I'm on loan this week, to another facility. So I have been working with older kids from the ages 6-11. There is a lot of disrespect towards the staff there. To me, this was unacceptable and instead of just "letting kids be kids", I took it upon myself to remedy this. We get a lot of eye rolling and huffiness in the facility when we have to constantly be reminding the kiddos of the rules.
The rule breakers and disrespectful kids were invited to sit with me during outdoor play time with history books in hand. They kept whining over and over again, "Life isn't fair, life isn't fair!!! You're not fair!" My argument? "Life is fair and it isn't... but when you make a decision to disobey rules and act inappropriately, there are most definitely going to be consequences of your actions." There were a bunch of huffs and puffs and fist poundings on the table. So I told them that I had a story for them about a friend of mine.
"Once upon a time, there was a beautiful and happy girl named Lynden. She went to medical school so she could be a doctor. One day she went camping and got bit by a bug and that bug was a tick. You know the little bugs that are all over the grass here that we have to be careful about? Yeah, she got bit by a tick and it made her really, really sick and she is still very, very sick. She's so sick that she can't work and this makes her really, really sad. She also has to take lots of medicine every day and she is always very, very tired and she has to pay a lot of money to keep up with her medicine. It isn't fair. She is a very good person but she got bit by the wrong bug. To make matters worse, her house burned down... and just when she thought everything was going to get better, it got worse. Do you think this is fair, boys and girls?"
They asked questions about Lynden with tears in their eyes and in the end they said, "I see, ok, that is NOT fair. It isn't fair that Lynden got sick and lost her house."
"What is fair, Ms. Conklin?"
My fair story was much shorter, however. I told them, "Once when I was in first grade... our class was really noisy and our teacher didn't like it. So she screamed for us to be quiet and then she threw a chair across the room. We told our mommy and daddies when we got home. That is the last time we saw her. Do you know what happened? She made a poor decision and the consequences was she lost her job. Is that fair?"
"Yes, teachers shouldn't throw things." I said, "Not just teachers, but nobody should throw things. Nobody has the right to make you feel scared or in danger, nobody should ever react angrily towards anybody or anything, unless they are ready to face the consequences. Every thing you do, boys and girls, results in some sort of action. If you hit a wall, you hurt your hand. If you disrespect people, they will lose respect for you and you are entirely capable of hurting somebodies feelings, which isn't ok. Nobody likes to have their feelings hurt. I am not a tick, boys and girls... I am your teacher and I am here for you. For as long as we are working together, I will always be fair to you."
And then we just talked and talked and talked. I feel like I may have been a little too candid with my story about my friend Lynden but in the end, they were showing so much concern... and by the end of the day I felt like I did a good job...
because now my kids know the difference between fair and unfair and I think that it's something that isn't being communicated enough with them, well enough to a point where the message was clear enough. Cause and effect... most of the time there is a cause but sometimes, there isn't a fair explanation for it. But all in all, everybody is always responsible for the actions that they choose to make... and once they make that choice, they take the risk of results of actions.
For the rest of the day, everything ran smoothly and everybody was more or less really mindful of one another and every now and then somebody would ask about Lynden and tell me that they would be thinking about her and to me, that was such a beautiful thing.
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