With Troubled Youth: Seek First to Understand
We have no idea. As teachers, very few of us have any real understanding of the world in which our ‘worst’ students live. We know little of what motivates them, what they care about. We don’t know what they want from life. We don’t know the things that terrified them. We know not what they value.
We judge them based on what we ourselves value, what we have experienced, and how we 
were brought up. So, when they show behaviour that is aggressive, obstinate, uncaring, we label them as bad kids. We think of them as little criminals who are doing nasty things to other people to get their kicks. We are fools.
Educational behaviour modification gurus give us ‘fool proof’ ways of dealing with students who are uncooperative. Like me, have you ever wondered why ‘fool proof’ never seems to work with the ‘worst’ kids. When you hear, “Go on then, give me a detention, suspend me, expel me from your stupid school. I don’t care. You can’t hurt me. You can’t make me care!”, from them, does it make you wonder why it’s just not working for you or for them?
I’m sure most of us who really care about the welfare of our students, think it’s something we’ve done that makes the ‘fool proof’ methods fail. We haven’t applied them perfectly. We’ve been too soft, too hard too …
It’s not!
What is it then? Well for starters, those great educationalists have set up systems that would work for children just like they were – middle class, pro-community, supportive of education, working for a living, caring about our fellow citizens type of people.
We assume these children even care. We assume their ‘parents’ care. In most cases, where the supposedly fool proof behaviour modification techniques fail, it’s because the children simply don’t care. It might float our boat, but they won’t even notice the boat going down with all hands.
Does that mean these kids are all fine and dandy? No, it does not. They are screaming for our help, but we just can’t hear them. Our middle class filter blocks our ears.
Instead of helping, we punish. When that doesn’t seem to work, we increase the punishment and increase it some more. Eventually we say they are no longer our problem, because we have just thrown them out of our school. Let someone else deal with the little animals.
Shame on us! These sad little people are hurting more than we can imagine, so we punish them for it, till they are no longer our problem. We get rid of them so we don’t have to worry about them any more. They are an inconvenience to us, just like they are to many of their parents. They make teaching our classes difficult. We are happy, in turn, to make life more difficult for them, even though these ‘evil’ children won’t admit to us that it does.
They could have been saved. Often, it takes just one teacher who is willing to look below the surface, to seek first to understand them before passing judgement, before sentencing them to further pain. They can become productive, highly cooperative students if we take the time to understand.
I, like so many of my colleagues, thought in the way I’ve described above. I thought, “I’m going out of my way to help you, you little cretin, and all you’re giving me back is grief. I don’t deserve this.” I was no different to other teachers when I chose to use punishment when my well intentioned offers of support were returned with continued aggression.
Who can blame teachers for reacting like this? No-one really does. Most people in the community say, “I don’t know how you do it. Dealing with those horrible teenagers must drive you insane.” For many teachers it does, but really there is no need for it to be so.
I am, by no means, a behaviour modification expert myself. What I am is a person that has been forced to experience some of the realities of my oppositional students. I am a teacher whose eyes have been prised partially open.
When I started to see what some of these poor children went through on a daily basis, I was shocked and terrified. What I saw shook me violently. It shattered my illusions of human nature. It made me see that no matter what a terrible childhood I thought I had, it was nothing by comparison.
Of course, when I could see without the filter of my own upbringing, I realised that every child is different. We can’t lump all at-risk students in the same basket, just as we can’t consider all students to be those who live in families where parents care deeply for them, value and support education, and want to advance themselves in the world. One size does not fit all. One size, when dealing with your students, fits one student only.
Looking back now, maybe I should feel ashamed that I didn’t care enough to find out enough about all my students to really help them. Maybe I should feel guilty for simply going through the motions of teaching.
I don’t. Firstly, beating yourself up is not at all productive. Secondly, I had no idea and no way of knowing that there were worlds in which my students lived and in which they tried valiantly to survive day to day, that were beyond my understanding. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
If I knew about the alternate realities of my very troubled students, and I chose to continue as normal, then I would have had reason to chastise myself. I didn’t, and I’m betting that you don’t either.
What I chose to do, once my eyes were no longer wired shut, was to seek to open them further. I remind myself that if a student is acting in a way that is destructive (usually self-destructive) in class there is a very good reason that goes way beyond him/her being an evil child.
I seek first to understand.
You might recognise this as one of Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. Mr Covey is one of the wise people whose writings on personal and business effectiveness have been very helpful to me in the classroom.
I know what he wrote wasn’t intended for an educational setting. So often, though, we chance upon something in a totally unrelated setting that sparks an idea that can revolutionise the way we respond to challenges. I recommend you read this book, but put your teacher’s specs on before you open the front cover. Ask yourself, “Where else could this help me?”
Thank you Mr Covey, and special thanks to all those troubled students who helped me to finally see. They taught me so many things that they never even mentioned at Teacher’s College. You changed my life.
This is my very first (ever) blog post. I hope someone finds it useful. I have to tell you, I’m totally at sea with blog construction and operation, so I hope you will forgive me when I seem new to all this. I am, but then I was new to helping severely traumatised youth too. Please help me out with suggestions of any sort.
I would be very grateful if anyone reading this would be willing to share their own stories about misunderstood youth, about the real world’s they inhabit, or about their own awakenings.
If you, like me, care about people who are struggling with life, please send me links to your own writings, blogs, websites etc. If you find my blog useful or thought provoking, please share it with your friends and colleagues.
Till next time,
Lindsay (The Hugsman)
- Posted in: Classroom Management ♦ Student Behaviour ♦ Student Welfare ♦ Teaching ♦ Troubled Youth
- Tagged: Behavior modification, Classroom, Education, Educators, K through 12, Personal and Class Pages, Student, Teacher
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