I don’t trust this guy. He looks like he means to make mischief of one kind or another. Photo by M. Severson

Any good parent will tell you they can’t make their children behave, but what they can do is make them want to behave. They can make them imagine the consequences of not behaving in a certain way and choose to do what is safest for their continued happiness.

Teachers will tell you teaching is not like that.

This is where teaching and parenting part ways. Teachers can develop dire outcomes to aberrant behaviors in many faceted forms and children will still choose the wrong path, no matter our resistance.

So that’s it, fine, we have no recourse, if children don’t want to learn, we can’t make them. It’s over, give up.

No, that’s why we have teachers.

What teachers can do, if fact what many teachers are really good at, is they can make children ready to learn. This is the penultimate divergence between parenting and teaching. Teachers check to see what skills children have before they try to teach them something. They evaluate student learning styles to see how the child processes new concepts and how best they internalize new ideas and teachers strive to make the learning of the material understandable and interesting so that the child is intrigued by the thought of pursuing it further.

Teachers spend most of their time preparing children so they are ready to learn, it is what they do.

Ready to learn. What an epiphany!

Our focus in education over the last few years has been directed at setting the curriculum (read test) and forcing the child to learn it or else. “Learn this or fail!” has been a hollow mantra that has resulted in increased frustration and growing despair among students and teachers alike.

Imagine if our cynosure was the child, themselves. What if we chose instead to ensure that the child had all they needed to be ready to learn before we demanded that they do it?

If you are working on your car would you get up in the morning and throw up the hood without first gathering tools, identifying the problem, making sure you had parts and perhaps even fixing yourself a cup of coffee to help ameliorate your mood at being forced to pursue the activity in the first place? No, you want to be prepared.

We owe our children at least this courtesy. Make sure they are ready to learn before we ask them to learn. Provide the stability and security of the freedom from hunger, disease, poverty or fear and then offer the enrichment of exposure to all the developmental prerequisites necessary to make the child feel confident they are prepared and yes, even eager to learn.

The ironic thing is I was working on this very topic the day before the horrific events of December 14th, 2012. I scrapped that version for this one but many of the ideas are the same.

We do not nurture or insulate our children enough.

The amount of stress that a five-year-old feels today is greater that it was 10 years ago, much greater that twenty years ago and immeasurably greater than when I was in school. More than a half a century later I can still call up palpable, clear memories of  my worries as a five-year-old.

In our current iteration we have slashed support personnel at public schools and subsequently loaded more and more responsibilities on those few people left behind. A similar statement can be made for our social services like police and fire departments and the hierarchical support of families as well. Many people, and especially parents are trying to do more with less on a daily basis. They lose ground as we strip them of services and buying power. Then we encourage them to enjoy the holidays.

Even for students from relatively stable, two parent households the holiday season is rife with possibilities for uncertainty. Much of that uncertainty is subsequently felt by children and yet they do not understand the source.

As much as they squawk and moan about it, school is a haven for many children. There is a set routine, expectations exist in their school that they can count on. Children know if they forgot breakfast, or didn’t get one, there will someone waiting with food in the cafeteria. After eating when they go outside someone will be there. There will a safe place where they can play with their friends. At a certain time a bell will ring and they will know where to go and who will be looking for them. They know that if they left something behind on the playground, more than likely someone will pick it up and bring it in.

Once in class the daily routine sets in and the expectations are known by all. Subjects and task follow sequentially and both the student and the teacher can draw a certain calm from that reassuring knowledge.

I can attest that as a classroom teacher I was a slave to routine because I am by nature so adult attention deficit if I did not enforce a schedule no one knows where we would’ve ended up.

Most days there would come the time that I found most satisfying as a teacher. As my favorite principal, and my most strident critic, Ann Francisco used to remind me, “A classroom should sound like a beehive Mr. Severson, not a chicken coop!” So I called it ‘hive time’. The class would be busy, working, moving around, interacting, talking in lowered voices and to me it resembled nothing so much as a busy beehive on a warm summer day. As I teacher I felt a certain security in this slightly noisy but calm environment. I cherished those days.

Because for all of us, calm can change to uneasiness or even to incipient terror in a moment’s uncertainty.

Children love Winter Break. They look forward to the unstructured time and the sleeping in; the excitement of the holidays and the opportunities to see family and friends. But they also see it as a time of uncertainty and it makes them uncomfortable. For all their supposed desire to get out of school for a few days teachers will tell you that student behavior gets a little erratic before vacations.

Often that is why teachers rush early in the quarter before vacation to get as much substantive work done as possible, which of course also heightens the apprehension.

We put too much pressure on our children. We give them too information and we hurry them along toward adulthood too quickly. Children are not our achievements, they are simply themselves, individuals in an ever more complex world and we owe them an opportunity to be children before they must be adults.

I don’t think the crux of the argument is whether we should enact stricter gun laws (we should) or outlaw guns (we shouldn’t) or even arm teachers and school administrators (???). What it comes down to is whether we as a society are going to value our children above all else because in the final analysis you don’t go to work to provide a bright future for yourself. You don’t have children to show them off like your newest tattoo or a cell phone that lets you play games. Children are the future, treat them appropriately.

Let’s do a better job protecting the future. There is no more crucial task.

If you have read my OpEds before, (thank you, thank you very much!) by now you may have noticed the change of title. I tried to hint at this upcoming event in my last post (“Teachers are retiring . . .”) but I am afraid I was just a bit too subtle.

Let me tell you outright: I have retired.

That does not mean that I am not showing up for work at my school next year — I have agreed to return part-time in a different iteration than as a classroom teacher. On my last day, our attendance clerk posted my next year’s class-list on my door. It was blank. I am going to frame it.

It does mean that this coming August, for the first time in thirty three years, if I don’t feel like going to work, for whatever reason, I don’t have to make a phone call by 6 am to ensure that someone will be there in my place. And I don’t have to make absolutely certain that there are written lesson plans that any adult can follow.

In addition to being very liberating, this event causes me to reflect. What is teaching, really? Let me tell you what I think.

I want you to know first off, that this is a diatribe about being totally alone amidst a plethora of emergent humans.

No, that’s not true, actually it is a soliloquy, worthy of Shakespearean iambic pentameter. Unfortunately I am too exhausted to attempt that so you will just have to put up with my usual colloquial obfuscation.

As teachers, we spend an enormous amount of time alone, especially while we are at work. Despite the fact that we are surrounded by people, we are completely alone. I have seen it in my colleagues every day. There can be a room full of active, laughing children engaged and learning and yet that teacher is going it solo. It is the nature of the job.

Each class that I have taught over the years was unique, each group of children brought their own special issues and needs to that class and it was my job to integrate them into the day to day activities that I had planned. This called for constant reappraisal of goals and objectives and daily assessment of progress. These were things I often did alone and on the run. Many decisions had to be made on the spot and quickly. I have read that the only job that forces the employee to make more decisions in a given day than teaching, is that of an air controller. I believe it. On those occasions where I was able to consult with colleagues our problems invariably intersected only at a macro level, that is, broadly and we were left to work out the details ourselves, alone.

Additionally, there is the perpetual self-assessment: Have I taught this objective enough? Do they understand the concept sufficiently to move on? Can I do it another way and be more effective? Teachers always second guess themselves. These kinds of questions constantly trail behind you like hungry cats, meowing for attention. Every time you feed one cat, more cats arrive and to be brutally honest, I am not overly fond of cats.

But I love teaching, few jobs I have held are so intrinsically satisfying. That is probably how I stuck with it for 33 years. And I always knew it is also unpredictable. That kept each day fresh and challenging. Knowing this, I liked to say that my lesson plans were, unintentionally, virtual works of fiction that occasionally, but only on exceedingly rare occasions, came true.

A teacher, walking into the classroom, never really knows for sure what will happen, day to day. Yet I did it approximately 6000 times. When I got in there each school day, with a crowd of developing humans, all together in one room for an extended period of time; I knew one simple fact: whatever I did, whatever occurred, I must still teach.

Teaching is hard. Good teaching is even harder. It is difficult to be the only one in the room who thinks that they know with any certainty what should be going on in the minds of twenty or thirty children, and then making it happen. Try it, I dare you. Just don’t step on the cats.

Yesterday was Pearl Harbor Day and in honor of the date I participated in a re-enactment of the famous event. For this production I played the harbor and a five year old girl from the class next to mine played the part of the attacking force.

When I arrived in her class at the behest of her teacher she was curled up on the floor making loud, odd noises. Her teacher told me she had asked her to stop, and had redirected her to sit in time out but the student had refused.

Normally faced with this situation I would offer her a choice of standing up and walking out with me or I would carry her. However I had left my class alone so I simply reached down and picked her up.

That is when the re-creation began.

She kicked me, she screamed, she hit me, she punched me, she scratched me, she reached for the pen in my pocket but I blocked her from getting that (see below) when we arrived in my room, the longest thirty foot stroll of the year so far, I told her she could sit in a chair while I continued teaching. As soon as I sat her down she jumped up to run away, I grabbed her and sat her back in the chair and reaching with one available hand pulled my chair over next to hers so I could hold her in her seat. I did so with a containment hold, circling my arms around her forming a ‘ring’ that she could bounce off but not leave. She continued to scratch, hit and try to escape. I mentioned to her as matter of fact as I could, that when she stopped trying to get away I would let her sit by herself in the chair. Then I went on with my math lesson (thank goodness it was math and not reading!)

Her screaming continued at a very high level, several of my students complained that she was hurting their ears. A couple of them, to their credit, gently tried to talk her out of her tantrum. One of my students actually said, “You may as well give up, he won’t.”

I have long enjoyed a reputation for dealing well with the tough kids.  Well, OK, “enjoyed” is not the right word. But there is something in my manner that can calm them, at least after twenty minutes or so. I think it is just that I seem unflappable. I’m not, but I seem to be. I also give choices. I rarely tell a child “You must do this.” I tell them, “Here are your choices.” Of course I never offer a choice I am not willing to deliver on. Hence my common offer of, “You can walk or I will carry you.” There is no question about whether they are leaving the room. Still, I think children are not given enough opportunities to learn about making choices and living with the consequences. It is a critical life-skill.

I am not magic, I have had my failures, many more than I care to remember, like the kid who tried to stab me in the neck with a sharp pencil (see above). I am always cautious if they have a sharp object in their hand.

And, as in this case, it is sometimes true I do not have time to offer a choice, we needed to get back. My own class this year has more than it’s share of volatile children.

Back to Pearl; the Arizona, my math lesson, was a smoldering wreck, in all it took about twenty minutes. The little girl finally calmed, or became mesmerized by my command of the second grade math curriculum, and I removed what was left of my arms. She sat quietly until it was time to go to lunch, went to lunch with us and then returned to her class, where we all had cookies and milk and lived happily ever after. No.

I would like to say that this is an unusual situation but it is not. A colleague of mine at another school shared that she has initiated paperwork on five students in her class who are likely improperly placed and possibly emotionally disturbed. She says all have exhibited dangerous, angry behaviors. This is not just some teacher – she is Nationally Board Certified. As a leader in my association I am constantly hearing stories about children endangered by the erratic actions of other students. Teachers too are vulnerable. A good friend of mine, one of the gentlest men I know, was attacked, punched repeatedly, by an angry ten year old yesterday.

Angry children appear to be epidemic.

Where have they all come from and why now?

I have a couple theories and they are problems not easily fixed.

First, I believe we have sent a message that anything can happen and it can happen here and now. Instant news and reality TV make situations that were once seen as aberrant, commonplace. Children are exposed to far too much information they simply do not need and it multiplies the stress upon them exponentially. To put it simply, it scares them.

Second, I believe we have abdicated good parenting skills both voluntarily and involuntarily. I know that most families cannot make a good living without at least two full-time incomes if not one of them also having a second job. I am not indicting them for this, it is a financial reality that I myself lived through for many years. Because so much of their time is consumed by work it is easy to allow children to turn to TV or computer games as a source of at least partial day care while parents are getting dinner or doing the shopping and actual day care is a 6am to 6pm reality for many children.

Finally, and this may be the most worrisome for me because it contains an element of the unknown, I think we are doing something damaging to our children that we have not yet identified. It is my worst case, unintended consequences scenario. It may be the massive rise in microwaves passing through our bodies with the inception of new wireless technology. Or it might be additives that we are using to supplement or enhance food resources. It could be simply the increase of very young children being exposed to electronic media that is contributing to the rise in autism spectrum disorders. The haunting part of this problem may just be it is a combination of all these factors and something yet unrecognized.

I do not mean to say that all children are out of control. Most of my class this year are hard-working, involved students who love to learn. Unfortunately one unruly child can effectively disable any lesson, two or three can make the room chaotic and four or five, not unheard of in our current enlarged classrooms, can cause the best of teachers to believe the whole world has gone insane.

This is my fear: We are responsible for this. When I say it haunts me, I am not crediting it sufficiently, I wake up some nights wondering about it, I have dreamt horrific dreams about scores of angry children that I cannot reach. I fear they are legion and I know it is our fault.