How we view discipline.

So here’s the deal. I am currently working through my administrator internship at an elementary school. I’ve been a secondary teacher for my entire career but feel the pull to work in the lower grade levels for the next phase of my educational journey. To be honest, there is a lot I don’t know and there is a lot I am learning. I am also having my perspective shifted daily and I appreciate that.

This last week, after doing morning duty at parent drop off, I was walking back when a teacher on campus asked “are you Genessee this morning?” Genessee is my principal mentor and the awesome principal at Jefferson Elementary School where I get to hangout before I go teach seniors at my campus. I nodded my head and said, “Yup.” She was being interviewed by the news that morning, so I took up her post at parent drop off and was in fact playing her role that morning. I was just missing the jaguar print mask and blinged out shoes. The teacher handed me her radio and told me I should keep an eye on the kindergartner who refused to go into their classroom that morning and that if she ran to say some secret code word into the radio for help.

Literally right after she said the magic word, I forgot it and she was gone. I was left with little recourse but to hang out with a little girl in the courtyard and find out why she wouldn’t go into her classroom. She was standing outside of her room, the door was open with her teacher working to get kids in the classroom breakfast. The kinder teacher quickly filled me in on a few things before having to get her classroom up and running which left me and a kindergartner to figure it out.

I told her who I was, asked her her name, and we started talking. She told me she missed her grandma, that she was doing school on her computer and got to stay at grandmas, and that she for sure did not want to go into her new classroom. So I told her we didn’t need to go in right now and that we could talk for a little bit until she felt better. We talked about Halloween, her favorite color, how I thought her mask was very cool, and what she was learning in class. She counted to 10 with me. She told me she wanted to sit down so we found a table in the courtyard and continued talking. We talked about how even though she missed her grandma that she got to meet all sorts of new friends and be with her new in-person teacher. Every couple questions I would see if she was ready to try going back to class. She wasn’t ready. We eventually talked about drawing and how she likes to draw people and dogs and that’s when I figured out the solution. I asked if we could go into her classroom and she could draw me a picture. She said yes but was still a little slow to move. I told her I would ask her teacher if she could take a couple minutes to sit and draw me a picture before she got to work and that seemed to click and yes she could go into her classroom. I walked her in, got to her table with her, and found a sheet with her name on it so she could work on tracing her letters. I told her that if she wanted she could draw on the back and then trace her name so I would know it was from her. I talked to her teacher quick, got the dog drawing okay and told her I would come and check on her later.

After that, I found Genessee and I told her about the incident and she told me I got my first elementary discipline out of the way. With a puzzled look on my face, I said "discipline?” She told me that it was. That I had a defiant student who refused to go to her classroom and that in that moment when I sat with that little kindergartner I was having my first discipline meeting with a student.

That’s when it clicked for me. I’ve always tried to solve problems and behavior issues in my classroom with relationships and conversations. Why was I expecting to see something different or do something different in my internship? What compelled me to view the discipline I needed to observe as an in the principals office with the behavior matrix out type of situation? So I’m asking myself how do I view discipline? How do I view behavior? In a greater regard how doe the royal “we” of education view both of those things?

For me that was a little girl who missed her grandma and just needed a little heart to heart, a little love, and a little conversation before she was able to get her day started. I don’t know how I would have approached it any other way. It got me thinking. At what point do schools stop asking kids why they are upset? At what point do schools stop trying to talk and help and instead move to detentions and suspensions. Of course we wouldn’t give a little kindergartner a detention because she missed her grandma and didn’t want to go into her classroom but why would we give a junior high student detention because they skipped class because of something crappy that started their day? Why would we punish a 10th grader because they missed an assignment when they had to stay up all night with their baby brother while their mom worked a third shift? At what point do schools stop asking why and start writing detention slips?

In reality we are all the little girl who misses our grandma and doesn’t want to go in to the classroom at some point during the week. We all have something that brings us down, that drives us to make a decision that’s not great. We should all be asking why, having those courtyard conversations, and working with kids instead of against them.

I did go back and check on her before I left for my own campus that morning. I asked her how she was doing and she said “I’m good, I don’t miss my grandma anymore.” She then told me she forgot to draw me a picture and I told her that was okay because she looked pretty busy learning and I was glad she was having fun in class.