What’s Inside
Article — How to Hang Students by Their Toenails Lovingly: Self-Government as the Best Form of Behavioral Discipline in the Classroom
Classroom Stories
Developing Better Thinkers Through Writing
Poetry — Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
How to Hang Students by Their Toenails Lovingly: Self-Government as the Best Form of Behavioral Discipline in the Classroom
I had a teacher in high school who used to joke around about hanging us up by our toenails for acts of disobedience, indolence, irresponsibility, etc. He would sometimes threaten to beat us with wet noodles (pasta). I have heard parents tell their children that they would snatch them baldheaded if they were ever as disrespectful or insolent as they see other children acting toward their parents. Other adults, parents and teachers, claim they want to wring their children’s/students’ necks or take them out to the woodshed to straighten them out. Finally, Christians in religious schools often talk about having “come to Jesus meetings,” where no one really knows what that means, but serious consequences are in the student’s future. The expressions above do not reflect the conduct of the adults who say these things, but the parents and teachers who say them do want the children and students in their lives to be warned that disobedience, insolence, and disrespect are serious offenses against authority that will require appropriate consequences. All adults can agree that children and students can be quite annoying in their disobedience, disrespect, and insolence at times – so much so that they bring the adults in their lives to anger. The key to developing a successful student behavioral system in a classroom is to establish a plan where anger does not influence the consequences.
From the early part of my teaching career, it seemed to me that my students should be the ones governing their behavior more than me, their teacher. I have always established my classroom behavioral training on the idea of student self-government. Training students to govern themselves is not easy, but once the pattern is established, the rewards for all are readily apparent. In my early days of learning the Classical Christian model of education, I learned about the concepts of internal and external self-government, which are simple to understand. The idea underlying the concept of self-government is that we always have government over us that is directing, restraining, regulating, and controlling us. The key is that we are either governing ourselves internally or others are governing us externally. A question is raised regarding the form of government, internal or external, that leads to the greatest amount of individual liberty. To go a step further, the Pilgrims and those who followed understood that the civil liberty of a group of people is dependent on each person’s ability to govern himself/herself internally. Less laws, rules, guidelines are possible when those in a group, a society, a school even, govern themselves internally; everyone can enjoy more liberty.
I found early on in my career that children of all ages desire freedom and when they realize that much of it depends on their ability to govern themselves, most will direct, restrain, regulate, and control themselves accordingly. Even though not all children are accustomed to self-control, but are more used to being consistently corrected by adults, they can be trained to learn self-government.
I have to thank the psychologist, writer, columnist, teacher, and parent coach John Rosemond for helping me to “perfect” my classroom system of behavioral discipline through his book Teen-Proofing. The book is designed for parents of teens, but its principles apply easily to the classroom. According to Rosemond, once children are a certain age, they can enter into family contracts designed to deal with common issues that arise between parents and children such as doing household chores and following curfews. In the contracts, the child and parents agree to certain guidelines as well as the consequences if the guidelines are not followed. The basis of the contracts is self-government, so certain levels of liberty are included in the contracts. If the guidelines are followed, then liberty is maintained or even increased. If the agreed upon contract is not followed, then freedom is definitely lost until it is earned again through obedience through self-government. The best part is that the parents do not have to try to come up with consequences for disobedience, because they are already arranged in the contract.
I implemented the idea of a contract in my classes and I was immediately gratified with the results. Offering students the promise of individual liberty in a school setting is inviting to them. They become determined to maintain their liberty and not to lose it. I generally provide five guidelines for my students to follow aside from general procedures. They involve students treating each member of the class with respect in terms of how they speak to, listen to, and treat each other including the teacher, having their paper, pens/pencils, and planners out on their desks ready to get to work by the time class begins, being in dress code according to school policies, and the expectation of honesty in word and deed. I explain the concepts of internal and external government and engage the students in a conversation regarding the relationship between self-government and liberty. If a person governs himself/herself, then he/she has less external government and more individual liberty. If a person does not govern himself/herself internally, then external government is applied and the person loses individual liberty.
Next, I go over the rules for Dr. McIntyre’s class. They find a page titled “Dr. McIntyre’s Classroom Rules” with the numbers 1-10 in list form. Next to the numbers is nothing. There are technically no rules unless students do not govern themselves and then they create rules for themselves. The contract states that the students will receive an after school detention the day the rule is assigned and the rule will last for thirty days when they have shown that they will not govern themselves. If at any time during the thirty days they break the rule, the student serves an after school detention and the thirty days starts over. (In Teen-Proofing, the new timeline is six months, but I found one month more applicable to the classroom.)
Each year, when I introduce the classroom contract and the students realize that there are no rules unless they earn them by not being self-governed, the class gets extremely quiet. I sit there and let them ruminate on the fact that the responsibility for self-government has been placed on them individually. The teacher is no longer in charge of correcting student behavior; each individual student is in charge of directing, restraining, regulating, and controlling his/her own behavior. If students do not control themselves internally, then external government is applied through the teacher until the students show that they can govern themselves again. I also apply a local-self-government rule if the class routinely fails to govern themselves such as getting quiet when I call for the start of class.
The first year I implemented my “no rule” contract, a seventh grade boy began weeping in front of the class. I was shocked and asked him what was wrong. He told me that he had terribly misbehaved in sixth grade and that he was going to fill up the entire page with rules. I had had him in class the previous year, and he had been a handful, but he had not been terrible. The pressure of being in charge of his own behavior overwhelmed him. I told him that we were in a new school year and that he could be different if he wanted to be. He earned two rules that year and no more as long as I taught him through 11th grade. He and I enjoyed a delightful student-teacher relationship until he left the school.
The most important thing that I have learned about young people through being a teacher for twenty years is this: students will always rise to the level of the expectations placed on them (given that they are reasonable). Too often adults have low expectations for students, because they allow the students to dictate the terms of their training in an effort to please them. Loving adults led by the Holy Spirit are capable of challenging students to do and to become more than the students ever thought themselves capable. I believe it is incumbent upon us all to help the children in our lives achieve the best of themselves in their personal and academic development for the Lord’s sake.
Classroom Stories
After literally surviving my first year teaching, it is truly a miracle that I continued with it. The first year I ever taught in a school I taught in a Christian school in Fort Worth, Texas, that no longer exists. I taught 4th grade and the class had nineteen students. I found out very quickly that my class was the worst class in the school. As a matter of fact, they had run off a twenty-five year veteran teacher after their second grade year and two third grade teachers the next year. By the time I got them, only two students in the class were reliable enough to be obedient and respectful.
I knew all of the students' names after only two hours of being in class with them and even though I did not want to, I waited until day 2 to begin taking minutes away from their recess time. My students were so out of control that after the first week of chapel, we were required to sit in the back of the church instead of the front with the rest of the grades. I worked hard to keep them under control in chapel by setting the worst eight, yes, I said eight, on either side of me and directly behind me so that I could literally reach them physically, if necessary, I set the rest around me in descending order of disobedience. At the end of the first six weeks, I sought out my principal’s advice for my unruly students and her only suggestion was to promise them a popcorn party every Friday if they behaved during the week. Knowing that they would never be able to behave well enough to have a popcorn party, I decided on a another tack. I decided to speak to their hearts and to help them learn to control themselves through self-government.
I had to train them how to change their books for different classes without going completely crazy. I had to teach them how to walk to every specials class and to lunch while remaining in a line and not running all over the place. They were not allowed to talk during lunch until their meals were eaten and more students spent time walking around the playground during recess than actually enjoying recess for a long while. At the end of the first quarter, we had parent-teacher conferences and it was considered a sign of poor teaching if a lot of parents signed up to speak with the teacher. My signup sheet was full. As I met with each set of parents, who were puzzled that their children received poor marks in citizenship, I limited my critiques of each child to five points each. As I listed the poor behaviors, the parents mostly nodded and none looked surprised. When I finished, the common response was, “Oh yeah — she/he does those things at home.” An important lesson learned — students' behavior at school reflects the behavior allowed at home. I realized that I had an uphill battle and battle on I did. By November, about three months after school had started, I finally had my students under control.
During this time, something strange happened three different times. When we had a good experience at chapel, during a lesson, or they walked to another class in an orderly fashion, I praised my students for governing themselves. Shockingly, each time I praised them, their facial expressions immediately turned to looking mischievous and they became terrible again for the next day or two. After the third time that their countenances changed and they began behaving badly after being praised, I asked my mentor for advice. She told me to stop praising them, because for some reason, it caused them to revert back to poor behavior. I quit praising them, and I never saw it happen again.
Another strange event occurred that taught me another important lesson: children must be trained to govern themselves, because the teacher cannot do it alone. My boss insisted that a set of metal lockers be installed in my classroom against my wishes. Knowing what you do regarding these children, you can only imagine the loud noise and mess that was going to accompany such an installation. I decided to change my tack of making specific rules to govern all sorts of behavior. I announced that I was not going to make a rule regarding slamming the locker doors, stealing from lockers, or leaving them open and messy. I told my students that they had to govern themselves and that as long as they controlled themselves, they could use the lockers. If they demonstrated that they would not follow my guidelines, then the lockers could not be used.
To my great surprise, my students did not slam the locker doors, but closed them quietly. They did not leave them messy, and they did not perform pranks or steal from one another. One time a student accidentally allowed the locker door to slam and the entire class froze in their tracks and looked at me. I let them know that accidents happened and an occasional mistake did not ruin the opportunity for anyone. After this event, my students fell in line remarkably well. We enjoyed each other’s company and we were able to get so much more work completed, because the students, at nine years old, experienced the liberty that comes with governing oneself.
Developing Better Thinkers Through Writing
“Republican government - self-government by the people - is at the heart of what it means to be free.” Josh Hawley
1. Define:
Republic —
Government —
Self-government —
Free —
2. Rewrite the quote inserting the definitions appropriately.
3. Contemplate the quote. Discuss.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.