Take your classroom back with an Authority of Care

My husband and I are opposites in most ways. He’s private, and I’m an open book. He’s funny, and my comic timing doesn’t exist. He’s cautious, and I’ll try anything once. As you can imagine, when we started talking about having children, our ideas about parenting matched our personalities. Recognizing that we’d constantly be arguing about even the smallest things, we decided upon a rule: everything required a two-zero vote. Whatever we had to decide, we’d have to agree on. The things we do have in common--we are both writers, talkers, and debaters--all made it easy for us to agree to this rule. Lots of our decisions have been about what we would allow our children to do. He was a hard no on our son playing football, despite the fact that I didn’t have objections--he was worried about head injuries. So, I dropped the subject and moved on. I was a huge yes for sleepovers, and I had to do quite a bit of convincing, but he came around. If we can’t convince the other person, then the answer is no.

When people hear about our agreement, they often feel that we’re too rigid. Some people have said that it doesn’t seem “fair.” The fact is, it is a gut wrenching rule when you don’t get your way. For example, I REALLY didn’t see why my husband didn’t want our kids to ride with my parents in their car. My husband, rightly, by the way, had noticed that my dad was always speeding and that my mom had mentioned that she didn’t really drive very much because she couldn’t see well. It was easier for me to just let the kids ride with my dad, but it had to be two nothing, so we stuck together. How could we agree to such an uncomfortable rule? It was simple: the authority to make these decisions came from a place of deep love and concern for our children. In other words, it was based on an authority of care.

An authority of care is a philosophy that the adults are making decisions that are deeply rooted in love and the well-being of each child. An authority of care is not one size fits all; in fact, the value lies in analyzing what is best for each kiddo. Our rules have been different for each of our children because we know them and value their individual strengths and weaknesses in a way that calls for differentiation in our parenting of them. In a classroom, the same applies: each student needs to be approached with an authority of care.

What does that look like in practice? It means that “Joey” is never going to be sent on an errand alone, but “Zach” will be. Joey would wander, get in trouble, or simply goof off. Zach needs breaks to help with his anxiety, but is a serious rule-follower, so he’d never get in trouble. It means that “Suzy” is going to be given an extra day for her homework, but “Danielle” will not. Suzy has a chaotic home life, and extra time will let her finish in a study hall, while on the other hand, Danielle gets overwhelmed when she’s behind, and she’ll shut down. It means that “Carya” can put her head down while “Sandy” can’t. Why? Carya uses a mini-break like putting her head down to handle some trauma responses, while “Sandy” is capable of staying on task but likes to avoid things she doesn’t want to do.

Is this Authority of Care fair? Does it make things difficult for the teacher? Are children able to understand why everyone is treated as individuals vs. a set of group rules that apply to everyone? Are there non-negotiable rules? These are important questions, and I hope you’ll join us on July 26th at 3:00 for “Take Your Classroom Back: Starting the New Year with the Authority of Care. We’ll be addressing these questions, as well as providing strategies to help teachers take their classrooms back and focus on what matters most!

There IS a Reason to Be Worried About SEL

I always get choked up as the teachers at my school wave and cheer the students off on the last day of classes. We line the driveway, blow bubbles, cheer, and wave. We want to give them a send off that reminds them that we love them, ensure they know that they are a part of a community, and give them memories to cherish. The last days of the school year bring with it finals, locker clean-outs, and the emotions can be overwhelming for middle school kiddos. In short, the end of the year doesn't always bring out the best in any of us. It is bittersweet, like leaving an amusement park at the end of the day--exhausted, satisfied, and a bit disoriented. Everyone who teaches will attest that it is a rollercoaster ride to be sure.

This year's last goodbye didn't make me choke up though. My emotions caught me off guard as the buses rolled away. I wasn't sad, exactly. I was worried.

Let me explain.

As all of you know, there have been groups that are trying to discredit SEL (short for Social Emotional Learning), calling it indoctrination, likening it to Critical Race Theory. In Florida, text books were not approved because of their social emotional learning content. It's never been clear to me why anyone would want to attack a philosophy that focuses on some very specific competencies laid out by CASEL.

And then, as this year's roller coaster ride came to a screeching halt, it hit me. There IS a reason to be worried about SEL.

As our country seems to be imploding, it occurs to me that those who don't want schools to teach SEL are very worried because social emotional learning is dangerous.

Very dangerous.

Self-awareness asks students to analyze their own thinking, dissecting their motivations and work to both contain and express their emotions. It asks students to name their emotions and find effective ways to mange them. This is dangerous because those who have self-awareness are not easily excitable by heightened emotions and understand when they are being manipulated because they know their own thoughts.

Even more dangerous is Self-management. This competency teaches students how to control their emotions and not impose themselves upon others. This is dangerous because those who have self-management skills are able to communicate in effective ways and never simply overpower others, instead relying on relationships and common social norms to get along.

Responsible decision making is a competency that is always at play in school. We are charged with helping students learn social norms, interact with each other, and make decisions that are based on their responsibilities and rights. Not only do we focus on students' positive rights--things they are allowed to do, we also focus on others' negative rights--our rights should not impede on others; for example, a student has a negative right to feel safe--to not be harassed or intimidated. It is dangerous because when students learn responsible decision making which takes into account the other members of their community, the community becomes more diverse and inclusive.

Then there are relationship skills. For me, I model this particular set of competencies via a "caring classroom" which celebrates diversity of all kinds. We are all unique, we are all to be celebrated, and we all learn together, despite our differences. We create a community that is able to separate fact from feeling, and we learn how to coexist even when our feelings are big. How dangerous is that?! Relationship skills have the power to transform "other" to "us" in a community.

Then there's the obvious competency, the one that I thought was what was being attacked. Social Awareness is probably the most sophisticated and nuanced to handle in a classroom, as it requires some level of mastery of the other competencies. The danger here has always been clear: when you are aware and seek to understand "the other," you are essentially changing and growing towards a more complete version of yourself, impacted by the world around you, but also knowing that you have the power to impact the world too.

As my students waved out the bus windows, I realized that the reason some people want to quash social and emotional learning is because its existence actually improves the chance of students accepting each other, respecting each other, and trying to support one another on life's very bumpy journey. So, yeah, I'm worried.

The reason we should be worried about SEL is that our students need it more than ever, and there are grown ups trying to steal our students' competencies--ways of understanding themselves and each other. There are adults who are trying to put up roadblocks, and that should make us all worried.

Waffle Cones and the Construct of Time

I'm frugal. Some (my husband) would say I'm cheap. I'd like to argue that I'm easily satisfied, but anyone who knows my obsession with expensive shoes and bags would disagree. Speaking of which, I'm already dreaming of these new Danskos for the fall.

But, I digress. I am, in the day-to-day, very frugal. I don't like to spend more than a few dollars on a coffee, and I always get the kiddie size of almost everything. This extends itself to my own kids most of the time. But yesterday was different.

Yesterday was overcast and pretty boring. We did go to the movies, but even that didn't do much to improve our middle-of-summer boredom. When the kiddos were little, I planned something every single summer day. In my book, it wasn't summer without a daily adventure. As a perpetually nerdy teacher-mom, I convinced them to do "Passion Projects" (where I learned how to do PBL). One year, Zoey wanted to learn about different countries, so each week she'd get library books, and Matty would cook something yummy for her to try. Oliver had a dinosaur year, and a year he wrote Star Wars fan fiction. We went to drum circles, took nature walks, had library time, and collected sea glass. If you have small children, I can't say it enough: do all the things. All of them. Don't clean your house. Go to the zoo. Skip making dinner and have "funky snacks" while watching a movie for the 100th time. Why? Because those days will help you (and them!) survive the teenage years.

Oliver is now 13, which in my opinion is the very worst of the teenage years, and Zoey is 16. She's working, learning to drive and planning things with her friends. She's an intern/stage manager for a production of Heathers. Oliver doesn't always want to go along with my plans, and he makes some of his own too. Mostly though, as it is supposed to be, my teens are trying to have a life of their own, one that is not orchestrated by me. And, yep, one that doesn't always include me. Sigh.

So, yesterday, after the movies, when Oliver asked to get ice cream, I said yes. Was it 5:00? Yes. Had I just spent too much money on stuff at the movies. Yes. But, here I was, with the golden opportunity to spend a little more time with my teenager. He's had a rough year, as we all have, and I'm aware, now more than ever, that time is the most ridiculous construct. It seems like both a million years ago and just yesterday that he was obsessed with Thomas the Tank. I can remember the hurts and anguish of being 13 years old, yet it has been 34 years since I've walked in my own Chuck Taylors. I feel like I'm going to blink, and the constant piles of laundry, the music I'm trying-to-like-but-don't, and the side hugs will be walking out the door and driving away. So, when he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and asked, "Can I get the chocolate dipped waffle cone?" I said yes.

I have a bunch of friends whose kiddos are going off to college, moving out, and my friends are having to redefine who they are and what they do with their time. That time is still a little ways off for me, but not nearly as much time as it feels. I always liked the old saying, "The days are long, but the years are short." I saw a young mom today, trying to hold her toddler's hand and adjust the baby wrap she was wearing with a 3 or 4 week old nustled in against the rain. In that sing song way that mama's talk to their babies (and themselves), she said, "We'll get this all figured out soon enough."

Yep, I thought. You will. And then it will all changes again. So, today, as I'm feeling unclear on this mother-of-teens thing, I'm going to remember that mantra all over: "We'll get this figured out soon enough."