Seek To Do No Harm
Repair Harm When It Happens
by Laura Kruschek and Laura Salopek
During the 2021–22 school year, our students came to us with so much on their plates from the past year and a half. They came to us a bit immature for their grade level. They were still in the “5th Grade” brain. They were so concerned about chatting with their friends and had difficulty focusing in class. Many blurted a lot during classes. Yet some of them rarely uttered a word. We felt they were emotionally and socially delayed because of this pandemic. One colleague put it aptly when she said, “We are expecting them to come back to us as a student from the 2018–2019 school year.” They weren’t ready for that yet. We learned this by seeing how they were interacting with each other. They were so excited to be back together, and it overwhelmed them.
There was also a lot of posturing being done by our boys. An example of this, though it may sound stereotypical, happened during a class when many of the boys during a video laughed a lot when hearing about how sea turtles were dying because they were eating plastic bags thinking they were jellyfish. They also mocked the voices of an Indian woman and a Spanish speaking woman on a video I played for them. I had to stop the video and explain to them how disrespectful this was. They didn’t seem to realize or understand this on their own.
Another example of “learning” how to learn again was the students thinking they were able to do what they wanted whenever they wanted. For example, getting up and talking to a friend, pulling their phone out and texting, sharpening pencils during the lesson while the teacher is talking, and a constant flow of students asking to leave to use the bathroom and get a drink. Their transition last school year from learning remotely to coming back to in-person 6 feet apart with masks, while some students remained at home and learned synchronously, while the teacher taught concurrently was less of an adjustment than coming back to the traditional school schedule this school year.
Our kids needed to learn to be kind. You can’t tell how someone is feeling or what they are going through, so you need to be kind. Kids are seeing their classmates make fun of people stuttering; they are seeing them tease in a mean way; they see them make fun of their classmates who are gay. One girl was so frustrated that she was crying in anger after all the other kids had left an area. She had her fists balled up, her face was red, and she said, “Kids here are SO MEAN,” to a staff member who found her alone this way. She has been suspended twice this school year for fighting back and standing up for her classmates who are victims of bullying while the bullies don’t have consequences that severe. We needed to be able to help our students help each other in respectful ways. We needed to have the bullying stop. Two boys that were bullies didn’t seem to even notice their behaviors were hurtful. They thought they were very funny. We wanted to be able to reach them and have them understand what they were doing and saying hurt others.
We knew that some of our students felt that they couldn’t call attention to bullying or stand up for the victims because they were afraid that they would be targeted as “snitches.” They also feared they would be called teacher’s pets and would become the victims of bullying themselves.
As we got to know our students better, we saw that some kids were dealing with lots of stress and trauma in their lives outside of school. We have had parent phone calls and parent meetings where we heard that the kids are depressed, taking depression meds., and receiving outside therapy. There are some parents who just don’t know what to do. They thought that coming back to school and a regular schedule would help alleviate some of the stress and anxiety and apathy. Some kids don’t seem to know how to behave in a regular classroom. Then there are others who are thriving. One of the challenges students were facing was not talking over their teachers or their peers. They needed some training in how to listen respectfully.
The Storm Team had kids fill out a Google Form during Advisory asking them what a perfect class looks, sounds, and feels like AND what our current classes look, sound, and feel like.
Here are some student responses about our current classes from January:
Looks Like: not good, there are people disrespectful, people throwing things, people off task, talking out of turn, not listening, chaotic, chaos, a disaster, not listening, talking while the teacher is talking, People running around — not in their seats, disruptive, talking and yelling
Sounds Like: loud, chaotic, lots of noise, lots of talking, people talking back, whispers while people are talking, sometimes loud when it shouldn’t be, Many voices talking at once, loud and scary, people yelling bad stuff, load noise and people talking to each other/side conversation, yelling, side conversations, random inappropriate moaning and noises, talking loudly and not when they are supposed to be, loud, swearing, playing sounds on their computers out loud
Feels Like: not good, feels uncomfortable for me at least, chaotic, we have gotten too close to our teachers so we are loud, feels bad, I feel bad for our teachers in the classroom because people are being mean and rude and disrespectful, like I am not heard, anxiety, “A mess”, takes effort to get work done because of distractions, tiring, negative energy, loud and uncomfortable
We met together to work on what we planned to do. We first decided to have our students brainstorm all harmful things they have seen and heard at school. Then we circled about how they were feeling. They were given the opportunity to share examples of harm without naming specific people. (See Day 1 Slides) After our discussion, we had kids line up and run their papers containing all the harmful things through a shredder. It was a symbolic gesture for them to get rid of the harm.
Next, we had our students do a journal writing with the following questions. Individual answers were to be anonymous and on different colored paper. After each question, we collected the papers.
- Based on your answers yesterday, where do we go from here? (Pink) — Discuss on 1/24
- In our classroom what is one way I can show you that I care about you? (Yellow) (1/25)
- What is one way your classmates can show you they care about you? (Green) (1/26)
- What can you do to show your classmates you care about them? (Blue) (1/27)
- What can you do to show me you care about me as your teacher? (Purple) (1/28)
On each of the following days we circled up in our classroom and handed back their reply for that specific prompt that we were focusing on and students shared their responses and were also allowed to pass if they did not feel comfortable sharing. Most students chose to share their responses, which made for a more meaningful discussion. Please see Day 3 — Day 7 slides for specifics.
As we ended Day 7, the students were asked to make a commitment that would honor our guiding principle of students and teachers seek to do no harm and repair harm when it happens. We then both created bulletin boards in our classrooms with the commitments on display. In addition, they wrote their commitment on a strip of paper that we made into a chain to hang in the classroom as a consistent visual reminder of our guiding principle.
As a follow-up activity we revisited our commitments in April and asked students to write down their previous commitment along with two examples/pieces of evidence that showed how they lived up to their commitment. If they met their commitment, they wrote a new commitment that would enhance our classroom community. If they did not meet their commitment, we asked them what they could do differently to be a positive member of our classroom community? 83% met their commitments and developed a new commitment for the rest of the school year.
Overall this was a tremendous learning experience not only for students but also for us as teachers. We often go about our day reacting to student behavior, but with a greater understanding of each other, we can create a positive community within our classrooms.
