Lately, I have been particularly aware of the word “should”. It feels like this word has been cropping up more than usual, explicitly and implicitly. Perhaps it is an effect of being in an election cycle or a consequence of the plethora of advice being offered about avoiding the coronavirus. Just for fun, Google “everyone should” and see what appears! We certainly experience people and institutions conveying their expectations of us in social media and in advertising every day. But I have been thinking particularly about how we use this word (or just the thought of it) in our classrooms.
“Should” in the Classroom
A phrase that I often hear teachers use when redirecting a student is, “What should you be doing right now?” If the context of this question is calmly taking time to sit down and help the child sort through options to make an informed choice, then the process helps build the child’s Executive Function skills. It is a “win”. Sometimes, however, the context of the question is expressing adult frustration over the child’s current chosen activity – usually wandering, over-socializing, or avoiding overdue work – as a prelude to telling the child what to do next. That is the scenario that has captured my attention this week
The Presumptive “Should”
Certainly, we have all felt the urgent need to get a child to engage in something – anything!! Sometimes, by the time we approach the child, so much time has been lost that the feeling of urgency has turned to desperation. We feel compelled to move the child into productive work as expeditiously as possible. And so, we use the kindest possible tone of voice to ask, “What should you be doing right now?”
The question carries with it some unstated presumptions: the child knew what was expected, had the ability to make an acceptable choice, and instead opted out. What would Montessori have had to say about this child? She did not specifically address the issue of a child who does not use work time wisely; however, she did say that we should treat the misbehaving child as if he were ill rather than naughty. What if we believed that children are inherently good and wish to be successful, believed that when children are not choosing wisely, something is getting in the way? What if we assumed those children who most frustrate us are already doing the best they can? Would we feel differently? Would we act differently?
Finding the Cause of Unmet Expectations
First, we must ask if the child genuinely understands the expectations, procedures, assignments and/or options. When I pose this question to frustrated and exhausted teachers, they sometimes reply, “How could they not? We went over all of that!” or, “It’s February! If they don’t understand the expectations by now, I can’t help them.” It is human nature to assume that when we use our best communication skills to explain something to people, they understand our meaning as we intended. But as we know, not all children process auditory information completely and few people (children or adults) find joy in reading written directions. For these children, describing the expectations and sending them off to make wise choices is very much like giving just the first period of a 3-period lesson and expecting the knowledge to stick.
When we redirect this child, if we convey disappointment or frustration (even inadvertently), we may put these same children into fight or flight mode so that hearing the expectations a second time will not help – they are already shut-down. How do we avoid letting out our inner exasperation and help them get back on track? We reframe the situation before approaching them. One way that I find particularly helpful is to look at the child’s choice or behavior with curiosity rather than judgment. This framing can help us replace opening lines like, “What should you be doing right now?” with, “You have walked the perimeter of the room a couple of times and you don’t seem to be finding what you want. What are you looking for?” This will likely be followed by, “How can I help you (to achieve your stated goal)?” The actions and decisions that result from that, with teacher guiding child, will provide a pattern for future choice that the child may be able to access the next time a choice is to be made. We are teaching executive function.
Understanding Short-Circuits Frustration
That all looks good on paper, doesn’t it? But it is not easy to pull back from a place of intense emotion to rationally look at a child’s unfortunate choice with curiosity, especially when we are feeling time pressures to get the child engaged with work. One thing that can help is understanding what can cause children (and adults) to derail. Wandering, procrastination, and over-socialization are not character flaws. They may look like intentional non-compliance or weak-willed laziness, but psychologists will tell us that by-in-large, these are symptoms of the greater problem: functioning deficit. This may have roots in:
- – anxiety. Children can experience anxiety about whether their attempts will be “good enough” in the eyes of friends, peers, or adults. This is true for children who have lower skills that they are trying to hide from friends. It is equally true for children who are praised for being so capable; they have a high bar to clear just to meet expectations. In either case, children can feel that it is sometimes safer to not try than to try and fail. (PS – this is true of adults as well!)
- confusion about how to start a work. This is often about a lack of mental and/or physical organization. “What do I need? Where do I find those things?” For these children, if we stay with them until they have gathered everything they need and get a start on the work, they will stick with the work for some time.
- fear about the magnitude of the work. In my family, we call this scary closet syndrome. It dates back to a time when I had asked my son to pick up his closet and returned sometime later to find him mired in the enormity of the task. As we talked through the process, breaking it into chunks, he began to relax. He no longer saw this as an unfair ask – he could see the process. (To be clear – that did not make him happy to pick up his closet, but it did the task doable.) In some situations, giving children a dichotomous choice (would you like to do a or b?) is key to success. In other situations, making a list of the steps involved in a process and encouraging the child to cross off each step as it is completed can help not just now, but also in similar situations in the future.
- competing priorities. Social concerns, particularly for older elementary children, can take first priority irrespective of what we deem important. To be sure, when children pose with work while socializing, it can be a simple matter of the endorphins being produced creating such a pleasurable state that they don’t wish to set that aside to do something else. But genuine social concerns are valid. When we validate their concerns and help them address their issues, we free up bandwidth for them to attend to our priorities.
- neurodiversity. The child who sits quietly and alertly at line or at a lesson may actually have completely disengaged from what is being said. If the child is a non-auditory processor, attending to instruction purely auditorily is exhausting. They may attend well initially, but after the first few hundred words, they may just run out of steam. A child who appears to have been attentive but cannot leave the line and comply with verbalized instructions without taking cues from peers may genuinely be clueless about what to do, no matter how well we explained it.
When we can honor these root causes of work-avoidance as being genuine, valid, authentic problems, the symptoms of wandering or work-avoidance feel less personal. We can ascribe less importance to causing the child to complete this work and more importance to helping the whole child be successful. We can begin to explore what situational or emotional factors are presenting barriers that we can’t see, or what needs are not being met. With this mindset, we can approach the child non-judgmentally to ask, “How can I help you achieve your goal?”
Reflection for Adults: What children /situations confound me on a regular basis? Where would approaching the situation with curiosity lead to an authentic solution rather than a temporary “fix”?
Reflection for Children: There are lots of things and people in our lives that tell us what we should do. We know, for example, that we should brush our teeth in the morning, and that people expect that we dress appropriately for school or sports. In our classroom, we have ground rules that tell us how we should treat one another. All of these “shoulds” help order our days so that we can live happy lives.
Sometimes, we have more than one “should” at a time, and they don’t always agree with one another. Maybe you know that you should set the table for dinner because it is your turn AND your friend says that you should come out and practice pitching. Or perhaps you have been saving your allowance for something special but you see something at the checkout stand that you want right now.
In Montessori classrooms, we believe that children should have choice. That sometimes means that there is more than one thing competing for your attention and time. Think about a time when you had to make a hard choice in our classroom. What were you deciding between? How did you choose? How do you feel about the choice you made?
Note to teachers: children’s responses to this can provide insight into their decision-making process. Sometimes their process is so subconscious that they are unaware that they are choosing. Even the most trivial example can provide a valuable entrée to a conversation with a child about choosing.
Image by Edward Lich from Pixabay
Treat a child as though he already is the person he’s capable of becoming.
Haim Ginott 1922 –1973, school teacher, child psychologist and parent educator
What is going on in your classrooms that keeps you up at night? PM me through Facebook or write to me at lockhartlearning@gmail.com to nominate a topic for a future blog!