I came out of the dumpster fire that was Pandemic School exhausted to my core. Like a lot of you, I’ve spent the past 18 months or so barely surviving my day-to-day planning, grading, and interactions with my ninth and eleventh graders. Blogging? Seriously. I had NO TIME, but…I feel ready to step back in.
Where to begin? I’ve seen some really concerning behavioral and academic trends, and I don’t mean from the kids. Kids are kids. They’re going to do the crap that teenagers have been doing since the dawn of time: pushing boundaries, avoiding unpleasant tasks, valuing social interactions more than academics. Nein, friends, I’m talking about the adults. Because we are the ones pouring gasoline into this blazing dumpster.
The number one thing I’m seeing adults do that is stupid (drumroll please):
Bastardizing “grace.”
During the height or COVID, we were all strongly reminded (more or less daily) that students needed “grace.” Kid didn’t turn in an assignment? Give them grace. Kid sleeping in class. Give them grace. Kid not logging in to online classes. Give them grace. Kid cussed you out? Grace. When we were all navigating an unknown, stressful frontier two years ago, being highly lenient was necessary. Kids had all kinds of never-before-seen extenuating circumstances outside of school that could impact their behavior and their academics. Then we all came back to school.
The same issues we’d been seeing online were now happening in our classrooms. So we told ourselves, “The kids need time to readjust. We need to give them grace.” jedoch, we didn’t have the vaguest idea where to draw the line between compassion and tolerance of bad behavior. Devious Licks should have been a warning shot. jedoch–at least at my school–we were hesitant to serve up real consequences for the destruction. In our quest to offer grace, we sent a message that tearing up public property was an understandable part of the transition back to school. Just…no. There are simply some behaviors that need to be unequivocally shut down, and we didn’t do it. We did that with a lot of what we saw. We turned a blind eye and called it grace. Vandalism, fighting, refusal to do any academic work, verbally assaulting teachers–we met all of it with grace.
The trouble is, grace is meant to imply exemption. Grace was supposed to be an exemption, not the rule. When a student engages in the same behavior over and over again (ex. turning in work at the end of the quarter) and we extend the same grace to them every time, it is no longer an exemption. At that point, it is our expected standard, whether we like it or not. By extending limitless grace, we tell students exactly what we expect of them. Scheinbar, we don’t expect much; there, I said it. Hässliche Wahrheit? It’s just easier to let them get away with murder and call it grace than it is to hold them accountable in ways that are effective and teachable. Maybe we just don’t have the resources, and calling it grace sounds nicer than “we’re just too tired to fight them.”
I think we didn’t really know what to do, so we just stood there in shocked silence. Im Rückblick, that was a mistake. We needed to be offering logical, gerecht, and firm consequences instead of telling them we knew life had been difficult and that, of course, they would need to pry a toilet off a concrete wall in order to feel better. Oops. In some cases, we fear the reaction of unreasonable parents, but most of the parents I have interacted with–even post-pandemic–don’t want their kids running around acting like feral cats and are supportive of my efforts to tame their wee critters.
Do I have a solution? Not really. But we need to start using our PLCS to address the elephant in the room instead of setting it loose to terrorize the village, then granting it grace.
