Troublemaking Free Spirits

Morning thoughts:

Cats watch birds

through windows;

Dream

of hunting

adventure

ferocity.

Screens furnish fodder

for fantasy.

-----

Even on approach

outside the building

lines of cars

lines of teachers

lines of students

school compliance reaches wide

-----

Work from home:

more birdsong, more sun.

It feels like spring.

Last post was largely about the drudgery of winter. The two weeks since have been better. The weather has drastically improved, we've gotten out more, and our moods have improved. There have still been plenty of rough moments, but there has been more ability to enjoy life.

We are definitely in need of spring, and it's not just us. Last Monday at dinner, [Older] told us that his class went with the school's instructional support teacher for reading. First graders usually stay in their home room with their main teacher for all their core subjects, only breaking out one period a day for a few "specials." Yet he said they would be going with this teacher for reading all week because "Ms B_____ is fed up with teaching us."

The next day we received an email from [Younger's] teacher that included: "Kindergaten Behavior Management Update. Hello Parents! As most of you know, as students spend more time in a given place they may start to feel more comfortable and in turn, misbehavior tends to increase. In kindergarten, it’s usually around this time of year that this happens. A change in behavior management is usually necessary to help with these times. Here is a general outline of our classroom expectation policy . . . "

They've both had some behavior issues. I mentioned last post their getting sent home from daycare. Since then we've had a call from the principal about one and from the art teacher about the other, both for physical aggression. Maybe others; it's all becoming a bit of a blur. Bad enough that my wife sent me this text last week one day before going to pick them up from school:

So that was a relief of sorts, getting called about a head bonk instead of trouble. The nurse sent home an injury report form to document the accident. We got a laugh out of this part of the paperwork:

No alcohol or driving for our first grader the rest of the day. Right. Totally ruined our plans for the evening.

I got a chuckle out of this showing up on my Facebook memories recently. Feb. 20, 2018:

Though he still has a few enunciation issues, [Younger] is getting to be quite the little conversationalist, with a good grasp on grammar and a range of vocabulary. Every so often he'll surprise us with a perfectly articulated multisyllabic word we wouldn't expect him to know. And on occasion he'll mimic something we say, apparently trying it out.

He was being especially difficult during a bedtime a few weeks ago, piling one excuse on top of another to delay the process. In a moment of exasperation and rare indiscretion, [Spouse] muttered to me something like, "And now he wants me to do such and such because he thinks I'm his beyotch." From the other side of the room, he enthusiastically echoed a delighted, "Mommy's name is BEYOTCH!"

And while we're able to laugh at things, we constantly wonder how we ended up with two children who are so wild and ask ourselves what we should be doing differently. It's a source of constant anxiety and frustration.

I just happened to read this book last week--because it came to the top of my overdue pile, not because I chose it--and it felt very timely.

Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School by Carla Shalaby

A fascinating and quietly powerful book.

I can't remember for sure, but I believe this was recommended to me by a high school teacher even though the four children at its center are first graders; its wisdom is that widely applicable. I even kept mentally applying its situations to my workplace manager-employee relationships. It's something I recommend for all educators, parents, and managers--to anyone with power over others.

Troublemakers struck me with particular relevance and immediacy because my two children are currently in kindergarten and first grade and have been known to cause a bit of trouble. My writing of this review was delayed an hour for a parent-teacher conference for the older one, which we literally just finished. In reference to our boys' (mis)behavior, our teacher called them "free spirits." Their behavior is sometimes misbehavior because they don't always comply with the requirements of school culture. I mention this because freedom is the core value at the heart of Shalaby's concerns.

Her book is an effort to reframe the idea of school behavioral expectations to include an understanding of students as full, free human beings, not mere students narrowly defined by a need for them to comply. Schools forcefully require students to conform to the setting, with coercion whenever necessary. She encourages teachers to see disruptive behavior not as a problem with the students, but as students attempting to communicate a problem with the demands the setting is making on them. To understand what students need and allow them to be free people in creating a community of learners.

Shalaby makes a case study of four different first-grade "troublemakers" at two different schools, applying her philosophy through her observations of them. She sees the values behind the behaviors that cause them so much trouble.

Families may model, teach, and value ways of being that they consider not only unproblematic, but actively healthy--like Zora learning to be unique and proud, Sean learning to question and argue, Lucas craving freedom and choice, and Marcus choosing not to be independent. But these ways of being sometimes get systematically punished by school. It is amazing, and disturbing, how early this process begins. These children have barely been alive seven years and already they have been identified as problems.

What she sees:

These alternate images allow us to view children as complex and beautiful human beings rather than caricatures of troublemakers. Their humanness encourages us to try to understand their difficult behavior through a more generous lens--a lens that treats trouble-making as a verb rather than a noun. As a noun, a troublemaker is a kind of person--an identity encoded in and imprinted on individual bodies. It locates the problem of noncompliance in people, fogging our view of the social and cultural production of trouble. By contrast, we can instead treat trouble-making as a verb--a process, an action, a system. We can ask, How does trouble get made as these children interact with school? Such a question redirects our attention away from "fixing" people whom we assume to be broken and instead toward addressing the harms that seek to break them.

Schools are a particularly harmful institution for young people. Trouble gets made because schools engender it, exclude it, and ultimately work hard to simply erase it. Schools try to make trouble invisible, most often by attempting to eliminate the young people who are working so hard to make it visible.

Shalaby's ideas felt a bit nebulous to me at the start of the book; I liked the idea of what she was saying, but didn't feel completely sure what it was. Even by the end of the first case study, I wasn't sure I could articulate her point. But as I carried on her message sunk in deeper and became clearer, and by her conclusion I had completely reached her wavelength. I reached her conviction.

I hope her ideas sunk deep enough to make me more effective in my work with youth at the library, make me a better parent, and make me a better advocate for my kids.       

I decided to contribute to our blog for local writers at my library last week.

February 2021 Prompt

The Japanese have a legend that says the face you have now is the face of the person you loved most in your past life.

In 500 words or less, tell us what you still love about your reflection. The legend says you loved yourself once, and we know you can do it again.

It makes sense that I loved the face in my past life, because I only seem to love it in this life once it becomes my past face. It takes a time-traveling mirror for me to appreciate my reflection.

When I look at myself in the present, all I see are the ways the image fails to measure up to some vague ideal that exists in my imagination. I don't really see my reflection or the ideal, but the space between them.

Yet when I capture that image and look at it through the power of time travel, at some future moment, a year later or five or ten, I suddenly appreciate the image I see. That person was attractive and I don't understand why I couldn't perceive it back then. I love that reflection from the past.

Then I turn to look in a standard mirror at present-me and again see only flaws. Except later, one, five, ten years further on, that same image I can't appreciate now will be mystically transformed into something future me finds pleasant.

And it cycles on. I love what I see in time-traveling mirrors that show me what I was once present-me has moved on, taking his criticisms with him.

I didn't mention what I see in mirrors is always at least a bit of a surprise because it never looks like my mental image of myself: an awkward, insecure teenager totally daunted by life and everyone in it. I don't know how I look so grown up.

I really like this trio of poems by Langston Hughes from The Dream Keeper and Other Poems:

Beggar Boy

What is there within this beggar lad

That I can neither hear nor feel nor see,

That I can neither know nor understand

And still it calls to me?

Is not he but a shadow in the sun--

A bit of clay, brown, ugly, given life?

And yet he plays upon his flute a wild free tune

As if Fate had not bled him with her knife!

Parisian Beggar Woman

Once you were young,

Now, hunched in the cold,

Nobody cares

That you are old.

Once you were beautiful,

Now, in the street,

No one remembers

Your lips were sweet.

Oh, withered old woman

Of rue Fontaine,

Nobody but death

Will kiss you again.

Mexican Market Woman

This ancient hag

Who sits upon the ground

Selling her scanty wares

Day in, day round,

Has known high wind-swept mountains,

And the sun has made

Her skin so brown.

Empathy.

This isn't really about me and my family, but it would be wonderful.

With One Move, Congress Could Lift Millions Of Children Out Of Poverty

But there's one idea that's so big, it was politically unthinkable not that long ago.

President Biden and Democratic lawmakers want to fight child poverty by giving U.S. families a few hundred dollars every month for every child in their household — no strings attached. A kind of child allowance.

If this proposal survives the wrangling in Congress and makes it to Biden's desk, experts say it could cut child poverty nearly in half. . . . 

Compared to other wealthy nations, the United States does little to reduce child poverty. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the U.S. ranks 37th among OECD nations — barely ahead of last-place Turkey — for how little it spends on family benefits: just 0.6% of gross domestic product in 2019. . . . 

The monthly benefit is designed to help families manage unpredictable incomes and unpredictable expenses, like a child's illness or a car repair.

"If you have a child allowance like this, all of a sudden you have more of a buffer, more of a cushion that can address those concerns," says Bradley Hardy, a professor of economics at American University. "My view is that it's the right thing to do, but also that it's sound economic policy." . . . 

Research suggests that investing money to lift kids out of poverty, especially young children, has enormous long-term benefits.

"They're not only better today, but it turns out they do better in school, they're more likely to graduate high school, more likely to attend college, less likely to be recipients of public assistance," says Hilary Hoynes, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of California, Berkeley. "When they're older, their health is better. They're less likely to be engaged in criminal activity, and they live longer. And all of those things are great for the child, but they're also great for society."

I figure it has no chance, but we can hope.