Saturday, February 11, 2012

Apologies.

Sometimes, you have to do what's right, and not what you want, or what you THINK is best. This past Tuesday, I completely lost it in front of my kids. They were yelling, running around the classroom, throwing things around, and when I tried to discipline them, they made fun of me. Hearing and seeing all that, I lost it and yelled at them. I yelled at the class, and then yelled right in front of some of the kids' faces. Obviously, they shut up, but when I went home that night, I thought about how I had treated them, and whether they had deserved that.


After thinking about it at home and talking to others at church, I decided that there was only one right thing to do. The kids didn't deserve to be yelled at under any circumstances, and I had to apologize to them. They may have deserved discipline and consequences, but yelling at them accomplished nothing, and it simply reinforced to them the idea that only the most extreme methods can ever be successful. It taught them that talking things through, diplomacy and peaceful conflict resolution would never work. It taught them the wrong lesson about respect and dignity. I didn't treat them with respect, and if I wanted respect, I had to earn it. 


Wednesday morning, I apologized to my classes for how I had treated them. I didn't want to have the conversation, and had feared it immensely. However, it really is true that when you do what's right, things will work out just fine. I didn't want to lose credibility and control of my classroom, so a reiteration of my class rules followed my apology. I told my kids that they deserved to be treated with respect and dignity, and that they needed to treat each other with the same respect they wanted. Two of my classes brushed it off and didn't really care about what I had to say, but my worst-behaved class listened intently and responded positively. I had let my guard down, been sincere with them and been vulnerable with them. This was the time when they could have taken advantage of my emotions and just pushed me off the edge. However, this class responded by telling me that no teacher has ever done that before, and that this was a lesson in respect that they, too, had to learn.


I had never expected a response like that. I wanted to do what was right, but I knew that it would probably end up messing up my classroom management system. However, it did just the opposite. My kids were on-task and learning that day. Coming home that day, I had very little doubt that this was not the product of something I myself had done, or what I was able to achieve in my classroom. Frankly, I didn't change my classroom management, and it wasn't like I had invested in my kids that much more. What it was was that I was pushed out of my comfort zone, done something I didn't want to do, and was blessed because it was the right thing to do. Most of the time, there are things we know are right, but would make us "lose face." I learned a lesson this week - the value in putting your pride aside and just be real with these students and show them what being an example means. 

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