Ask the kids
Kyle Steele’s article on the Madison Metropolitan School District’s behavior education plan, where he interviewed “almost 15” people, didn’t shed much new light on the controversial plan (“Challenging Behavior,” 9/8/2016). It isn’t the plan’s goals but the means to achieve them that have not convinced many — especially, it would seem, classroom teachers on the front lines. That the plan needs more resources and more staff and more time has become its refrain.
Missing from those quoted were students’ voices. When I asked my middle schoolers last spring how they felt about the way behavior is managed in our school, many told me that they thought grownups too often seemed afraid to confront bad behavior. And students who tended to misbehave said that it was easier to keep it together in classes where there were clear expectations, where sabotaging their own or others’ learning wasn’t really a choice. Only when the social contract seemed fuzzy did they feel empowered to act out. Sadly, when they did, they not only interrupted their own learning but others’ learning as well.
My students tried to explain how school might look if it were more “functional.” Kids seem to crave civility and just enough order in the hallways and lunchroom and playground to make them feel safe.
I wish, in our efforts to make our schools work better for more of our kids, we would listen to them and print and record what they have to say. They are so smart, they see a lot and they have much to tell us.
But instead I read that once again MMSD is turning to an outside group of experts they’ve hired with the alliterative mission of building “culture, conditions and competencies of excellence and equity.” Whew. That is a mouthful. I have not seen, in my decades teaching in Madison, great things from hiring outside experts who are contracted to change our schools’ culture.
MMSD has a problem. We are not alone. It seems intractable in part because social conditions do not vigorously support healthy families and thoughtful parenting. There is just too much that too many are up against. While this is not an excuse, we can’t ignore its impact on our schoolchildren. And yet, kids can, with support, still thrive in school.
Teachers feel under siege as more is put on our plates at the same time our voice, our right to collectively bargain and have a say in our work, is receding. Many teachers feel a disconnect between what “downtown” decides and how those decisions play out in our classrooms and impact our students.
Barbara Williams (via email)
