made me think about doing well even if I didn’t enjoy the course.

It’s good sometimes for me to remember that not everyone cares about marks. Not everyone is motivated to do their best. I cared enough to pass but not enough to do well in every course. I’m not the only kid that has ever thought that way. The interesting thing to me is that it wasn’t always the subject matter that drew me in. Sometimes it was the teacher. Good teaching bridged the gap for me.

Teachers who can build those relationships and foster excitement in learning are a real treasure. They are inspiring and make learning fun. They know how to reduce the gap between students doing the minimum and students being motivated to do well. They inspire students to do more and to find greater success than they ever expected.

The teachers that helped me cross that gap are the ones I remember most.

Fun escape

Yesterday we took our students bowling. Our PAC, Parent Advisory Council, paid for the event. With my back issues I didn’t bowl, but it was great to see students and staff having a fun afternoon together.

Bowling is a fun sport where students are a lot more equalized in skill than many other sports. Most people don’t know how to bowl well, and while athleticism can help, being athletic doesn’t make you a good bowler.

For us, it’s an affordable, fun event and the bowling alley is a 5 minute walk from our school so there’s no transportation costs. I wish I got to participate, but it was still great to see students having fun in a completely different context. Sometimes we can take school too seriously, and forget that kids are still kids. An event like this is a good reminder.

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.

You don’t know

One of the challenges of being an educator… Sometimes you don’t know.

You don’t know that the way you say something triggers a kid.

You don’t know that a kid missed breakfast, or that they didn’t have anything in the house they could have for breakfast.

You don’t know that after school they have to fend for themselves, and maybe a younger sibling too.

You don’t know how abusive a parent is.

You don’t know how stupid a kid feels.

You don’t know how crippling perfectionism is.

You don’t know the root cause of misbehaviour.

You don’t know the bullying was happening until it went too far.

You don’t know how important your validation is.

You don’t know how hard the learning challenges really are.

You don’t know that the distracted kids really wants to pay attention but the distractions are too loud in their heads.

Sometimes you don’t know what you needed to know about a kid to be a better teacher for them.

Ah, but then sometimes you don’t know…

How appreciated you are. How much you are looked up to. How valuable your connection is to a kid for whom you are the only caring adult that listens to them.

Sometimes you don’t know that the joke you shared in class was the only smile a kid had that day. That you make a kid feel smart. That you are the only person to give a kid a 4th chance because life isn’t baseball and no kid deserves only 3 strikes.

Sometimes you don’t know how valuable you are to the kids, the families, and the community you serve.

The effort of learning

As an athlete, I didn’t have very good body awareness. My swim stroke was awful and that’s tough to deal with as a water polo player. My coaches spent a lot of time trying to fix my stroke, and they’d have me try all sorts of drills and drill strokes, but I often wouldn’t feel the difference or wouldn’t be able to get my body to do what my coaches wanted it to do.

I was also a player who has no issue being yelled at. I listened whether the coach was speaking at a regular volume or yelling at the top of his lungs. Didn’t matter if it was encouraging or angry. I heard, I tried. I tried again. And often again because listening wasn’t doing, and I had to work extra hard on the doing.

For me, learning new skills was always something I had to work at, and the idea of learning being an effort has stuck with me. Maybe it’s not true for someone who finds that skills come easy to them, but for me if there isn’t a struggle then there isn’t much learning happening. That’s why I frequently go back to the ideas I shared in ‘learning and failure‘. We should teach kids to struggle through things that are not easy and not guaranteed to work. We should have them feel the struggle of failure… even if they are solid ‘A’ students (perhaps especially if they are – see #3 here).

I think sometimes we try to make learning too easy. We forget the sense of accomplishment that comes with succeeding at something hard. We forgot that the challenge is what makes the learning stick. Learning can be fun and hard. It can be challenging and rewarding. It is seldom effortless and still processed meaningfully. The effort is what helps make the learning stick, and while it need not be painfully hard, it does (often) need to at least be uncomfortable. Easily learned skills are not nearly as rewarding as the skills that are more challenging and harder to accomplish. Real learning comes with effort.

Disengaged

It’s apparent in schools, it’s apparent in the workforce… there are students and young adults who are disengaged with societal norms and constructs around school and work. They are questioning why they need to conform? Why they need to participate? There is a dissatisfaction with complying with expectations that schools is necessary, or that a ‘9-5’ job is somehow meaningful.

Some will buck the norm, find innovative alternatives, and create their own niches in the world. Others, many others, will struggle, wallow in unhappiness, and fight mental health demons that will leave them feeling defeated, or riddled with anxiety, or fully disengaged with a world they feel they don’t fit in. Some will escape this, some will find pharmaceutical ways to reduce or enhance their disconnect. Some of these will be doctor prescribed, others will be legally or illegally self-prescribed.

The fully immersive worlds of addictive, time-sucking on-demand television series, first-person online games, and glamorous, ‘living my best life’, ‘you will never be as happy as me’ illusions on social media certainly don’t help. Neither does unlimited access to porn, violence, and anti-Karen social justice warriors dishing out revenge and hate in the name of justice. The choices are fully immersed, unhappily jealous, or infuriatingly angry… and disengaged with the world. Real life is not as interesting, and not as engaging as experiences that our technological tools can provide. School is hard, a full day at work is boring, and it’s easier to disengage than participate.

The question is, will this disengaged group find their way? Or will they find themselves in their 30’s living in their parent’s basements or subsisting on minimal income, working only enough to survive, and never enough to thrive?

School and work can’t compete with the sheer entertainment value this group gets from disengaging, so what’s the path forward? We can’t make them buy in if they refuse, and we can’t let school-aged students wallow in a school-less escapes from an engaged and full life. I don’t have any solutions, but I have genuine concerns for a growing number of disengaged young adults who seem dissatisfied with living in a world they don’t feel they can participate meaningfully in.

What does the future hold for those who disengage by choice?

The behaviour not the child

It is a simple thing to understand but not always an easy thing to do. When a kid messes up, you can focus on the behaviour that was inappropriate or you can address the kid as inappropriate. When you deal with the behavior, you give the kid a choice not to behave that way. When you deal with the kid, you are telling them that they are bad. Not what they did, they are bad.

What were you thinking? (That teenage brain probably wasn’t thinking.)

How could you do such a thing? (As opposed to ‘what other choices could you have made?’)

You should be ashamed of yourself! (Does the idea of shame make you feel resourceful and help you learn? I doubt it.)

Addressing the behaviour allows the kid to see that behaviour is a choice. Having them come up with alternate options is a way for them to see how their behaviour can change. It’s a way to help them see that the future can be different… just like in my 3rd part of an apology, students can see how a different behaviour can produce a more effective result.

You can be disappointed in a kid, but they need to know you are disappointed with their behaviour. Because if they decide that you are right, and they are just a disappointment… there isn’t the same incentive to change the behavior compared to if the kid feels empowered to change. If the kid feels like you believe they are not only capable of change but that the change is something you would expect from them, then the experience can lead to positive change… to positive changes in behaviour. A good kid can now show you that they made a bad choice.

The challenge of hindsight

Recently I had a student come to me for advice. He played a joke on a friend, and then kept the joke going digitally on a digital discussion board. It wasn’t a bullying issue, there wasn’t a power struggle. But the kid who came to me recognized that his friend was struggling a bit and he felt that his joke added stress and added to his struggles. He just wasn’t sure how to fix it.

I could see and hear the anxiety that he had gone too far with the joke and hurt his friend. There was a lot of guilt, and the awareness that he could have contributed to a friend’s struggles was really burdening him. He felt awful. I think he came to me partially because he wanted advice and partially because he felt he should somehow be punished for hurting his friend. I mentioned that there was no power struggle and so it wasn’t bullying, but in this kids eyes he did something that hurt someone so it was bullying.

I tried to put him at ease by talking about how hindsight is 20/20 and it’s easy for him to see that he took the joke too far now, but it would have been much harder to see this at the time. And I said that the fact that he could look back and see that now was actually a good thing. Good because it shows he’s reflective and cares for his friend, and good because he has the power now to make things better. But that it’s easy to see this now only by looking back and being thoughtful.

I then guided him through a good apology. He wanted to make it about the struggles his friend was going through as part of the apology. I suggested this wasn’t an ideal approach. A version of “I’m sorry you have problems that I added to” doesn’t instil a sense that the conversation is about an apology. Instead I suggested he focus on his own behavior. “I’m sorry that I took the joke to far, I didn’t mean for it to be hurtful in any way, but I think it was. I apologize and I’ll be more thoughtful next time.”

At one point when I was finishing up with him he said, “I’m sorry if I seem distracted but the longer I’m here the longer my friend has to wait for my apology.” I had to hold back a little chuckle as I let him go to talk to his friend.

This is a good kid. He used hindsight to see that he had done something wrong to a friend, but then he beat himself up for not seeing his mistake sooner. How often do we all do this? We look back at our actions and feel guilty, stupid, or embarrassed for what we did. Then we magnify those feelings and feel even worse. Our hindsight gives us insight into how we could have and should have acted previously… but now it’s too late. Now it feels like all we can do is feel bad.

…Or we can be humble, recognize our mistake, and try to make things better. The challenge with hindsight is that we can’t undo our stupidity, we can only pretend it didn’t happen, beat ourselves up about it, or actually try to face the mistake we made, own it, and be willing to make amends or ‘make it right’. This latter choice isn’t the easiest path to take, but it is the best path to take and the faster we do it, the less time we spend worrying or feeling bad about it.

A message to high school teachers

If you are in a semestered high school, you are about to finish semester 1 and start semester 2. That means it’s time to give students final marks in half of their courses. How do you work out their marks? Is it a matter of just looking at your mark book and averaging or tallying up marks from September to now?

Consider this little analogy I’ve shared before… and ask yourself if there’s a kid or two who might deserve a better mark considering how they are doing now compared to 4 months ago:

__________

The Parachute Packing Analogy

I love the simplicity of this example! There are 3 students who are in a parachute packing class:

Students take 3 tests during the course.

Student A starts off strong and gets an A on the first test, gets a B on the second test, is over-confident, flounders and gets a C on their final test.

Student B is a solid B student and gets B’s on all 3 tests.

Student C struggles on the first test and gets a C, starts understanding the concepts and gets a B on the second test, then totally understands all the concepts and finishes with an A on the final test.

All 3 students have a ‘B’ average in the course.

Which student do you want to pack your parachute?

__________

You don’t ‘need’ to mark the way you used to. You don’t ‘need’ to mark the kid getting 46% just by the numbers, especially if their mark was 36% at the start of the year and they are much more successful now. You can bump the one kid up 2% for the ‘A’ because they did poorly on one test the whole semester… And totally justify not giving another kid that 2% because they are short of getting an ‘A’ from consistently getting the harder questions wrong, and have not demonstrated that they are a ‘A’ student.

Equal ≠ Fair

Equal is not equal to fair. You can be fair without treating everyone equal… with assessments, with support, and even with how much homework you give them.

Assessment isn’t just about averaging and tallying marks, and fairness isn’t determined by equal treatment.