When I think back to Kindergarten, like many folks, I feel happy. Since I was 5, I only remember a few snapshots of events, but have strong recollections of how I felt. Based on my mother’s accounts, I was thrilled to enter school that year, and I was not disappointed. It turned out to be a magical time, full of crafts, stories and fun. I learned how to socialize and first develop a social identity. My teacher was a wonderful woman who worked very hard to make the environment one of empathy and nurturing. She actively encouraged parents to volunteer, which decreased separation anxiety for both my mother and me. However, what made the entire year so special was not how great it was when kids were happy and compliant, but how she managed the class when they were not.
She understood that being away from home for hours at a time and acclimating to this new environment was hard for some of us. She used rewards, rather than punishments to motivate the class. Kids with disabilities or those who acted out were engaged in meaningful dialog about their behavior. I remember one boy who had such a hard time adjusting to the new reality of going to school that he would have fits full of screaming, cursing and crying. Other children would then begin to model this observed behavior. This phenomena has been studied by many psychologists, one of the most notable being Albert Bandura. His experiments in the early 60s, especially those with the Bobo doll, laid the groundwork for others who were interested in how children model violent behavior (Kaplan, 2009).
In early 2019, I became the Center Director for a small learning center and private school. I was let go in May due to Covid’s impact on the corporation’s financial health. It was the best job I ever had. I thought about my kindergarten teacher often because her compassion and patience have always inspired me. I found out first hand on many occasions the strength that it takes to manage an ongoing situation with disruptive children. What started with one boy refusing to work, storming out of the room, knocking over chairs and generally being loud became two boys within a month when his brother joined him. After three months it became three boys. It felt like everything we tried only worsened the situation. Talking with them, empathetic listening, token economies with personalized prizes, nothing worked. I talked to the brother’s parents about their children’s behavior, but they continually made excuses for the boys that ranged from not enough outside time to boys have a genetic predisposition to get into fights. In the end, they were explicit that they “don’t care about [stuff] like that.” Eventually, the situation escalated to the point where the third boy, a friend of the brothers, hit one of the brothers and me, both very intentionally. He was suspended from school for a week. His family was unhappy to also learn that he needed to have a guardian with him for the rest of the year. Unable to comply with this, they eventually dis-enrolled from the school. It was terribly sad because this boy had attended the year before the brothers did and he was a quirky, sweet and model student. Unfortunately, because of family tension and world events, he found himself having emotional breakdowns almost daily. In the end, he sought comfort in belonging to a group that exploited him as the fall guy for the toxic culture they created.
I’ve thought about that scenario a lot since it happened. Spoiler alert: it was not resolved by the time I was laid off in May and wasn’t resolved until the brothers moved away at the end of the year. The staff were exhausted, I was far beyond frustrated, and couldn’t help but feel responsible for destroying what had been a magical environment the year before. When I arrived in 2019, it was a happy learning center where kids voluntarily sat and listened to a teacher read them Harry Potter on their lunch break. They were kind and respectful. How had it devolved into such a negative experience for students and staff alike? I’m still ashamed to say that it was under my guidance that this occurred. There were multiple factors, several of which that had nothing to do with any of the boys, but there were directives from members of the company that I believe made the situation worse.
Due to the nature of the work (very tight schedules with specific, daily progress goals on a specific timeline for each student), the preferred method of behavioral intervention was the aforementioned token economy. Praising students and keeping them engaged by working for prizes seemed intuitive for kids who were typically resistant to reading. Most of the time, it worked well, but not in this case. Settling on a prize and sticking to it was difficult and often, they each wanted something that they knew we could not provide. The parents were not keen on providing prizes or experiences because they were busy and paying a lot of money for the children to attend. When corporate suggested we have a behavior chart and reward them for doing what they were already supposed to do as students, I felt like we were reinforcing bad behavior. Part of when the situation completely fell apart was after I was instructed to be more authoritative with the boys and “lay down the law.” Being this way has never come naturally to me. I generally err on the extreme of being a doormat, however, I am not in a habit of noncompliance when given a directive from a superior. I tried this exactly how they told me to and it failed spectacularly. An adversarial relationship between the boys and the staff exploded and continued to escalate for the rest of the year. Everyone got a much needed break when Covid hit and the boys were forced to work from home. The behaviors continued, but during lunch (typically when their behaviors were the worst) they could do whatever they wanted.
Gruman (2018) sheds light on why none of our efforts worked. He notes that teaching students to be interested in learning by catering to their interests is a good method to help them develop a love of learning. He also notes that the best environments for this are the ones that have low external rewards. We had no idea that when we constantly bribed the ringleader that we were sending the message that learning is an undesirable activity that needs payment to complete. I wish I had known then what I know now. If I could go back and do things differently, I would. However, moving forward, I think I would have questioned the company’s methods early on and saved my staff some heartache.
Gruman, Jamie A., et al. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. 3rd ed., SAGE.
Kaplan, H. (2009, Nov. 19). Bandura Bobo Doll. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZXOp5PopIA&feature=emb_title