Don’t Smile Until January

Really bad advice teachers are better off ignoring (I did)

I had known Kim for two years, and something was terribly wrong.

She came into my classroom during my free period and sat at one of the desks. A sixteen-year-old student of mine, Kim’s normally radiant face was now void of emotion. She was hurting.

Children’s pain makes some rules absurd

I got up, walked to the empty desk beside her, and sat down. In the back of my mind, I knew she needed to visit our school psychologist, but she had been out of the office for a few hours.

[One rule I always abided by was never to play the role of a mental health professional. I would stay with a child in distress until the appropriate professional or parent showed up. Pretending to be a psychologist or therapist is not only illegal, it’s wrong, and it is not in the child’s best interests.]

Stupid Rule #1: Almost keep your distance from students

“Sweetheart, tell me what’s going on with you,” I asked, ignoring the advice never to use words like ‘sweetheart’ with students. To do so would cross boundaries. My heart knew better in this situation.

It was just the two of us sitting silently in an otherwise empty classroom. Kim rolled up the sleeves of her oversized blue sweatshirt without saying a word, revealing long trails of deep cuts from just above her wrists to the crease of her elbows.

My heart stopped beating; my lungs stopped breathing.

I took a deep breath and said, “Kim, can you tell me about your cuts? I think you’re in a lot of pain right now.”

[Again, I’m trying to figure out how to get help for this child as quickly as possible.]

“I’m using Dr. Clark. I can’t do this anymore.”

I didn’t push her for details about what she was using or how she found the drugs. My only job at that point was to listen and be there for her. Later, Kim would share all those details with our psychologist and her parents.

Kim’s self-mutilation was like a Roman Candle expression of desperation coming from a frightened girl.

The courage to ask for help

“Kim, are you ready to make a courageous decision?” I asked with the best loving smile I could manage. I wanted her to know unquestionably that I loved her and would do my best to care for her.

“Sure, I can do that,” Kim replied.

“We’re going to the counselor’s office. I will call her and ask her to meet us there. I will stay with you in her office as long as you need me; I am not going to leave you alone. I will also talk with the main office and let them know what’s happening. There are a lot of people here who care deeply about you. I owe it to you to reach out to the people who can help. You need to know that I don’t keep secrets and you don’t want me to.”

I think Kim was relieved to have a compassionate adult in her life right then whom she could trust.

Villages of caring adults raise children

We sometimes give lip service to the idea that it takes a village to raise a child, but it’s true. What was it that Margaret Mead once said?

“Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

One of the worst pieces of advice I received as a young teacher was not to get involved in children's personal lives and to keep my distance. That advice was right up there on the ignorance scale with ‘Don’t ever hug a kid.’

Kim’s situation was dire. Her parents immediately withdrew her from school and placed her in an intensive rehabilitation facility. She recovered, attended a community college, and is happy and living a good life, free from the bondage of drugs.

Stupid rule #2 — Never hug a child

That advice I just mentioned, never to hug a child, was uttered by someone who had never spent a day in an elementary school as a teacher. Small children routinely reach out to their teachers for hugs — especially junior and senior kindergarteners.

I once taught science to a small group of four-year-olds. It was a phenomenal experience. At the beginning of class, I would gather the kids around in a circle as I read a book about something science-related. Popular topics were birds, trees, animals, and dinosaurs.

Fortunately, my memory is pretty clear because I have vivid images of these tiny children hanging on me like apples on a tree. The more I read, the closer they wanted to be to me. Their complete innocence and display of affection inoculated me against pessimism forever.

Their complete innocence and display of affection inoculated me against pessimism forever.

Stupid rule #3 — The adults are in charge, and you better make sure the kids know it.

While I was working at the school where I taught kindergarten science, I collided with another stupid rule. That rule was, “If children aren’t disciplined immediately, they will soon run the class, not you.”

In order to execute (I chose that word deliberately) that discipline rule, children who misbehaved were singled out at an all-school assembly — I’m not making this up. I refused to be part of the process that reported our “misfit toys” in a public arena.

Children are not small adults. They’re children. To loosely paraphrase the late Sir Ken Robinson, “A ten-year-old is not half a twenty-year-old.”

A ten-year-old is not half a twenty-year-old.

A Classroom Constitution

My “discipline plan” was simple. I called it “The 3 R’s.’

Rights — Respect — Responsibility.

At the beginning of the year, I had a long conversation with the children in my class. We talked about their rights and my rights. We wrote these down on a piece of chart paper. Then, we moved on to respect.

“How can I respect you, and how can you respect me?” Again, we wrote down those ideas. Lastly, we talked about responsibility.

“What are your responsibilities, and what are mine?”

The entire conversation usually lasted about thirty minutes, and when we were done, we had our Classroom Constitution finished. We kept that Constitution pinned to the wall for the duration of the year.

I wish adults could work together to create their own Community Constitutions as peacefully and respectfully as the children in my class did.

If you treat children with dignity, respect, and love, they will rise to the occasion. There will be no need to humiliate them when they color outside the lines.

I was fired from that school for failing to comply with discipline protocols. I danced all the way to the parking lot.

Control is an illusion

One of the epiphanies I had early in my career was that I had zero control over my students. They were their own people, and I could not begin to control what each of them did. We had to agree to work together as a community. Once that was established, the issue of who was in control was meaningless.

Stupid rule #4 — Never smile before January

The last stupid rule appears in the headline — never smile until January. If you talk with a few seasoned veterans, you will find this rule still circulates.

Seriously? Who can do that? Even the Grinch smiled.

The logic of this rule is connected to all the previous stupid rules — if you smile, then:

• Children will want to get close to you, which will violate boundaries.
• Children will want to hug you.
• Children will sense your vulnerability and take advantage of you.

I chose to smile.

I was teaching small human beings, not little robots. Children come to us filled with all sorts of emotions, needs, dreams, and fears. They seek connection, inspiration, and someone to believe in them. That is why I became a teacher.

If you have children, I hope they never have a teacher who listens to any of these four stupid rules. Your children deserve better.

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