Don't Dislike Your Children

I've been spending a lot of time in a car recently. My role as the state principal of the year requires me to travel quite a bit. Just this week I crisscrossed the state and between Tuesday morning and Wednesday evening, I had been in a car for about 10 hours. You can only listen to so much music when you drive that much and I can't check my email and drive, so I turned to audiobooks to at least stimulate my brain a little with all that highway time. This week I started 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. He's a somewhat controversial person and this isn't at all an endorsement of him. To be honest, I don't agree with 100% of what he says or writes, but it does make me think and that's the point. One of his 12 rules really got me thinking about the students in our classrooms and how we interact with them. It reads: "Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them." The chapter has absolutely nothing to do with teaching. It's about parenting your own children and addressing misbehavior in small children so that society doesn't have to correct them later in a much more difficult way. It's the same reason we must focus on classroom management as educators. 

On the surface, classroom management is about running things well enough so that the lesson can be taught. You need students attentive, engaged, and not disrupting others so that learning can take place. But like most things in a classroom, the content isn't what we are really teaching. Teaching students how to participate in society and in a group is the real lesson. They graduate from school and classrooms but they will work and live with others and knowing how to be a productive member versus one that is counter-productive is essential. That's why we have to take the time to teach and address things when students do something that we (and others) dislike. Ignoring it is the equivalent of allowing your child to throw a tantrum in a store when they want the toy. If you don't address it, they will keep doing it and believe that it is ok. Meanwhile, the rest of the store (and the classroom) creates a dislike of them as an individual. As educators we prepare young people to be productive adults. They learn some content along the way and we hope that some piece of that content sparks an interest that leads to a career or passion later in life. Along with their families and peers, we guide these young people to be the best versions of themselves that they can be in so many ways. Therefore, it is just as much our responsibility to correct students when they do things that we and others will dislike. Teaching that is just as important as the content of our lessons because as an adult, they will be assessed on it every day.