Teachers are continually frustrated at the beginning of lessons with the disruption of some students who take a long time to settle down. For some, it's just a matter of them calming down after the excitement of the lunch break or the ‘freedom' of moving from one classroom to the other and for this vast majority experienced teachers have no problems. But, for some students, those with severe behavioural issues this disruptive behaviour can be driven by elevated levels of anxiety, a consequence of the memories of previous unpleasant experiences in the classroom. If we look at particular interventions that have been traditionally used to deal with children who suffer from uncertainty and anxiety, we soon find ourselves examining the use of rituals.
Throughout ancient history civilizations emerged in relative isolation. One cause of anxiety, common in all communities was death and almost all developed intricate rituals to deal with the anxiety and sadness of this inevitability. To deal with this tribal communities developed rituals, funeral ‘services’ to ease the pain of grieving. The application of a set of prescribed activities somehow lessens the heartache of loss.
Other rituals developed to deal with the anxiety that comes from the uncertainty of the future. For example, when early communities made the change from being hunter - gatherers to a reliance on agriculture, they soon realized that the success of next year’s crop depended on a range of factors that were beyond their control. To ease the anxiety they developed rituals, including the sacrifice of animals or other humans to appease a supernatural force in the hope that this ritual would ensure next year’s crop.
It becomes evident that rituals are useful in dealing with occasions that are potentially ‘dangerous’ or where the desired outcome is marginally out of your control.
At a personal level, rituals can be any sequence of actions that may consist of words, touching objects or focusing on a particular object that is designed to reduce tension. These activities are developed by repeatedly performing the same act every time we are exposed to that uncertainty. It is the focus on the sequential activity that alleviates the anxiety of contemplating on the potential outcome of the task at hand.
The use of rituals is widespread in sport. As a coach, I used the same sequence of activities before every game no matter how important each was. For the 45 minutes before each kick-off, all players and staff were required to complete a set of tasks. Within each task players were taught to incorporate their own ‘rituals,' such as putting their left boot on first, listening to music or whatever within the framework of the team procedure. When it came time to take to the field, I had ensured they were ‘ready to play’; they had confidence in their ability to succeed.
An important fact is that both the players and I understood that the rituals in themselves had no magical powers but the use of a structured predictable (how often do I use the words structured predictability) sequence of events helps reduce anxiety and focus on the task at hand.
Now returning to our challenging students, they have a sense of self that is associated with academic failure. As teachers, we need to be prepared to deal with their understandable anxiety. Remember, whenever they have come into a classroom, they have come face to face with the memories of past experiences, most of which are recollections of failure and embarrassment. In fact, to ask these kids even to try to do academic work puts them in an extremely vulnerable position. Furthermore, to invite them to do their best, risks potential ridicule or rejection if they fail. Better to be a 'bad' kid than a dumb kid is a choice they make.
So, if you have students like this, or even if you have kids that are extremely well adjusted the use of rituals will increase the early engagement and consequential success of your lessons. The teams I used to coach were of elite standard and played at a national level, and they certainly understood and benefitted from this structure. However, it is those damaged kids who will get the best out of this approach.
No one can ever predict the future with certainty. Most of us have a fair idea what will happen if we follow a specific course of action. These kids, who come from chaotic backgrounds, have no idea they have any influence on what happened to them. But, if the start of today's lesson is the same as yesterday’s and the day before, eventually they will get a sense of predictability and instead of being full of anxiety from the very start of the lesson they are at least available for the next step of the lesson.
Rituals are also effective for teachers who suffer from anxiety when facing a class. I’m sure we all had a level of anxiety when we began our careers and I’m equally sure there are classes that still cause us increased levels of apprehension. Having a ritual will help the teacher just as much as their students.
Early childhood trauma is well established as the major contributor to disrupted neurological and behavioural development in children. The inevitable outcome from the abuse and/or neglect that creates this trauma is a child whose repertoire of behaviours coupled with an adverse cognitive construction limits their ability to engage in our classrooms on an equal footing. Although there is a recognition that these children do suffer from a ‘mental health' disability there remains a reluctance to embrace these kids with the same compassion as those whose disability is more visible and less offensive.
But what constitutes trauma? (The term ‘trauma’ is also used in the medical field to describe an assault on the physical body, but for this work, we are discussing psychological trauma) The short answer is a deeply distressing or disturbing experience or a negative event that is painful and overwhelms a person’s ability to cope.
The three conditions where trauma can occur are:
Shattered Expectations – We all have a belief that things will be OK in the future. We live on an ideal beach with the surf lapping at our front door – then a tsunamis hits and your family has washed away; you're driving home from work and you’re hit by a truck that is out of control.
These events and countless other potential disasters, if experienced, force you to accept that a single person has no real control over natural forces. Most of us will never have to face such events but for those who do the resulting stress levels leads straight to trauma!
Human Vulnerability – All our life we wake with an expectation that we will live through the day and repeat this process over and over. We fail to see the fragility of our bodies and the tenuous grip we have on life. However, if you witness an unexpected death, a road accident, murder, industrial accident or perhaps the onset of a fatal disease you become fully exposed to the reality of death and how helpless we are to prevent it. If you have ever seen such an event, you will understand the trauma that surrounds it. Imagine working in an area such as a war zone or the scene of a natural disaster, this human vulnerability is reinforced time and time again. It's little wonder soldiers, police, rescue workers, etc. are highly likely to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress.
The Human Capacity for Evil - History is full of major events that illustrate our capacity for evil. The holocausts, Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia and the countless war crimes reported throughout history all confirm that humans are capable of a level of ‘evil’ behaviour that is rare in any other species.
Such malevolent actions are not limited to these large-scale examples, go to any emergency ward in any public hospital, and you will see children, women and male victims who have been beaten for no reason than to satisfy some wicked person’s desire.
The reality that some humans do not share a capacity for kindness, tolerance and a fair-go shatters the belief system we depend on and when we witness extreme malevolence we become traumatized.
The types of trauma that tend to have the greatest adverse psychological consequences are those related to interpersonal or intentional trauma. These include childhood abuse and neglect.
But identifying these underpinnings of trauma do not appear to be relevant when discussing the trauma of young children. Their cognitive development would make any real comprehension of the conditions outlined above almost irrelevant. So, what are the conditions that traumatize kids?
This is a difficult area, what will traumatize an infant is different from say a two-year-old, this difference reflects the variation in their social/intellectual development. I have attempted to create a crude model that illustrates the differences. I have put these into stages. However, the underpinning feature is the shattered sense of safety.
Stage 1. Infancy
Traumatic factors will include frightening visual stimulation, loud, unexpected noise, being hurt or abandoned. The child's increased stress levels are a response to the fear of ‘death' even though they are incapable of that concept. For them, ‘death' is the removal of support.
Stage 2. Early Childhood
The initial conditions still apply, but now the reliance on relationships becomes a more significant factor. Children, who are abused by primary care-givers not only suffer the trauma of that abuse they also interpret that as a complete rejection from the very person they rely on for survival. Because they are intensely ego-centric that rejection must be because they are ‘bad’. This is the foundation of their sense of toxic shame.
There is also the situation when they see their mother beaten. Mum represents life and when that is threatened the child suffers trauma. Some research contends that seeing mum beaten does more damage than being hit their self. Bizarrely, they will believe they deserve to be punished but not their mum. Seeing their siblings abused continues this trend of helplessness in the face of evil.
There was a time when people believed that because their ‘memories' had not developed that the children would not suffer long-term consequences from the abuse and resulting trauma. This idea that there is no impact could not be further from the truth. Early childhood is the most vulnerable time for children and those who visit abuse or neglect on children at this time in their life are creating the maximum psychological scar possible.
The dominance of male students who appear in suspension data or are attending special settings for ‘out of control’ behaviour, is a feature of all school systems. If you agree with us that most dysfunctional behaviour is formed in abusive early childhood environments, this reality is counter-intuitive as young girls are at least as likely to be subjected to abuse as boys. In fact, there is a strong case for inferring that girls are more likely to be abused when you consider that sexual assaults by adult males are most likely to be directed to females.
The simple answer to this quandary is that these behaviours are cultural and historically females have learned to stay quiet about how they feel and suffer in silence. There is some truth to this but I offered an explanation about these disproportionate numbers. This belief based on the work of the anthropologist Louis Leakey who hypothesizes that boys have evolved to externalize their actions. Once humans became the apex species the main threat to survival was attacks from another tribe. In the event of such battles males had a greater chance of survival if they act-out, fought the invaders or ran to safety; that is they took action. Such a response was not as effective for females and children. They were more likely to survive if they surrendered or dissociated. They would be taken as trophies.
Reasons that lead me to support this conclusion are that even in modern ‘tribal wars’ like those during the break-up on Yugoslavia in the 1990’s, the Balkans and Kosovo saw acts of murderous brutality against the male populations. The resulting mass graves were primarily filled with the bodies of potential opponent soldiers.
I believe this underlies an examination of the suspension data in our schools. Up to about age ten or eleven the suspension rate of boys is marginally higher than girls. When we look at the data for puberty and beyond the figure for boys explodes. I suggest this is when their adult disposition is initiated.
If you look at the most common diagnosis of dysfunctional behaviour that results from early childhood abuse the most common are Conduct Disorder, Oppositional Defiance Disorder and Dissociation Identity Disorder. The first two disorders are largely populated with boys; in the latter girls dominate the numbers.
In broad terms dissociation from the immediate environment is on a continuum ranging from mild detachment to a more severe isolation. It is a detachment from the reality rather than a loss of reality that occurs if the child is suffering a psychotic episode. The clinical description of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is a single person who experiences himself/herself as having separate parts of the mind that function with some autonomy. It manifests as a lack of connection in a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings and actions.
As stated above almost exclusively these people have documented histories of repeated, overwhelming and often life threatening trauma during sensitive developmental stages of childhood. At the time of the abuse when the child is faced with this overwhelming trauma and there is no physical escape, they go away ‘in their head’. This is a highly creative method of survival allowing them to endure in apparent hopeless situations. If the trauma is repeated eventually this develops as an automatic response to situations which have similar environmental characteristics, despite not being life threatening. That is if the stimulus presented has strong ‘reminder’ qualities of the original traumatic event(s) the child will dissociate.
How does this disability appear in the classroom? It does and is a real interference to the potential learning outcomes for these students. The problem for teachers is that these, mostly girls are quiet and compliant and pose no obvious challenge. The student’s ‘invisibility’ is intensified in classrooms where there is a core of students with acting out, dysfunctional behaviours. Teachers are so occupied controlling the obvious problems these girls are left to suffer in silence.
However, schools have a duty to support these students so they will learn. The following approach will at least create the conditions that allow the students to operate in an environment that will improve the student’s personal control. These include:
Creating a structured environment where the students learn to predict the consequences of their behaviour thus allowing them to regain a sense of control in their life
Developing a place that is safe and secure for the students
Developing strong boundaries for the students so that they can protect themselves against stimuli that has the same characteristics as the early abuse but not the same ‘real threat’
Presenting a program where the students get their needs met
Developing a cognitive framework for the students so that they can sort out how they think and feel, undoing damaging ‘self concepts’ and learning about what is ‘normal’
Hold the students responsible for their behaviour
The dissociated student presents a real challenge but along with the steps outlined above it is powerful to point out to the student that they have the right to participate and to get their needs met.
In the Newsletter Teaching Practical Boundaries (31st July 2017) I outlined the process of establishing effective boundaries. The work described how you know your boundaries are being threatened and how to protect yourself. This simplified approach is useful to either protect yourself from harm or to teach students how they can protect themselves and to develop independence.
Of course, boundaries are not that simple in the complex world of a teacher and the following will help create more professional boundaries that allow you to stay ‘in control’ in the most challenging situations.
Let’s start with a more realistic description of how we create our boundaries. In a pure form your boundary is the interface between your-self and non-self. As we grow we constantly build a connection between incoming stimulus, how that affects us and what happens if or when we act in response to that stimulus. Eventually, after a number of trial and errors a set of rules will develop; those rules will be our reality. The more consistently the impact of the stimulus and/or the consequence of our behaviour is interconnected the stronger will be the accepted reality. The link is why we really start to believe we know what just happened or what will happen in any experienced situation.
The day to day correlation between our experiences of the physical world is considerably robust. We soon learn that if we jump off a wall we fall to the ground or if we go out into the rain without protection we get wet. But, people are biological beings and our experiences are dependent on the environment in which we develop. Therefore, the correlation between what happens in my reality and yours is not so consistent.
However, there is enough of a matched response to situations between individuals to allow a broad sense of a shared reality. This is particularly true if the development of our reality is within a homogenous group. When we grow-up in a neighbourhood with shared socio-economic and cultural norms, the links between actions and consequences are more likely to be alike. The chances are that you and the person with whom you experience an event will share the similar beliefs about that incident. This shared reality will allow you to predict what is most likely to happen in a given situation and that is essential in building a safe and secure environment.
What are the complications for teachers?
The first is that there is a probability that you will be working in a community where the cultural expectations you learned are not the same as the culture you are working in. The expectations of families, for their kids may clash with yours. What you expect to happen may not be what they expect to happen. To compound this problem, even within communities over time traditions change; the older you become the more out of touch you are with those pesky teenagers who grow-up in a ‘modern’ environment. So again a clash of customs will occur. It is this clash which will create a level of tension. To protect yourself from that tension the likely thing is to defend your view of reality which by implication means you reject the other view. You’re right and they are wrong!
The second professional consideration is that you are dealing with children who are just developing their sense of reality. Because of their limited experience very young children are still learning the stimulus-response/action-consequence connections. Also, many of these lessons belong on the developmental path they are age dependent and so their reactions you expect for a given situation may not be present. Say you are annoyed at something they have done, it may well be that they just didn’t know what to do. Your ‘annoyance’ may provide the correct feedback they need to create this reality!
Finally, the kids we are focused on, those with damaged childhoods will most likely have an interpretation of any situation where there is a disagreement. Their idea of what should happen, their reality may well be very much at odds with yours. One example of this clash of realities is that many of these kids are comfortable in a noisy, chaotic classroom while such a classroom will/should strain your sense of ‘safety and security’ this situation will violate your boundaries. But, when you get the class under control, achieve a state of calm this situation will threaten the abused child, it is not their reality.
One of the great impediments to having strong and effective boundaries is the faulty belief that your reality is another’s reality. This can never be the case (see Newsletter - Theory of Mind, 7th August 2018) your internal world, your reality is yours, it is unique and has developed in response to your perceptions and the environment in which you developed. Too many people take for granted that their reality is the only reality and when there is a clash in the response to a situation they believe the other person is deliberately taking an action that annoys you.
As a teacher, you have a professional duty to understand that the children you are dealing with may have a very different view of the world so it is worth repeating the third step in setting those practical boundaries.
Ask the Questions
‘What is really happening’? This is often not the obvious event.
‘Who is responsible’?
If ‘me’ then I must take responsibility, take action to address the cause of the stress.
If not ‘me’ then I ask a further two questions:
‘What is causing the attack’?
What do I have to do to change this situation in the long run’?
Boundaries are extremely important in every part of our life but it is no more important than when you are in charge of a classroom. This is where your skills define you as a professional teacher! Remember reality is just a set of rules learned to live in the environment you first develop and continue to live. These children need the reality that will help them change their reality and so you need to create a structured and supportive environment that will facilitate this.
This change takes time so you have to rely on your own boundaries to allow you to hang in with these most deserving kids. Understanding their reality, how it damages them, how to help this change should be your reality and this will give you the resilience to turn up each day.
One of the hallmarks of successful students is their resilience; that is, their ‘toughness’ they display when facing some stressful situation that may have long-term negative consequences. Resilient kids soon get over inevitable set-backs and get on with their life. Teachers know there is a clear link between a student’s resilience and their learning outcomes and school bureaucrats and educational academics have quickly adopted this link and promote the development of resilience in our schools.
They understand that students with healthy resilience have confidence in their ability to get through the hard times and have a positive outlook about their future. Resilient kids have:
A deep-seated trust in their community, that they will be safe and supported even when they make a mistake
They have confidence in their ability to solve problems and that they will be supported while they work through difficulties
They have a strong sense of self and know they are valued by those that care for them
They have the ability to control their levels of stress when faced with a difficulty.
It will come of no surprise that those students who have severe behaviours, those for whom we advocate and we deal with in these Newsletters are not resilient. In fact, they are just the opposite and It is no wonder.
Children with severe behaviours:
Do not trust the community and never expect support; their experience has taught them just the opposite!
They have no confidence that they will succeed, not in the short term and they have no concept of long-term consequences
They have a toxic view of their sense of self, that is they don’t make mistakes they believe they are mistakes
They are imprisoned by their inability to control the overwhelming effects of stress levels experienced when they are under threat.
They have given-up on their self.
The fact is when these children are faced with a crisis situation that threatens their sense of security they will either be consumed by that stress, that is they can erupt with high levels of anger, act out against the threat or they can internalize these acute emotions or implode into and dissociate from the problem. In either case they are beaten by the stress; they are firmly locked into this dysfunctional response.
The fact is the vast majority of these kids have developed this non-resilient sense of self because of the parenting they have received and the idea that the teacher can provide effective therapy to help them develop resilience is fanciful. It is important to recognise that teachers are not therapists, they have to deal with these kids within the confines of four walls and a significant number of ‘other kids’. So, what can we do in our resource poor classrooms for these kids?
As always for so many of these kids the only chance they have is their teacher so again, it is up to the teacher to try to develop their resilience. Sadly, unless they can, these students will never reach their learning potential.
So, what to do? Well resilience can be considered a personal set of characteristics we would want for all our students. We want them to:
Have a positive sense of their worth
Have them develop a sense of trust and be trusted by others in their class and life
Have the confidence that they have the ability and the right to solve their own problems in their own way while knowing the support is there if and when they fail
Have a sense that they can pursue their own goals and careers; they have something to live for.
The solution in the classroom lies is in the way the classroom is run; by the teacher presenting a very structured set of behaviour rules each child learns to develop a sense of power over the situations in which they find themselves. They gain an understanding that their outcomes are related to their actions both positive and negative. Keeping in mind, as the student’s confidence develops it is important to increase the level of challenge to a level that ‘gets the child’s attention’ but not too much that will overwhelm them.
This structured action – consequence organisation will allow the students to gain a cognitive understanding of how the world works. But, this is only half the equation.
The level of personal support the teacher offers is critical if we are to develop personal strength in these kids. Just how much we are there with them while they learn reinforces their sense of worth, first to you a significant other in their life and gradually to themselves. This level of support, in a normal situation is proportional to the age of the student. That is, young students require high levels of support and this drops as the students mature, developing their resilience as they age.
However, and importantly, for students with severe behaviours this relationship between support and development is not directly related to ‘age’ but to the level of their self-control. A totally dysfunctional thirteen-year-old will need the same level of personal support as a child in kindergarten. When you have one of these dysfunctional students in your class it is your professional duty to give them this level of support. The good news is they will develop at a quicker rate if you get the environment right.
Resilience is a desirable quality for all of us, we deserve it. Damaged kids have had that ability taken away from them through the abuse or neglect they grew-up in. Society owes it to them to develop those characteristics that were denied them so they can take their rightful place in their community!
One of the time-consuming things teachers face is trying to get to the truth of student disputes. Despite the protests of many parents who insist ‘their child would not lie’ it is a fact of life that kids will lie on occasion especially if they are trying to avoid trouble! This is an unpleasant job but it is an inevitability for those running a classroom or school.
I came across an article in Scientific American by Roni Jacobson ‘How to Extract a Confession … Ethically’ and it referenced the process used by President Obama’s High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG). In the wake of the unethical interrogation techniques used in the Abu Ghraib prison during the second Gulf War, there was a demand for guidelines that authorities could use when interviewing ‘suspects.’ The process described in the HIG report meets the ethical standards of the American Psychological Association.
There are times when you will need to get to the truth to:
· Teach the student that has made a mistake that there will be consequences eventually
· Protect the student (or teacher) who is the victim of the lie
· Demonstrate fairness in the school setting
Also, remember there are some students who will immediately ‘spill their guts' and they are not the problem. This technique is for students who are practiced in avoiding facing the consequences of their inappropriate behavior.
The following are the steps developed to get to the truth of the matter in a practical and still ethical way:
1. Build Rapport
Think about the ‘good cop – bad cop’ scenario and then eliminate the bad cop. Develop an empathetic approach to the student you are questioning. You want to build an atmosphere of cooperating as you approach the problem. Forming such a relationship is the critical step, not only to get to the truth but because you are genuinely concerned for the student, relationships can survive even after you get a confession. The action and the child are separated.
2. Fill in the Blank
Don’t just ask direct questions straight from the start but begin by telling what you know about the situation in a manner that suggests you already know what happened. As you go on the guilty student will start to add details or correct part of your story without realizing they are doing so. Don’t go ‘in for the kill’ when this starts to happen – you are building a case, be patient. Research conducted in 2014 indicated that people who are interrogated using this method tended to underestimate how much they were telling the interrogator.
3. Surprise Them
The students who know they are under suspicion often practice their answers ahead of time. In the age of mobile phones, I have seen texts between students where stories are ‘coordinated.' Under the pressure of the interview they try to keep the story intact while they struggle to remain calm and relaxed. If you ask them something unexpected, something out of the blue about the incident they often slip-up while they try to fit the new facts into their fabricated story.
4. Ask Them to Tell the Story Backwards
It might appear counter-intuitive, but students who are telling the truth will add more details as the retell their story. Those students who lie will stick rigidly to their tale being careful not to make changes. Inconsistency is part of how memory works. This technique exploits the difficulty liars have reconstructing their story from the back to the front. Again the HIG investigation found that liars produced twice as many details when telling their story in reverse order often contradicting their original story.
5. Withhold Evidence Until the Crucial Moment
A study showed that when people were confronted with evidence of their wrongdoing early in the interviewing process, they either clammed up or became hostile. After a period of time, when you have established the ‘right’ conditions, that is they think they are safe the release of evidence will often be accepted because they give up trying to sustain the lie.
Finally, this is just a technique to get to the truth; it is not a set of tools to BEAT the student. When it works beware, you might be tempted to take pride in how ‘clever’ you are. It is never a competition, finding the truth is just to help all the students!
Teachers are often faced with a class that is ‘out of control’ and we previously have discussed (Taming that Difficult Class April 2018) the advantage of taking an inventory of all the ‘things that are wrong’ and dividing them up into manageable chunks. The crafty understanding behind this approach is the handling of the students’ stress levels, their level of arousal that any change to existing behaviour involves.
The graph below illustrates the process involved. When the teacher changes the behavioural environment in such a way that the student’s behaviour attracts a negative consequence that student will be thrown into a state of disequilibrium and experience the stress that comes from that disorder. However, if the consequences are not overwhelming and delivered in a way that respects the child and focuses on the behaviour, that stress will soon subside and the student will return to a state of calm even though they have accepted a ‘new environment’ as being normal.
So if the teacher has followed the advice of examining all the problems and choosing one to attack it is important that the targeted behaviour is not extremely threatening. From this it is obvious that the taming of a dysfunctional classroom is a process over time that involves a change in the structured environment that occurs during that period of time. You never ask for big changes and you move the behaviour in a non-threatening manner. The harder you push the more stressed they will be and the more they will resist.
This model exploits the process used by negotiators who work to resolve conflict between two parties. In any dispute there are some areas that both can agree are not that important and are willing to sacrifice to facilitate a settlement. These are referred as areas of indifference. Once they give them up they no longer become in dispute. By slowly moving both parties through these areas they eventually identify the core problems and the energy can be focused on a possible solution.
As teacher we are not negotiating the right for all students to be taught in a calm, supportive environment and so we focus on moving the students to our desired position through a series of their points of indifference. Each stage refers to a ‘rule’ you have negotiated using the process discussed. This is important because you can refer to that rule when delivering the consequence while pointing out the student’s ownership of that consequence. This allows the relationship to remain in place over the long term.
This diagram illustrates the step process in making change in the classroom.
Finally be aware that your behaviour towards the students as they move through this process is important. When they inevitably complain about the new situation you should pay them the courtesy of actively listening to them making sure your non-verbal communication, body language, facial expression and tone of voice is not confrontational.
If you do follow this process of structured management there will come a time when the students will accept that you do have control and that is for their benefit. You have created a new environment and they have learned a new set of behaviours to achieve a state of equilibrium.
‘Good girl/boy’ or ‘you are such a clever little boy/girl’ etc. are everyday comments I hear when around teachers and parents when they are talking to their kids. It wasn’t always like that. I hate to put on my ‘in my day’ hat but before the 1960’s the custom was children are seen and not heard, children developed their position in the community by their actions and by watching adults. So what happened?
The reason given for this change is that at the beginning of the space race the United States felt humiliated by the success of the USSR. This failure created a lot of retrospection and review amongst a range of their systems including their education practices. Coincidentally a book “Psychology of Self Esteem’ by Nathaniel Branden, the founder of the self-esteem movement came out and this caused a ‘positive praise’ movement that is alive and well to this very day.
No longer were children just a part of the family unit, ‘good parenting’ made them the focal centre of the family. Educators were taught that praise was a valued tool to raise the educational outcomes. I remember in my early years in ‘special education’ my American peers were expected to provide four positive comments to the class, morsels of praise for each negative statement. I must say that in my classes for students with severe behaviours, even the most ‘inventive’ teacher would have trouble adhering to this requirement without resorting to ridiculous incidents.
Granted the development of a strong sense of an authentic self is critical for all children but the term self-esteem is confusing and clouds that concept. An authentic sense of self is a truthful understanding of your character and abilities. This allows for self-criticism and improvement. The term self-esteem suggests that what is important is to value what you are. The difference is subtle but important. The latter view, the importance of the self is defensive, the popular book ‘I'm OK – You're OK’ by Thomas Harris (1969) is based on the idea that whatever you do you are ‘alright’.
The former is more like taking the view that ‘I’m imperfect and that is not OK; I have work to do’. This approach allows you to understand that you are not perfect, you make mistakes but because you are a good person you will work to improve. This is a better approach to achieving authenticity.
Enough of this philosophy the question is what is wrong with praising our students? Well it depends on how, when and for what you praise them. Lets start with the two lesser issues around praise; the when and how to commend.
Young children below the age of about seven will take what an adult says on face value. If you say to them ‘great job’ or ‘what a clever girl’ they take that on face value, they believe you. Soon they mature and become more critical of others’ judgments; teenagers are very suspicious of praise. They understand the truth; that praise is a form of manipulation and for it to have any validity it must be earned. There is an inverse relationship between age and the effectiveness of praise.
For the older kids an effective approach is the ‘second hand’ method. You can do this by saying to a student or a class that Ms. Smith told me you did some great work in her art class. I would of course follow that with some friendly humour like ‘she must have got her class mixed up’ to avoid their potential embarrassment. This second-handedness allows the kids to be a step away and the fact Ms. Smith told someone else about you indicates she really must have been impressed. Another way to provide this second hand praise is to tell another staff member about how much you value the class in a situation where they can overhear you.
Finally, in the ‘how’ category, when you praise a student leave out the ‘I’ in your message; don’t say I am proud of you. For some kids, especially those who have attachment issues linking the value of their work to your acceptance can be threatening. You're their teacher, personal acceptance is a given. Instead link the praise to their work. “You did a great job’ or ‘Just look how good you set out your title page’. The praise should reflect what they did and this will lead to intrinsic motivation.
The real issue around praise is the ‘what’. There are two types of praise personal and process.
Personal Praise
This is when you praise the child for what they are. Things like, you’re very clever, you are a natural, you find this work very easy, etc. There is plenty of evidence that this has a negative affect. Children praised for ‘what they are’ will lack motivation and lose interest in the tasks and have their grades actually fall. Most dangerous is to tell them they are very clever.
Psychologist Carol Dweck gave a group of students a relatively easy ‘IQ Test.’ The test was done individually, that is, only the examiner and the student were present. For half the group, the examiner commented, ‘You must be clever.’ The other half was told, ‘You must have really worked hard.’
After a period of time the students were re-gathered for a second test. They were offered a choice of tests. One test was similar to the first test. The other was described as more difficult, but they were told they would learn a lot. Ninety percent of the students who were given the message about making an effort chose to do the more difficult test. The majority of the ‘clever’ kids took the easy option.
What this tells us is that if you praise kids for their intelligence, the following occurs:
They don’t make any effort; they expect things to come easily to them.
They are afraid to take risks, feeling it is better to be safe and look good.
If and when they fail it is final; their failure is evidence that they are not as smart as you told them. More importantly, there is a faulty belief that there is nothing they can do about intelligence. The quantity is given; they can’t get more, and there is nothing they can do to control this failure. They have no useful response to failure.
Process Praise
This is to praise them for their effort. Be specific about what you are praising them for; describe the detail of what was good about what they did. Dweck’s work is at the frontier of the ‘effort’ movement that now dominates the current theory of student motivation. We are to praise them for their effort! There are problems with the ‘effort’ movement for instance some start to believe that ‘failure’ is only because you didn’t make enough effort but more of that in another Newsletter.
The students who have been praised for their effort are more likely to see failure as a result of not making enough effort. This gives them something to work on to change the result. This approach allows the students to take control, and they are more likely to maximize their learning in areas that capture their interest.
I can’t imagine teaching without praising the students. We become teachers because we love kids and the joy of seeing them grow into successful, independent young adults. This is our job!
If you have young children or, as in my case grand children, recently you may well have been terrorised by the title song from Disney’s blockbuster film Frozen. It was the most requested karaoke song in 2014 and is a tune loved by children all over the world. What made Frozen the number one animated film of all time and why do kids love its pivotal song ‘Let It Go’ so much? Two psychologists decided to find out. Their verdict: the song recognises our desire to be happy and free.
But why are the words ‘let it go’ so important if we want to be happy and free? The fact is, if you look at the opposite of the positive emotions like happiness and freedom you arrive at feelings like anger, sorrow, hatred and fear. While ever you hold onto these types of emotions you are locked into a negative spiral that keeps you their prisoner.
For all of us a great portion of our happiness is tied up in our relations with others. We love being with those we care for, our friends and family and while these relationships are running smoothly, life will be OK.
So how is it with the students you teach. Unlike family and friends the relationship is not so easily formed and is often one sided especially for those kids with abusive backgrounds. These damaged kids find it very difficult to establish the kind of relationships that leave them happy and content. More importantly for teachers, often their behaviours are so repulsive they sabotage any attempt you may have of forming a positive relationship.
In a recent research paper from the Monash University it was found that teachers, particularly those who handle the discipline side of our work are eight times more likely to be abused, psychologically and six times more likely to be physically attacked then the general public. It is part of our professional duty to deliver consequences for dysfunctional behaviours and we have to learn to deal with the abuse that often follows.
It is not unusual for these most difficult kids to abuse their teacher, most often verbally but in too many cases they physically attack the teacher. We understand that these severe behaviours have their origin in their past and even though it is an extremely difficult thing to do, we must separate the behaviour from the child.
The alternative is to not ‘forgive’ the child and let the incident dominate the future relationships. This is holding a grudge and a grudge is the feeling of anger and resentment and drives the desire to ‘get even’.
We are human so think about the last time you were wronged, did you hold a grudge and if so was it a feeling of carrying extra weight? We often talk about ‘carrying’ a grudge like we’ve got a heavy load.
In an experiment the psychologist asked participants to remember when they’d experienced conflict. One group were asked to recall a situation that ended in forgiveness, while the other group were asked to remember a situation where they did not forgive the offender. All participants were then asked to jump five times as high as they could.
Participants in the ‘forgiving’ group jumped the highest, while the ‘grudge holding’ group jumped almost one-third lower (on average) than the forgivers. So there it is; carrying a grudge really does weigh you down. Forgiveness can lighten the burden so let revenge go.
It is most important that teachers let go of this extra burden in their life. Letting go is not easy, it may well be the most difficult thing you can do but it is imperative if you want to retain your mental health. There are some things that you can do. These include:
Debriefing – After any situation that you are ‘attacked’ you need to go over the circumstances around the issue. It is best to do this with a trusted and informed colleague who understands your work. The use of your family should only be as a last resort as it will cloud the boundaries of your home and your place of work.
Boundaries – We have spoken about boundaries elsewhere but briefly they protect you from abuse you don’t deserve, inform you of your contribution to any incident and let you plan how you will deal with the problem if it happens again. The fundamental questions are:
What is really happening?
Who’s responsible?
If it’s me then I have to take action
If it’s the student I have to take action – this doesn’t seem fair but you are the professional and you must understand your health is your responsibility. Don’t hold a grudge!
Decide what you want in the future and take action to make that happen.
The final step is to let go. Generally it just requires you to forgive the student and start each new day afresh but in some cases no matter what efforts you put in nothing changes and you continue to be abused. If things are like this ‘letting go’ may mean someone leaves the relationship!
At some time in your training you have been in a discussion about morality and how it can be threatened by reality. The exercise is more likely than not about the run-a-way trolley car where you have to make a decision, do you let five individuals die or will you act by pulling a switch that changes the lane but by doing this you deliberately kill one person to save the five?
The most common response reflects a utilitarian view of the world. The loss of one life is better than that of five but is that a moral stance, are you interfering with destiny? Does being faced with such a choice involve a moral obligation?
The recent movie ‘The Eye in the Sky’ is a Hollywood version of this dilemma; do we kill a few for the sake of the many? How you answer might well be prompted by how attached you are emotionally to the participants.
The stark confrontation of this conflict was brought home in the movie Sophie’s Choice where a mother was forced to choose one child to live or both would die. This is an impossible dilemma.
The exercise not only makes us think about the difficulty of living a moral existence it also shines a light on the participant’s compassion and empathy.
Scientists have made interesting findings while studying how the brain responds to these moral judgments. Neuroscientists have highlighted the role of the prefrontal cortex and area of the brain that deals with generating social emotions. It is the emotional function of the dilemma that makes us agonize over choice when the situation is personalized. This is the power of the choice Sophie had to make.
These findings have been confirmed through replication and further study including considering the influence of elevated stress and different types of brain damage. In fact, the people with damage in this region due to stroke or other causes experienced severely diminished empathy, compassion and sense of guilt.
So what is the relevance of this information in informing practice for dealing with kids who have been abused or severely neglected? A major consequence of the early childhood abuse/neglect is the real damage to the brain in particular the prefrontal lobes. These are reduced in size by up to 20% and the neural density is significantly reduced. These children are for all intents and purposes brain damaged.
When undertaking the task of dealing with these children many teachers try to evoke some sense of shame for behaviours they have done that hurts others. This may well be an appropriate approach when dealing with healthy kids but for these kids (along with those on the Asperger’s spectrum) it has little impact. Judgments made are driven by the utilitarian approach but because they have no emotional attachment to others the so-called utilitarian approach is self-centered. They are only concerned about how they fair.
The easy answer is this apparent selfish approach is malicious and they in turn deserve no compassion from you the teacher. But this would be wrong; this is one of the things that makes dealing with these very difficult kids so hard. It’s not their fault they were made this way by their abusers when they were infants. They need even more compassion.
So what to do? The first thing to do when dealing with these kids is to put in place a very structured environment that has a clear relationship between the child’s actions and the consequences that follow. Because they are so egocentric they will soon learn to act in a way that is best for them. Your structure needs to provide for this close link. And the consequences are not only negative but just as importantly positive outcomes for functional behaviour.
Behind all your work is the principle of parenting the child in a way that will allow them to develop a new set of psychological traits and so given time with structure along with positive relationships and expectation they can develop compassion and empathy and the satisfaction it will bring to their life. Your work in this field is so important!
The principals of the company have had long careers in education with a combined total of eighty-one years service. After starting as mainstream teachers they both moved into careers in providing support for students with severe behaviours.
