A Holiday Postcard from the Principal’s Office: #4

Glad tidings? Really?

But first…

I’m going to set aside the fact we’ve experienced yet another, inevitable, school shooting this past week in our wonderful and great country. Nothing will change on this topic in America, nothing. The only certainty one can count on, scary as it is but it still must be faced, is that a school shooting is coming to a school near you. At some point, it will happen. We don’t want to believe it, but it’s the truth. The community near Madison Wisconsin wouldn’t have believed it either, but now they have their truth.

And we all know why. But I refuse to go there right now. Except for this wonder:

How many guns are going to be given as gifts this Christmas?

(“All I want for Christmas is my AK-47”)

Today’s post is, in an indirect way, related. Let’s see if you get just how.

Photo by Zhivko Minkov on Unsplash

Today, Friday, December 20, is, in my neck of the woods here, the last day of school for the year 2024. It’s also known as the last day before Winter break! When you were a student, how did YOU feel about the days like today? I, for one, was always excited!

I want to highlight a phenomenon that all teachers are familiar with at this time of year. And I wanted to do this so that you all could gain a deeper appreciation for our teachers and our staffs in schools—especially those precious educators who understand and “get it.” And then change their practices accordingly to be more compassionate during this “joyful” time of year.

The phenomenon?

The Holiday’s can bring out some pretty ugly and unskillful behavior in our students (maybe in some staff too), even in those whom we wouldn’t expect given their “typical” behavior.

Artwork by Beth Evans

Defining Behavior—The Holiday Season Way

In these postcards, I want mainly to speak to the experiences I directly had when I was “in the business” of doing school. But I was also a student of schools and so read widely and often on the latest social and technical research into schooling and education in our country and from around the world. Not all teachers or schools understand their true purpose, their “why,” which I phrase as “being passionate about meeting all learners where they are in service of each realizing their innate and extraordinary human potential.” Too many schools and teachers, still, are concerned mainly with content-based achievement as measured by test scores—aka: someone else’s arbitrary beliefs about student intellectual potential. Too many parents and students remain overly concerned with those as well—but this is likely because it’s what many are being taught, and led to believe, by the schools and districts anyway. More on this in a later Postcard.

Holiday Season behavior is a real thing—I experienced 33 years of it as an educator.

I hope it’s not a surprise to anyone that the holiday season is an unpredictable and tough time for many. Maybe even for yourself. But we often forget that our children, whom we assume should be the most giddy and happy during this “Imma-gonna-get-lots-of-presents” time, feel as much stress, or more, in their bodies then we could sometimes ever imagine. One reason is that they cannot communicate their complex feelings very well. Teachers, though, know this. And the most compassionate teachers take this into strong account in the classrooms and schools during the months of November, December, and then even into the beginning of January. In more specific terms, the school days over the course of Thanksgiving through the New Year offer their own unique flavor and unpredictability to the school’s routine. And this is an important source of distress for many kids.

The most intuitive and compassionate educators define behavior as a form of communication. ALL behavior, regardless of the person’s age (actually!), is a form of communication. Schools, especially elementary schools where we bring all these young, socially immature, emotionally raw, and unskilled little humans together, under one roof, are full-on social science laboratories in human communication.

During the holidays, when our culture, as a whole, shifts its national focus to one of the capitalistic “getting of shiny new stuff,” coupled with the fact that the second longest break away from school is the Winter break, we in school knew we were being set up for some mighty big feelings and emotions to come forward. And come forward they ALWAYS did! Sometimes, like I said, from students we would never have predicted.

For the kiddos whom we knew struggled with their emotions, such that they would communicate those struggles in unskilled, sometimes very dramatic, even hurtful and destructive ways, we would, or should, have already had plans in place to support their needs. But because we can never fully know what our kids are dealing with when they leave our sphere of influence, when they leave our school at the end of each day, or for extended breaks, the unfortunate baggage of life—the family stress, the potential trauma they faced, the over-stimulation and sensory overload from the entire holiday experience (noise, lights, presents, family, food, Santa, excitement, excitement, excitement!), the loss of structure that provided important predictable patterns and schedules, and even the trustworthy way the adults in their lives, at school, would respond and work in tandem with them—sometimes the holidays become too much and our young, unskilled students reach breaking points; their immature nervous systems are simply incapable of managing such overwhelming stimuli. And because school is oftentimes the safest place for a lot of our students, that was also the place where they felt safest to surface those emotions through dramatic behavior.

One of the primary goals of schools should always be to teach our children how to be better communicators—in all ways (through their use of grammar, spelling, word choice, syntax, tone, voice inflection, the written word, the spoken word, mathematically, poetically, musically, artistically…etc.) And most importantly, but least taught (or least taught well), socially and emotionally. The more adept a student can become in communicating their needs clearly, skillfully, safely, calmly, and productively, the fewer dramatic behaviors will be witnessed.

Take note moms and dads: if your child is behaving inappropriately, don’t punish! Figure out what the behavior is communicating then meet THAT need! And Teach!

I have story after endless story of extraordinary tales of all kinds of student behavior—and often the most dramatic came during the holiday season (perhaps you’d be interested in reading some of those experiences? These, afterall, are not common knowledge outside of the schoolhouse itself). An important factor and contributor, it must be noted, is due as well to the heightened stress and emotionality within school staff. Our own emotions and baggage ALWAYS have an influence on the emotional weather of the school—sometimes we forget, or don’t want to know, how WE contributed to a student’s behavior. SO much goes into this complex dynamic of student/adult/school/stressor when it comes to student behavior. Master teachers know it is never as simple as “Johnnie’s being a bad kid again! This is all Johnnie’s fault!”

Important disclosure:

There is no such thing as a “bad” kid. NO SUCH CHILD EXISTS! And student maladaptive behavior is never the “fault” of only one human.

Here’s an important, seemingly innocuous example of something schools do that can contribute to student stress. It’s called “the countdown to the break.” It is a mistake to promote a countdown to a break away from school. You know what these are: “10 days ‘till winter (or summer or spring) break! YAY!” Sometimes schools actually display these countdowns and “tear away” each day until they get to zero. “Freedom Day!” For some kids, those words heighten their anxiety because they translate them in these ways (each true stories I’ve witnessed): “10 days until I won’t get two warm meals; or 10 days until I won’t get to be with my best friend; or 10 days until I’ll have to stay at home and listen to my parents yell at each other, or when I have to compete for their attention (or relatedly, 10 days until I have to hear my divorced parents bicker about who will take me and when, and when I have to be returned); or 10 days until I will be apart from my teacher whom I love and is the only person in my world who sees me every day, and greets me with a hug and a smile, and whom I know loves me.”

For the record, if a staff member or student ever slipped in my presence to say something like: “Five more school days ‘till break,” I’d counter and say, “Yeah, but six more school days before I’ll get to see you again! And I can hardly wait!”

Kids often don’t say it, because maybe they can’t put words to it, but most students LOVE school. And when school is taken away from them (through holidays, summers, breaks, or Covid!), a void is created that they don’t have the skills with which to adaptively cope. Not all kids, for sure. But more than you’d expect if you don’t know—if you aren’t with them, at school, in the intimacy of a classroom, where the grand expanse of human emotion is on full display. Many kids cry when they say goodbye to us; we teachers, we know why.

(And sometimes we cry too—because we teachers, we know why as well.)

Schools always need to be Sanctuaries for our students. Which means they must be responsive to the predictable times of the year when student behavior is at its most unpredictable. This mandates that teachers and principals understand little-human nature AND that they remain responsive, not reactive, in ways, skills, and practices that are restorative, compassionate, and growth-enhancing. But are also NEVER punitive. It is incumbent upon the adults in the place to step back from the immediate situation, once safety and calm is restored, to take into account what the student was trying to communicate through their behavior, before applying restorative measures to teach (not punish!).

The holidays, in compassionate schools, should promote traits of grace, patience, compassion, forgiveness, and calm response. Our students need this within their Sanctuaries—in fact, these are parts of the definition of Sanctuary (if your neighborhood school does not provide this sense of emotional welcome and safety, it’s not a Sanctuary). And when school staffs respond in compassionate ways, THOSE are true gifts, never acknowledged as such, but ones that can and do have lifetime impacts. Without us even knowing, such responsive gifts, given unconditionally, actually saves lives.

For a teacher or principal who knows they have this impact, there is no greater gift THEY could ever receive—regardless of any holiday season. We just know. We know we make a difference in the lives of children. Which is why teachers have the most important jobs in the world.

Which is also why every skilled teacher, everywhere, deserves every break that comes their way! Ironically, (or not), it is also those same teachers who simply cannot wait to see their kids immediately after the break is over!

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No matter how you celebrate the holiday season, or even if you do not, may this time of year bring you peace, health, and happiness. But don’t just wait for it, go get it! Cultivate it in the only place it CAN be cultivated—within the warmth of your own loving heart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Live, Laugh, and Love—with Clear Eyes and Full Hearts,

Always and Ubuntu,

~ kert

And with Ahimsa!

🙏🏼

This is my 200th Substack essay! And my last for 2024.

Thanks for being right here.