121Rethinking_Students_Who_Challenge_UsIf_we_are_to_reclaim_our

Rethinking Students Who Challenge Us

If we are to reclaim our classrooms as inclusive and loving spaces where all students are valued and celebrated, we must actively work on rethinking our students’ challenging behavior using a strengths-based, holistic, and loving approach. In this chapter, we aim to shift from a traditional deficit- based way of understanding kids with challenging behavior and instead describe new ways of thinking about student differences, including approaching behaviors as natural and expected means of communication. We then help you focus on the strengths, gifts, and talents of each student and provide specific ways of being and practices to help you reset and reinvigorate your thinking about students with challenging behavior. This approach helps us boost and lean into our natural inclination to support students in creative and loving ways.

Value Student Differences The richness of our classrooms, schools, and communities is derived from difference. In a classroom community that operates from a place of love, we’ve watched it take only a few moments for students to notice, learn about, and

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Causton, Julie, and Kate MacLeod. From Behaving to Belonging : The Inclusive Art of Supporting Students Who Challenge Us, Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uneedu/detail.action?docID=6263859. Created from uneedu on 2020-09-22 18:08:35.

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embrace one another’s differences. Often, this process of understanding and valuing difference uses a similar pattern with groups of students:

• Students noticing something different about a peer. • Students becoming curious about that difference. • Students learning what that difference means for how to engage and connect

with the peer. • Students embracing the difference and the peer.

We see students engage in this loving work every day. In 2017, a video from BBC News (2017) began circulating the internet and perfectly documented this natural peer process of embracing differences. A group of students greet their classmate Anu as she walks to the playground for the first time with her new prosthetic leg. Her peers bend down to take a look at her new neon pink titanium leg. They ask questions such as, “Did it hurt?” and “Did you pick the color?” They embrace her in hugs. The young girl then shows them how she can run with her new leg. Then her peers begin to run beside her and behind her, matching her pace. Soon, she is leading the way. This brief video ends with the young girl and a peer walking hand in hand.

We can learn so much from our students about how quickly and readily they embrace and celebrate differences (in the case above, in 42 seconds). But first, we must provide students with the opportunity to interact with and embrace one another’s differences so they can lean into their strengths and talents and learn from and grow with one another. Students’ readiness to embrace differences can often be stifled by school cultures and structures that focus on the concept of normalcy; consequently, schools often sort and separate students with differences before the peer community even has a chance to love and embrace them. The first step is breaking down the myth of normal.

No Student Is Bad It is this mythical concept of normal that can too often perpetuate barriers

for our students’ success. It can impede our ability to value student diversity and instead label it as different, challenging, or deficient. Perhaps the most pressing issue with labeling a student as challenging or deficient is that none of these labels are ever true. Isn’t that refreshing? Our students are not challenging, bad,

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or naughty. Instead, student actions and behaviors, influenced by a contextual stew of socioemotional, academic, environmental, and disability-specific factors, present as challenging or disruptive.

In other words, we must remember that kids are not bad. All kids want to be loved and understood. All challenging behavior is merely evidence of kids asking us for that love and understanding in a way they know how. The more significant the presentation of behavior, the more we need to use love, support, and understanding in order to address the student’s needs.

All Students Want Love and Understanding All students want love and understanding, so it is critical to rethink deficit-

based thinking about students and student behavior. We’re sure you have, at some point, said or heard a teacher say something like, “He’s an attention seeker. He only acts out because he knows it will get him attention from the teacher or his peers.” This is a very common way to describe and explain students and their behavior. Ultimately, though, this way of thinking is fundamentally flawed. Consider the following examples:

Deficit-based thinking: We assume only kids with challenging behavior seek attention from adults and peers.

Truth: All kids seek attention. Attention is proof that we are loved and understood, which is a fundamental need for all humans.

Deficit-based thinking: We assume that kids only display the challenging behavior because it gets them something (i.e., attention).

Truth: All students would display the expected behavior if they knew how to get attention in appropriate and expected ways. The student exhibiting the challenging behavior simply doesn’t have the skills, tools, or knowledge about how to display the appropriate behavior yet.

Let’s look at another common phrase we sometimes say or hear about students with challenging behavior in teachers’ lounges and meetings: “She’s manipulative. She asks me questions that have nothing to do with the lesson, argues with me, and tells me all about what other kids are doing wrong. She often says, ‘The other kids don’t like the way I talk about them, so they avoid me.’ And I know she does all this just to avoid work!”

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Again, we understand the student’s behavior is working in her favor! But here, too, this deficit-based thinking about a student and her behavior is fundamentally flawed. Let’s consider another set of beliefs around student behavior:

Deficit-based thinking: We assume that kids who display challenging behavior have planned the behaviors out using skillful forethought, impulse control, planning, and organization.

Truth: Most of us behave in ways to get our needs met. That does not make us manipulative. Most students with challenging behavior don’t have the very skills (i.e., impulse control, planning, and organization) needed to manipulate an outcome. In fact, if the kid had those skills, she would most likely be able to attend to the tasks at hand (e.g., focusing on the lesson and building positive relationships with peers) and avoid getting in trouble and isolating herself from peers.

Rethinking the deficit-based approach to working with students that attempts to incorrectly identify student behavior as normal or abnormal, good or bad, or malicious or innocent is the first step in reclaiming our classrooms as places of love. We must commit to the understanding that all kids want to behave because they all want love, understanding, and success. For kids with challenging behavior, we must remember that they want to attend to the math task like you’ve asked. They want to engage with peers in appropriate ways that lead to strong peer connections and friendships. They want to have positive relationships with adults, including you. But for kids with challenging behavior, they might not have the specific skills, prior knowledge, or opportunities to succeed in the ways in which schools expect them to succeed and behave.

Kids Do Well if They Can Ross Greene, a scholar who writes and speaks with great expertise about how

to implement better, more effective ways to work with kids with challenging behavior, explains in his important school-based text Lost at School (2008) that we must shift our thinking from “Kids do well if they want to” to “Kids do well if they can” (p. 10). This paradigm shift is powerful because it helps us reimagine our students using a strengths-based and compassionate perspective.

When we realize that all students want to do well, it helps us approach students in new ways. Even when students are demonstrating that they don’t

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care or don’t want to try, we must look past the actual behaviors and language to the meaning behind it. Students might act as if they don’t care because they are fearful they won’t be successful. Students might say they hate us because they are scared we will be disappointed in them. Supporting a student who is scared or anxious is much different than looking at the behavior as defiance or manipulation. We not only need to rethink student motivations; we also need to reexamine our larger structures that are based on the myth of normalcy.

Normalcy Is a Myth In schools across the country, the concept of “normal” often marginalizes

students based on issues of differences, such as perceived ability, behavior, race, and language. We often do it with the best of intentions, but it still happens. The student with dyslexia who doesn’t read as well or as quickly as her peers is often educated in a segregated reading room down the hall. The student who is more verbal than others is told again and again to be quiet. The African American boy who displays challenging behavior in a predominately white school can be quickly disciplined, or even wrongly labeled with an emotional disturbance. Though there are many issues to grapple with in these examples, ultimately, they represent the damage deficit-based thinking can inflict on student structures such as placement, labeling, rules, policies, regulations, and ideas about what students can be.

The more equitable, effective, and loving way to work with kids with diverse backgrounds, abilities, and needs—including behavioral needs—builds on the peer process of diversity acceptance we shared earlier. First, we acknowledge that difference is the norm. This means that normal behavior, normal academic achievement, normal communication styles, and normal social skills—frankly, whatever you are attempting to normalize!—are myths. You and your students are thankfully too diverse and amazing to behave, move, think, communicate, and interact in the same standardized ways.

It is often easy for us to value diversity, but when it comes to students with challenging behavior, it is common for us to quickly jump to conclusions and beliefs about the student. Instead of these knee-jerk reactions when we are faced with behaviors that challenge us, we must pause and take the time to acknowledge and value the individual differences that have carried the student to this particular point in her life, education, and, of course, the specific challenging behaviors.

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Embracing diversity means we must also abandon the idea that normal behavior is the only valuable behavior. This idea can be very hard because we know classroom disruptions happen due to challenging behavior, and we’d rather those disruptions didn’t happen at all. But if we take a moment to reimagine our well- behaved students and expand our thinking to include all our students, even if they have challenging behaviors, we then begin to expect that all our students will behave differently and will need to learn different skills.

If students are only valued when they are quiet and compliant learners, never question our authority, and do what they’re told, we run the significant risk of devaluing and underestimating too many of our students. Instead, when we seek to understand the whole student, we can begin to celebrate how they show up every day, even without all the skills it might take to succeed the way they’d like to (or in the ways we’d like them to). Only then can we begin to consciously create a classroom environment that values and addresses not only the needs of our diverse students but also the individuality they each bring to our world. Only then can we truly begin to understand our students as valuable—not despite the individual ways they move, think, play, and communicate but because of those differences.

Star the Strengths Often, our kids with challenging behavior can spend the majority of their days being told what they’re doing wrong and how to do it—whatever it is—the “right” way. Sit still. Be quiet. Do your work. Walk in a straight line. Write neatly. Speak clearly. Raise your hand. It can be exhausting for educators and students. When we hyperfocus on fixing the behaviors and require kids to achieve that mythical norm, we often miss out on opportunities to give them a chance to nurture talents and skills. Let’s push against the traditional school mode of obedience and lean into radical love in the classroom. We begin by starring students’ strengths.

Carve out time and space to help students develop and build upon what they are interested in and good at. Starring the strengths helps you to approach students from a place of love and respect, and it helps you build their confidence so they feel, perhaps even for the first time, successful and confident at school. For example, take the way 10th grade teacher, Patrice Smith, approached a student named Song

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and starred her strengths to help address challenging behavior and simultaneously improve her feelings of success and belonging.

Song was often in the principal’s office for “defiant and loud class disruptions,” particularly during her English class with her ELA teacher, Tom. Tom was at his wits’ end because, as he said, “Song is such a bright student, a good student, but she just can’t keep it together in ELA. And with her outbursts, I just can’t have her constantly disrupting the class. I don’t know what to do.” Song ’s geometry teacher, Kim, knew Song to be an excellent student with minimal to no disruptions in class. Kim suggested that she and Tom brainstorm about Song ’s strengths and talents together. They discovered that Song

• Is a strong student who loves math and problem solving. • Has two younger siblings and works very well with younger students. • Loves comic books. • Is interested in her Asian American heritage. • Is musical. • Is a kinesthetic learner and likes to move about when working. • Is a leader among her peers.

Maybe you’re thinking that you’re at the beginning of the school year and you couldn’t possibly know all the relevant information about a student yet, not to mention a list of their talents and strengths. We recommend engaging students in this work by asking them to think through their strengths and talents during class meetings or morning circles, or even by handing out a survey or multiple intelligence quiz in class. These practices can help students identify and star their own strengths, talents, and interests so they know how best they can learn, interact, and grow.

Once you do this with your entire class, you can create a positive student profile that helps you understand particular students with challenging behavior from a restoried, strengths-based perspective. By using Figure 1.1, we recommend writing this positive student profile with the student to make sure everything is accurate and true and that they feel a part of the process. Sometimes, this might require support from family, siblings, and friends. Keep in mind that the information in the profile should be used to create new ways and opportunities for the student to build on their strengths and interests and, ultimately, to shine in your classroom.

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STRENGTHS, TALENTS, AND INTERESTS • Is a strong student who loves math and solving problems • Is bilingual • Has two younger siblings and works very well with younger students • Loves comic books • Loves K-Pop • Is interested in her Asian American heritage • Is a leader among her peers

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES • Has logical-mathematical intelligence • Has musical intelligence • Is a kinesthetic learner and likes to move when working

ACADEMIC SUBJECT INFORMATION • Is very strong in math and science • Excels in art and music class • Loves science and maintains a 99% average • Loves lab assignments, especially when she is the lab leader • Reads English independently at two grade levels below her peers • Has a reading comprehension level one grade level above her peers with access

to audio, text, and read-alouds

SOCIAL INFORMATION • Has some close friends • Still has learning strategies for dealing with conflict

FAMILY INFORMATION • Lives with her parents, grandmother, and three elementary-aged younger siblings • Moved from South Korea when she was in elementary school

SPECIAL EDUCATION SERVICES OR ACCOMMODATIONS (IF APPLICABLE) • Has been labeled with a specific learning disability in reading • Has access to accommodations for audio text, text-to-speech prompts, tests,

and read alouds • Receives consultant support from special education teacher regarding reading

supports

Figure 1.1: Song’s Positive Student Profile

(continues)

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Restory the Challenging Behavior Next, you’ll want to practice restorying the student’s challenging behavior. To begin this work, we ask you to join us in a short exercise. Use Figure 1.2 to look over some of the most challenging behaviors educators consistently highlight. However, instead of asking whether you have seen your students display these challenging behaviors in your own classroom, we’d instead like you to circle any of the behaviors you yourself have engaged in over the years—as a student, an employee, a family member, a friend, or a community member.

If you’re anything like us, you might have circled several of these challenging behaviors. This also means you are perfectly human. The fact that you’ve engaged in some challenging behavior in your life doesn’t mean you are not a valued student, employee, partner, parent, or friend. It simply means you were communicating something at the time. Perhaps, at that time, you didn’t have all the necessary skills and tools to understand your behaviors or manage them to the best of your ability.

STRATEGIES THAT WORK • Allowed to take frequent breaks (up to three per class) • Responds to asking her what she needs when she seems upset • Reacts well to calm, loving responses to her behavior • Allowed to listen to music • Has access to audiobooks and texts • Has access to partnered reading • Needs help resetting behavior after an outburst

Figure 1.1: Song’s Positive Student Profile (continued)

• Yelling • Fighting • Throwing items • Avoiding work • Leaving or storming out of the room • Shutting down or closing off

• Challenging authority • Talking back • Swearing • Talking out of turn • Talking to your neighbor when the

expectation is that you should be listening to the speaker

Figure 1.2: Identifying Challenging Behavior

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Talking to the person next to you during a faculty meeting might have communi- cated that the principal had gone on too long about the new literacy program and you needed a chance to actively engage with another person rather than passively absorb. Yelling at a spouse might communicate that you are angry or not OK and need new and improved skills to help communicate anger or pain more effectively.

Now, turn this same understanding toward student behavior. Throwing something across the room might communicate she is not OK and needs support and new skills to better communicate her anger, confusion, or pain. Likewise, running out of the room and turning desks over on the way out after an altercation with a peer might communicate that the student is angry and embarrassed. Perhaps her peers didn’t know or understand that she needed a note-taking accommodation during work time. Perhaps she wanted to socialize but doesn’t have all the skills required to do so yet.

Remember, kids do well if they can. All kids want to do well because they want love, belonging, and understanding. It is up to us to restory our students’ challenging behavior in order to help them succeed, feel loved, and feel understood. Certainly, it’s what we’d want someone to do for us.

To set you up for success with the practice of restorying challenging behavior, we’ve provided a few simple questions we’d like you to follow. We will continue to use Song as an example for the process.

What is the challenging behavior? (Be as specific as possible.) Song is disruptive (e.g., she interrupts, curses, or refuses to participate) during reading activities in English class. This often results in her leaving class to visit the principal’s office or cool down.

What do we know about the student that might inform the challenging behavior? Song has a specific learning disability in reading. She was identified as an English language learner when she arrived from South Korea three years ago. She excels in math but utilizes text-to-speech applications to help her work through word problems and new math vocabulary.

How can we restory this behavior as communication?

• Song doesn’t feel confident in her reading skills. • Song doesn’t yet know how to ask for or doesn’t have the opportunity to access

her accommodations such as text-to-speech applications or audio text during her English class.

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• Song doesn’t feel like she can succeed in English class. • Song feels like she doesn’t belong in English class.

You can see that when we restoried Song ’s behavior as communication, we didn’t include stories like “Song is unmotivated in English” or “Song is manipulative and relies on behavior to get out of English work and class.” Instead, we restoried her behavior as communication from a place where she is only seeking success, connection, and belonging. Use Figure 1.3 to see how you can begin restorying your students’ experiences.

Figure 1.3: Using Restorying Questions

1. What is the challenging behavior? (Be as specific as possible.) 2. What do we know about the student that might inform the challenging behavior? 3. How can we restory this behavior as communication?

Learn from Student Behavior A critical and integrated step is to move from restorying the behavior to learning from the behavior. Once you begin to practice from the mindset that behavior is communication, you must then deeply listen, observe, ask, and learn about the behaviors—and the student as a whole person. By using these practices, you can begin to pinpoint the communicative intent in collaboration with the student and respond by providing loving and creative supports and tools. This might mean we ask the student a direct question about their behavior such as, “Song, it must mean something when you put your head down on your desk after I’ve asked everyone to independently read. Can you tell me what it means for you?”

Another strategy is to watch and make hypotheses about the communicative purpose of the behavior. This is similar to what we did when we were restorying the behavior. When creating hypotheses, always consider the most positive potential purpose for behavior that remains consistent with the facts. For example, consider a student’s need for joy, choice, control, sense of belonging, positive relationships, interdependence, independence, expressions of frustration, and access to communication as potential purposes of behavior.

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Consider also that the challenging behavior is displayed because the student, perhaps due to disability, language, culture, trauma, or any number of inter- connected and complex factors, does not have the skills or tools with which to communicate, process, or regulate their emotions or behavior in a way that schools or educators deem appropriate. Remember that kids do well if they can, and we must always assume that students do not have a malicious or manipulative intent. We must believe they are simply trying to have their needs met and, in some cases, merely survive. If colleagues disagree with you, you can point them to empirical evidence that shows behavior is linked to a mismatch between student needs and classroom expectations, activity, schedule, or environment (Epstein, Atkins, Cullinan, Kutash, & Weaver, 2008). Alternatively, you can say that you choose to believe this because you are reclaiming your classroom as a place of love and therefore must look for the positive intent in your students.

Expand Your Perspective and Give It Time If we are to commit to supporting students from a place of love, we must widen our lens of understanding and address the greater context of factors affecting the student. We must dive deep into learning about students’ preferences, talents, and interests; their family context; the way they interact with the curriculum; our instruction and teaching style; and the social landscape of our classroom, school community, and larger community. When challenging behavior occurs, in order to consider the most loving response, we must try to understand how the behavior is connected to all these factors.

Not only is this hard work, it also takes time. We must practice patience because knowing about students and providing supports doesn’t mean the behaviors will stop right away. Just as it takes practice to learn new math and reading skills, it also takes students time to learn new skills to express their emotions, needs, and wants.

Apply the Golden Rule The golden rule for supporting students with challenging behavior in schools is to support them just as you would want to be supported. Remember the exercise we did earlier in the chapter where we asked you to circle some of the challenging behaviors you have displayed?

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Now we’re going to ask you the follow-up question: “What was it I needed in that moment?” Go ahead and get out your journal to respond.

Did you need a hug? The benefit of the doubt? A friend to listen to you? A chance to escape the faculty meeting? Someone to help you outline the difficult task ahead of you? A nap? A snack? Whatever it was you answered, we imagine that your responses did not align with what so often is provided to students in schools with challenging behavior—angry words and body language, physical redirection, limited recess, a visit to the principal, a punitive call home, lunch or afterschool detention, a suspension. The issue is, we know these don’t often work. Paula Kluth (2010) even argues that a “punitive approach almost always serves to distance the teacher from the student and certainly fails to strengthen their relationship. It is ironic, but true, that the more a teacher may try to control a situation [or behavior], the more out of control that situation may become” (p. 22). Instead, as educators, we must practice the Golden Rule with our students if we are to reclaim our classrooms as places of love.

Be Conscious of Your Language As poet Gregory Orr says, “ Words build worlds,” so we must be incredibly conscious of the words we use about and with our students.

Using Writing Consider the words written about students who have challenging behavior. We

might see a long list of deficits, disorders, and problems written in indelible ink in a student’s IEP. Each sentence represents a problem or situation that gets recorded in that student’s permanent record. We would like you to rethink that practice and instead record all the student’s gifts, strengths, and positive attributes. When we write about students in these ways, we can actually restory a student’s future.

Using Personal Communication We like to stick to the following three guidelines when communicating, regardless

of the age of the person with whom we are connecting.

1. Use positive and loving language. Using positive language with students helps frame the way they will think about themselves, respond to us, and interact with one another. If we use negative deficit-based language with

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students, they internalize it and respond accordingly with self-doubt, a negative self-image, and deficit-based language with us and peers.

2. Be honest, specific, and direct. Students in our care deserve our respect and love, and that means we must be honest, specific, and direct with them. Phrases like “Great job” and “Try harder” are vague and don’t mean anything to students or to us. If we want students to understand that telling a peer they’re a “retard” isn’t OK in a classroom grounded in love and respect, we must shift our response from “We don’t use that word, Peter” to “Our class expectation is that everyone is treated with love and respect in here.” It is also important to know that the conversation doesn’t end there. Having a private conversation with Peter later or even scheduling a class meeting to revisit the type of language and respect expected in class is an important follow-up step.

3. Use inclusive language. This may seem like a no brainer, but it is so important to use inclusive language in all its forms. Spend the time to learn the correct pronunciation of all your students’ names and their preferred pronouns. Always use age-appropriate language with students and speak directly to them—not to teaching assistants, paraprofessionals, or other educators. Use a student’s native language in everyday conversation and make sure your curriculum, whenever possible, represents the cultures, genders, and racial makeup of your class. Make sure to avoid isolating phrases such as “Tell your mom and dad” because so many of our students have unique family constellations, whether it is two moms or dads, grandparents, a single parent, or a legal guardian.

You likely have other guidelines for communication and language you use to help focus on empowering your students, building their confidence, and creating an environment of belonging. We encourage you to continue building that practice and sharing with your students, colleagues, and families.

Learn to Love Sometimes we need to dig deep to star student’s strengths and restory their challenging behavior. Even if you want to love all your students, it might take more time and effort to accomplish that goal. But if you are to reclaim your classroom as a place of love, we ask you to change your thinking about what it means to love a student. Attempt to create a love that is resilient and unconditional. A love that

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doesn’t depend on the student’s behaviors or daily moods. If you can approach all students with this type of unconditional love, you can more readily embrace their challenging behaviors with humor, curiosity, and empathy. You can clean up the mess and give a hug. You can know it’s OK for you to be disappointed sometimes— or even often. You can embrace the knowledge that learning new skills takes time and patience—both for you and them.

There is much about teaching that can make us feel like giving up, but when you love your students, it is easier to find strength. In fact, in bell hooks’s powerful book all about love (2000), she writes, “Knowing love or the hope of knowing love is the anchor that keeps us from falling into [that] sea of despair.”

We believe that all endeavors to teach your students to be creative, com- passionate, and thoughtful critical thinkers will be in vain if you cannot show up for them with love and give them the hope that goes along with being loved. This is particularly important to recognize when they are communicating to you through challenging behavior that they need new skills, tools, relationships, and love. We know that education is much more intimate than is often discussed. Every day, we work to develop intellectual and emotional connections with our students and engage them in discussions and problem solving that will help nurture their love of self and community.

We must not manage our classrooms. We must learn to love our students.

Recognize the Difference We Make Six Hours a Day When we open ourselves to working with and loving our students, we also open ourselves to heartbreak regarding all they are going through. Many of our students have experienced more trauma and heartache than we have. When working in schools, it is common to experience personal heartbreak because we feel helpless to deal with forces outside school that negatively affect our students’ mental, physical, and emotional health, such as homelessness, addiction, unmet mental health needs, abuse, incarceration of family members, and so much more.

As an open-hearted and loving educator, these feelings of heartbreak and hopelessness are normal and natural. Worry and loss of sleep over our students is part of being a compassionate human being. Compassion fatigue is what we label an extreme state of tension caused by helping. It evidences a focus on the suffering of those in need to the degree that it can be felt as a secondary trauma.

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In the research about strategies used in effective trauma-informed schools, educators are encouraged to practice preventative measures through self-care (we will address this topic in greater detail in Chapter 2) and increased awareness and identification of secondary trauma symptoms, such as feeling overwhelmed, hopelessness, fatigue, engaging in self-destructive coping strategies, low job morale, and withdrawing from relationships with colleagues or family.

Self-care and awareness are important strategies to prevent or deal with secondary trauma, as is connecting with your colleagues and friends. Tracy, a teacher we know who works in a middle school with a high rate of students dealing with trauma, started a Teachers Supporting Teachers group at his school. Every Monday after the bell rings, the group gets together to check in about how they are doing, share self-care strategies, and simply connect and recharge with one another. Tracy said that for something that wasn’t all that difficult to organize or execute, it has done miraculous things for his morale and well-being. Beyond caring for yourself and connecting with others, it is also important to ground yourself in all you do have control over when it comes to your students.

We have over six hours a day to make a difference in the lives of our students. We have six hours per day to fill a student up with love and hope. We have 360 minutes a day or 21,600 seconds per day to change their lives in ways beyond our imagination. It is unknowable what can be accomplished for a student in that amount of time. The hugs, the high fives, the handshakes, the wiping of tears, the positive messages of “You can do this” and “You are deserving of love and belonging ” all make a significant difference. You may be one of many people in a kid’s life who provides them with a foundation of love and kindness, or you may be the only one. If we remember that our main goal is to build, support, love, and connect, then our teaching, our students, and our relationships in schools can flourish.

Rock Your Support of Students In a recent presentation with a large group of educators, we brought large landscaping rocks, each the size of a person’s hand, and set them in the middle of each table. We explained the following Rock Rules:

1. Put a rock in your dominant hand. 2. Do not set the rock down.

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3. Hold the rock the entire time. 4. Do not mention your rock. 5. Bring your rock with you everywhere.

Each table group had someone designated to be sure that their tablemates followed the rules. Then, all the participants had to continue to participate in the rest of the conference. Some of the activities involved groups working together to build a tower with paper and tape, whereas other activities included individual tasks such as taking notes. If a participant did not follow one of the Rock Rules, they were to come to the front of the large room and write their name on the “Warning Wall.” After the morning activities and lunch had concluded, we told the group it was OK to set down their rocks and discuss the experience.

We began by talking about what the rocks represented, explaining that students all carry rocks. We asked this group of educators to consider the rocks their students carry. They responded by saying that these were things that weigh students down and shared examples such as trauma, anxiety, anger, depression, stress, pregnancy, body image, isolation, homelessness, addiction issues, disability labels, poverty, sexual identity, gender identity, and mental health issues. To say the least, they came up with a lot of different kinds and sizes for the rocks.

We then discussed what it was like for them to have carried rocks all morning. The educators described being very distracted by the rocks. It was stressful attempting to keep the rocks secret. The rocks also significantly influenced their ability to stay focused and connected to the learning.

“The rock impeded my ability to do anything it seemed,” one educator said. Another educator said, “I am quite struck by how difficult this was, especially

because I knew that, at any time, I could set down my rock if I had to.” He paused and then noted, “My students don’t have that luxury.”

What We Can’t Do with Students’ Rocks We can’t hold students’ rocks for them, regardless of how much we want to

take away the pain of struggle. If we attempt to hold all our students’ challenges and concerns, two things happen. First, they do not learn how to carry and manage those issues, and second, we cannot function well when we are carrying the load of our students’ rocks.

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We can’t pity students for their rocks. Pity is not useful for students. When we pity our students, we diminish their lived experiences and the resilience it can bring. Likewise, we can’t spend our time blaming others for the rocks. Blame is not useful in schools. It is not useful to blame parents, caregivers, or situations. Instead, we can invest every breath in making our classroom experiences more accessible and compassionate for students.

We can’t group students by rocks. It is commonplace in schools to place students with the biggest rocks in the same room. However, this practice decreases the natural diversity and all the richness that comes from learning with and from people who are different from us, as well as those who may have fewer rocks to carry. Additionally, this homogenous grouping practice creates a stigma. Students quickly learn that their classroom is indeed a place for students who struggle with the biggest rocks. Lastly, students learn best from peers who can be models. For example, perhaps a student’s rock is about learning to build positive social relationships. This student will best learn this skill when she is surrounded by others who interact and socialize well.

What We Can Do with Students’ Rocks We can make space for their rocks and acknowledge and witness them. Recently,

when we were presenting and doing the rock activity with a group of educators, a teacher who was clearly frustrated came up to us during the presentation and said, “I just can’t NOT talk about this rock! The direction of secrecy is killing me. I can’t listen to what you are saying or do anything else, really. Please, can we talk about them now?”

When we keep quiet about the rocks, we increase the challenge the rock presents for the student who carries it. Instead, we must create safe and open spaces where students are free to share their struggles.

We would love to be able to teach students that they can set their rocks down, but that option is often not possible. Instead, we can teach students that their rocks do not have to sink them or weigh them down. We can teach them that once we acknowledge the rock, we can then work together to create supports to make the challenge of carrying it more manageable. For example, if a student is currently homeless and living in a shelter, we can be sure to discuss it with her. Yes, it is a huge rock; it’s a challenge she has no control over that can cause feelings of helplessness

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and hopelessness. But we are there to support her, provide extended deadlines for work, offer lunches and snacks, make her laugh, ditch the homework, and expect great things from her.

We can also help students build with their rocks. We can help them arrange their rocks into giant structures called inuksuk. An inuksuk is an Inuit practice of rock building where rocks are stacked into human form and placed in spaces where it is hard to travel. When you come across an inuksuk, it means “Someone has come before you.” In other words, for some students, we can help them know that they are not alone, that others have traversed this path before, and that they have survived.

We can also examine our own rocks. Take some time and answer the question “What rocks do you carry?” Most of us carry many challenges, even if we have not taken those rocks out to look at in a while. How are you supporting yourself ? Are you able to carry your own load of rocks, or do you need other kinds of support?

Finally, we can celebrate rocks. Lucy, a student we know, turned her rock of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) into several beautiful works of art. Painting her rock onto a canvas opened her up to a deeper understanding of her experiences and challenges. Each brush stroke helped her see how OCD affects her life. She was able to explore the weight of her OCD but also the strength and resilience it had created within her.

Lucy explained that in her artwork, she explores how she felt lost in her OCD. In Figure 1.4, you can see that she painted the feeling of losing herself in the overwhelming nature of OCD and how it can totally exhaust her with repetitive thoughts. She then said that by painting and drawing, she has been able to understand, visually, what is happening for her.

Believe it or not, our rocks can be celebrated. They might make us stronger, more independent, empathic, smarter, and creative—if not right now, then possibly in the future.

Lean in When Kids Act Out This chapter has been about restorying our students, viewing them in new ways, and helping them view themselves in new ways. We want to conclude this first chapter with an analogy from Josh Shipp (2015), an expert on supporting kids with challenging behavior and the adults those kids can challenge. Shipp begins the

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analogy by asking you to remember the last time you rode a roller coaster and the safety bar came down over your lap. You probably tested the bar by shaking it, hard, before the ride began. But you didn’t test the safety bar because you hoped it would fail and you’d go plummeting to your death as soon as the first upside-down loop appeared. You tested the safety bar to confirm its stability, ensure it was safe and secure, and confirm its ability to protect you.

Shipp explains that this is exactly what kids are doing when they challenge us. Kids with challenging behaviors have significant uncertainty in their lives. Remember all those rocks they are carrying around? All those skills they still need to learn? All those feelings of belonging and safety they crave and perhaps don’t have yet? When they test you with behaviors, they are simply looking to you to confirm that you are stable, certain, and safe. Therefore, the next time a kid tests you, we want you to simply be the safety bar for them. Know that they are simply confirming you are there for them, no matter what. Don’t push them or send them away when they challenge you. Lean in.

Source: Artwork by Lucy Benton. Reprinted with permission.

Figure 1.4: Lucy’s Rock

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Tiny To-Do List

❒ Use your journal to complete any exercises in this chapter. ❒ Take five minutes and write a new story about a specific student.

❒ What are this student’s strengths, gifts, and talents? ❒ What are some possible reasons for their behavior(s)?

❒ Write down one thing you can do today to build confidence in a student who is struggling and one thing you can do to lean in and provide them with the certainty they are seeking. Implement those new actions as soon as you can.

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North Koreaʼs human rights: What's not being talked about

18 February 2019

Trump-Kim summit

Most children receive basic education, though some are forced to drop out of school early

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A2er decades in the political wilderness, North Korea has spent the past year in a flurry of diplomatic activity.

But talks with the US, China and South Korea have so far focused entirely on trade and denuclearisation. North Korea's woeful human rights record is one topic that is yet to come up - and it's likely to remain that way.

The UN says North Koreans live under "systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations". Here are just some of the issues:

Total government control

Isolated from the rest of the world, North Korea has been ruled by the Kim family for three generations, and its citizens are required to show complete devotion to the family and its current leader, Kim Jong-un.

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The state controls everything, and actively spies on its citizens using a vast surveillance and informer network.

The economy is also strictly controlled and the government funnels money into its nuclear and missile programme despite widespread shortages of food, fuel and other basic necessities.

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Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), told the BBC that North Korea has only been able to develop an expensive nuclear programme because it is a totalitarian state, and it's done so by "taking food out of the stomachs of hungry North Koreans".

Media control

North Korea's media is arguably the most tightly controlled in the world. Reporters without Borders (RSF) ranks it last in its World Press Freedom Index.

North Koreans get all their news, entertainment and information from state media, which unfailingly praises the leadership.

According to RSF, citizens can be sent to prison for viewing, reading or listening to content provided by international media outlets.

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The Korean Central News Agency is the world's main media window on North Korea

Mobile phones are more common than they used to be, but making an overseas phone call doesn't come easy.

"You would have to get a Chinese cell phone on the black market, drive to the Chinese border and then even along the way state agents may stop you," Arnold Fang, a researcher from Amnesty International, explained to the BBC.

Internet access is available for the elite few in the capital, Pyongyang, who lead relatively comfortable lives. Others may have restricted access. The country has its own very basic intranet - a closed network which certain people are allowed to use.

But most North Koreans will likely never go online.

What the North Korean internet really looks like

North Korea error opens door to fake Twitter account

Surfing the internet in North Korea

'A steady stream of propaganda'

Religious freedom

The constitution promises a "right to faith" and there are Buddhists, Shamanists and followers of Chondoism - a native Korean religion - North Korea. State-controlled churches also exist.

But Mr Fang says this is all largely for show.

"In reality, there is no freedom of religion. Everyone is indoctrinated to treat the Kim family almost as something to worship."

KCNA

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A 2014 UN report said Christians face "persecution and severe punishments" if they practiced their religion outside state-controlled churches.

North Korea also takes a dim view on foreign missionaries. Among its most famous detainees was Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American evangelist who ran Christian tours to North Korea.

He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour in 2013 for "anti-government" crimes. He was released in 2014 on health grounds.

Prison camps and conditions

"North Korea has been said to be the world's biggest open prison camp," said Mr Adams. "I don't think that's unfair."

According to a report by the US State Department, there are between 80,000 and 120,000 people in prison in the North.

This satellite image shows a North Korean prison camp that has extensive facilities

People can be jailed for almost anything, activists say, with crimes ranging from watching a South Korean DVD to trying to defect.

Reality Check: North Korea's secretive prison system

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North Korea's secret slave gangs

What's it like to live in North Korea?

People convicted of political crimes are oden sent to brutal labour camps, which involve physical work such as mining and logging.

Amnesty has described the prison camps as "harsh beyond endurance". Detainees face torture and beatings by guards, and women are led especially vulnerable to sexual coercion and abuse.

Not all those in prison have actually committed crimes. North Korea practices collective punishment, so if one member of a family is found guilty it's possible that their whole family gets punished.

North Korea makes liberal use of the death penalty and has been known to conduct public executions.

Foreign detentions

Foreign nationals in North Korea have been arrested and detained for extended periods of time - oden kept as prisoners for political reasons and used as diplomatic pawns at opportune moments.

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22-year-old Otto Warmbier (C) had travelled to North Korea as a tourist in 2016

Three US citizens, who were jailed for anti-state activities and placed in labour camps, were freed from North Korean prison as a gesture of goodwill ahead of the US-North Korea leadership summit in 2018.

But US student Otto Warmbier was not so lucky. Mr Warmbier was arrested in 2016 for stealing a propaganda sign. He was released ader 17 months in detention on health grounds, but was seriously ill - he died days ader returning home. His parents, who believe he had been tortured, sued North Korea over his death.

Will we ever know what happened to Otto Warmbier?

North Korea tourism: A dangerous gamble?

Six South Korean prisoners are still believed to be in detention.

North Korea has also admitted to kidnapping at least 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s, who they used to train their spies in the Japanese language and customs.

Among other noted kidnappings were a famous South Korean actress and her ex-husband, a film director, who were taken in the 1970s. They were forced to make films for the state but later managed to escape.

Actress kidnapped by North Korea dies

Forced labour

A significant majority of North Koreans undertake unpaid labour at some point in their lives, according to a HRW report.

Former students who defected from North Korea told HRW that their schools forced them to work for free on farms twice a year - at ploughing and harvest time - for one month at a time.

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Some North American detainees, who have now been released, recalled being forced to work on a farm while detained

North Korea also sends hundreds of thousands of people to work overseas as low-cost labour - with many of them essentially working under slave-like conditions.

It has sent workers to places like China, Kuwait and Qatar - though most countries have stopped renewing work visas to North Koreans to comply with UN sanctions. However, reports have emerged that North Koreans are still working in some places despite sanctions.

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Panorama went undercover to reveal secret work gangs.

"Many overseas workers live in a monitored dormitory where there is no freedom of movement, rendering them essentially prisoners," said Mr Adams.

A large percentage of workers' salaries are usually seized by the state - a huge source of income for the country.

Women's rights

Discrimination against women very much exists, but "there isn't a way to measure inequality in the North like how you measure the wage gap between males and females", says Mr Fang.

Some North Korean women say that sexual harassment is rife in the military

Though North Korea presents itself as nominally equal society, women are said to be deprived of education and job opportunities.

Rape and no periods in North Korea's army

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North Korean begs China not to deport wife and young son

"Women are really vulnerable - sexual violence exists but if someone assaults them they have no-one to complain to," says Mr Adams.

Reports are also rampant of women facing torture, rape and other sexual abuses while held in detention facilities - and of widespread sexual abuse in the military.

Children and malnutrition

Children in North Korea do receive education, though some have to drop out of school early to help their families survive economically, according to Mr Fang.

This 2004 photo shows a North Korean boy eating vitamin and mineral-enriched food supplied by the United Nations World Food Programme

The school curriculum is "dominated by the country's political agenda, restricting their knowledge from a very early age".

According to Unicef, 200,000 North Korean children are suffering from acute malnutrition - of which 60,000 would have become "severely malnourished".

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North Korea routinely rejects criticism of its rights records - it has said its citizens "feel proud of the world's most advantageous human rights system" - and points the finger at the flaws of other countries.

But Mr Adams of HRW says the topic of human rights in North Korea is "a bottomless pit".

"Everyone's looking out for their own interests. No-one's looking out for the interests of North Korea's citizens".

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North Korea in �� remained one of the most repressive countries in the world. Under the rule of Kim Jong Un, the third leader of the nearly ��-year Kim dynasty, the totalitarian government deepened repression and maintained fearful obedience using threats of execution, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, and forced labor. Due to the border closures and travel restrictions put in place to stop the spread of Covid-��, the country became more isolated than ever, with authorities intensifying already tight restrictions on communication with the outside world.

The government continued to sharply curtail all basic liberties, including freedom of expression, religion and conscience, assembly, and association, and ban political opposition, independent media, civil society, and trade unions.

Authorities in North Korea routinely send perceived opponents of the government to secretive prison camps where they face torture, starvation rations, and forced labor. Fear of collective punishment is used to silence dissent. The government systematically extracts forced, unpaid labor from its citizens to build infrastructure and public works

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Kim Song Ju Primary school students have their temperatures checked before entering the school in Pyongyang, North Korea.

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projects. The government also fails to protect the rights of children and marginalized groups including women and people with disabilities.

North Korea’s failures to promote economic rights resulted in increased harms to the population in ��. On January �, at a major party meeting, Kim Jong Un stated that North Koreas would need to “tighten our belts” and find ways to become self-reliant. However, the government continued its prioritization of strategic weapons development, leading the UN Security Council to maintain severe economic sanctions.

The economic impact of those sanctions, which was intensified by the Covid-�� lockdown—as well as severe floods that hit the country between June and September and destroyed crops, roads, and bridges—undermined the country’s agricultural production plan. The government continued to rebuff international diplomatic engagement and repeatedly rejected offers for international aid.

Freedom of Movement and Information

Moving from one province to another or abroad without prior approval remains illegal in North Korea. North Korea continued jamming Chinese mobile phone services at the border and arresting persons caught communicating with people outside the country, a violation of the right to information and free expression.

Networks that facilitate North Koreans’ escape to safe third countries reported extreme difficulties due to Covid-�� health measures and checkpoints on top of surveillance and

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other existing obstacles to movement in countries through which people transit. Many North Koreans in China reportedly had to stay hidden in safe houses for months, with the Chinese government continuing to catch North Korean refugees and trying to return them, violating China’s obligation to protect them under the Refugee Convention.

Despite the Covid-�� health measures, the Chinese government reportedly forcibly returned North Koreans until March. South Korean media with contacts in North Korea reported instances of the North Korean government rejecting Chinese proposals to return North Korean refugees in February and October.

The Ministry of Social Security considers defection to be a crime of “treachery against the nation.” North Koreans fleeing to China are protected under international law as refugees sur place, since those forcibly returned by China face violations that a �� UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) on human rights in North Korea has condemned as crimes against humanity. While several thousand people escaped North Korea annually earlier this decade, the numbers have decreased in recent years. Just over one thousand North Koreans fled to the south in ��, but only �� did so between January and September of ��.

Forced Labor

The North Korean government routinely and systematically requires forced, uncompensated labor from most of its population—including women and children through the Women’s Union or schools; workers at state-owned enterprises or deployed abroad; detainees in hard labor detention centers (rodong dallyeondae); and prisoners at ordinary prison camps (kyohwaso) and political prison camps (kwanliso)—to control its people and sustain its economy. A significant number of North Koreans must perform unpaid labor, often called “portrayals of loyalty,” at some point in their lives.

The government routinely compels many North Koreans, who are not free to choose their own job, to join paramilitary labor brigades (dolgyeokdae) that the ruling party controls and operates, working primarily on buildings and infrastructure projects. In theory, they are entitled to a salary, but in many cases, the dolyeokdae do not compensate them.

North Korea remained in �� one of only seven UN member states that has not joined the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Pretrial Detention, Due Process Violations, and Torture

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https://www.dailynk.com/english/north-korea-refuses-repatriation-defectors-imprisoned-dandong/

https://www.dailynk.com/english/north-korea-still-rejecting-chinese-proposals-repatriate-defectors/

https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/hrc/coidprk/pages/reportofthecommissionofinquirydprk.aspx

https://www.unikorea.go.kr/eng_unikorea/relations/statistics/defectors/

https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/05/05/north-korea-forced-labor-underpins-party-congress

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The North Korean government’s pretrial detention and criminal investigation system remained arbitrary, violent, cruel, and degrading. Ordinary citizens have no access to North Korea’s laws, which are vaguely worded and lack definitions. Law enforcement agencies and courts are controlled by the Workers’ Party of Korea, and connections and money are important determinants of whether one is detained or receives better treatment or shorter sentences. People in pretrial detention are subjected to beatings, torture, dangerous and unhygienic conditions, and other mistreatment in interrogation facilities (kuryujang), with women and girls particularly targeted for sexual violence.

Marginalized Groups

The North Korean government uses songbun, a socio-economic political classification system created at the country’s founding that groups people into varying classes including “loyal,” “wavering,” or “hostile,” discriminating against lower classed persons in areas including employment, residence, and schooling. Pervasive corruption allows some maneuvering around the strictures of the songbun system, with government officials accepting bribes to allow exceptions to songbun rules, expedite or provide permissions, provide access to certain market activities, or avoid possible punishments.

Women and girls in North Korea suffer widespread gender discrimination, high levels of sexual violence and harassment, and constant exposure to government-endorsed stereotyped gender roles, in addition to the abuses suffered by the population in general.

Human traffickers and brokers, often linked to government officials, subject women to forced labor, sexual exploitation, and sexual slavery in China, including through forced marriage. On July ��, ��, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) published a report that said women forcibly repatriated from China to North Korea were imprisoned without due process or a fair trial and then subjected to egregious human rights abuses. While in detention, the women experienced food deprivation, sexual violence, infanticide, and forced labor and were held in overcrowded prisons with dangerous conditions.

Covid-19

In ��, the North Korean government imposed various restrictions in response to the Covid-�� pandemic. While some measures that limited rights were justified by public health exigencies, others were not necessary or not proportionate and permitted grave abuses under the pretext of protecting against the spread of Covid-��.

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For instance, the government intensified enforcement of a ban on “illegal” travel to China, including by executing persons caught while attempting to escape. In August, the government created buffer zones one to two kilometers from the northern border, with guards ordered to “unconditionally shoot” on sight anyone entering without permission. Also under the pretext of Covid-�� prevention, on September ��, the North Korean navy shot and killed a ��-year-old South Korean fisheries official on a boat near North Korea’s western sea border.

The government also implemented drastic quarantines for anybody arriving from overseas at border cities, ports, and airports. North Koreans reentering the country through northern border cities did not have the option to quarantine at home and reportedly were quarantined in government-designated facilities with little food (three meals a day consisting of a bowl of boiled rice and crushed corn and some soup), inadequate medical treatment, and lack of basic needs products like electricity, some for up to �� or �� days.

North Korea maintains there are no Covid-�� cases in the country, but South Korean media with sources inside North Korea reported several deaths featuring coronavirus- like symptoms. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of October ��, North Korea had tested ��,�� people for Covid-��, with all resulting “negative” for the virus, and as of August ��, a total of ��,�� people had been placed under quarantine and as of October ��, ��,�� released.

The government also strengthened restrictions on travel domestically, issuing fewer official travel permits, imposing new temporary road checkpoints, and enhancing enforcement to prevent “illegal” travel. These measures, though justified on public health grounds, severely reduced people’s ability to access food, medicine, and other basic goods. Schools delayed their scheduled start from March until June.

On June �, Tomás Ojea-Quintana, special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, recommended that the North Korean government seek more international assistance to prevent the spread of the virus, and make all public health data publicly available, allow citizens free access to electronic communication and global news, and permit international humanitarian organizations access to the country. The government did not respond.

Key International Actors

North Korea has ratified five human rights treaties, but it has ignored its obligations under all of them. A �� UN Commission of Inquiry on human rights in North Korea

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/27/world/asia/korea-killing-defector-inquiry.html

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/nk-sinuiju-quarantine-03102020171253.html

https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-ap-top-news-seoul-pyongyang-international-news-c1f46e5e7344cb2b917e750d20c4c815

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/nk-sinuiju-quarantine-03102020171253.html

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/searo/whe/coronavirus19/sear-weekly-reports/weekly-situation-report-week-44.pdf?sfvrsn=d0afb7d4_2

https://www.dailynk.com/english/sources-almost-200-soldiers-have-died-covid-19/

https://www.dailynk.com/english/four-north-korean-military-hospital-doctors-die-symptoms-similar-covid-19/

https://www.nknews.org/2020/11/north-korea-records-6173-suspected-covid-19-cases-nobody-tests-positive/?t=1606214361777

https://www.nknews.org/2020/08/north-korea-tested-more-than-2700-people-for-covid-19-all-results-negative/?t=1604999665662

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/searo/whe/coronavirus19/sear-weekly-reports/weekly-situation-report-week-44.pdf?sfvrsn=d0afb7d4_2

https://www.dailynk.com/english/north-korea-further-strengthens-restrictions-domestic-travel/

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25941&LangID=E

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found that the government committed gross, systematic, and widespread rights abuses, including extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, and other sexual violence. It recommended the UN Security Council refer the situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC). The North Korean government has repeatedly denied the commission’s findings and refused to cooperate with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Seoul or the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in North Korea.

On June ��, ��, the UN Human Rights Council adopted without a vote a resolution emphasizing the advancement of accountability efforts and mechanisms. As recommended by the Commission of Inquiry and mandated by subsequent council resolutions, the UN high commissioner for human rights continued to gather evidence of human rights abuses and crimes against humanity committed by the government. In November ��, the UN General Assembly’s third committee passed without a vote a resolution condemning human rights in North Korea.

Although the US-led efforts to place North Korea’s human rights violations on the UN Security Council agenda as a threat to international peace and security between �� and ��, since �� its mission to the UN failed to do so, and there was no formal council discussion of North Korea’s record in ��. However, the US government continued to impose human rights-related sanctions on North Korean government entities, as well as on Kim Jong Un and on several other top officials. The US also continued to fund organizations promoting human rights in North Korea.

Despite North Korea’s rejection of any diplomatic engagement, South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s administration attempted to develop better relations with Pyongyang in ��, apparently to placate North Korea. The South Korean government has not adopted a clear policy on North Korean human rights issues and in �� it did not co- sponsor key resolutions on North Korea’s human rights record at the UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly.

On � July, the UK introduced new human rights sanctions, including against two North Korean entities in charge of the forced labor, torture, and murder that takes place in the country’s political prison camps (kwanliso) and ordinary prison camps (kyohwaso).

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110

Dealing with Crisis Artfully

The goal of this book is to help students be seen, heard, and supported so they do not end up in an emotional crisis. However, even with thoughtful planning and creative and engaging support for both the student and yourself, some students will still struggle with behavior. In this chapter, we work through steps to implement when a crisis occurs, beginning first by accepting that crises will occur and then figuring out how to respond in compassionate, calm, and loving ways.

Playing the Long Game of Love and Persistence We were recently in a kindergarten classroom observing Sam, a student with very challenging behavior, and were able to witness a beautiful example of love and connection. As we walked in, Sam was already in a full meltdown. He was screaming, crying, and hitting the carpet with a pillow. It appeared he had already knocked several books off the shelf, as there were many books scattered on the floor, and some looked to be ripped. One of the coteachers had taken the rest of the class to the library a few minutes early in order to help Sam maintain dignity and privacy while the other coteacher stayed behind to support. What we witnessed next was nothing short of magic.

His kindergarten teacher, Mr. Goode, sat on the carpet next to him. He reassured Sam with the following phrases: “I am here. It is going to be okay, I promise.”

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Sam writhed around screaming and hitting the pillow on the carpet. He was yelling, “I hate you! I hate school! I hate this!” During Sam’s outburst, Mr. Goode’s disposition remained calm, loving, attentive, nearly meditative. The student sobbed, screamed, and sobbed some more.

Mr. Goode offered, “Do you want my hand on your back?” Sam yelled, “No!” Mr. Goode continued sitting silently next to Sam, breathing slowly, deeply, and audibly. After what seemed like 20 minutes—but was actually only four—something happened. Sam paused and took a shuttering breath and then sighed. Then Mr. Goode said, “There you are.”

“There you are,” he repeated, as if to say, “I see you now, and you are not your behavior.” Sam sighed again and wriggled over to Mr. Goode’s leg and rested his head on Mr. Goode’s hand. He lay there breathing. Mr. Goode breathed, too. When Sam’s breathing finally slowed down and he appeared to be ready to get up, Mr. Goode said, “Let’s get a drink of water and wash your face. I am sorry that was so hard for you.” They got up to get a drink. Mr. Goode got some water, too. He then said to Sam, “Let’s clean up these books and then we can get you to the library.” They cleaned up the books together. With Mr. Goode’s guidance, Sam taped the book that had ripped. They walked out of the classroom hand in hand.

When Mr. Goode returned, we had a lot of questions for him. The first was “What started this situation?” We learned that Sam had been having a lot of trouble because he only wanted to sit next to a student named Sabrina. But during story time, the two seats next to Sabrina were taken, so Mr. Goode suggested that he find another spot. Mr. Goode then explained, “Sam’s rage is big and deep, as you saw. It turned into quite a scene today.”

Next, we asked Mr. Goode to tell us exactly what he was doing while sitting on the floor with Sam. Mr. Goode smiled and said, “Well, I am certain none of this can be explained clearly, but I hold space. It may sound strange, but while I sat there, I opened my heart to Sam. I always first make sure the student is safe and I am safe.

“Second, I reassure the student and imagine my heart opening up to him and surrounding him with light. Then I examine my own reactions. I work on calming myself. Again, I know this sounds strange, but I ask myself, ‘Where does this hurt?’ and ‘What does this remind me of ?’ I send myself love. I surround myself with healing energy. It is fairly traumatizing to witness the pain that some of these

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children bring. I use it as an opportunity to heal myself, and I know somehow it helps to heal them.

“Next, I listen for the pause. There comes a time with Sam where he moves out of rage and into sadness. I try to let him know he is coming out of it. When I notice the shift, I say, ‘There you are.’

“I guess,” Mr. Goode continued, “today was a big rage, but it didn’t last as long as usual. I am noticing improvement in both the length of Sam’s tantrums and also the intensity. After lunch today, we will spend time talking about that situation, at a point when he is calm, but it is still fresh in his mind. That is when I like to teach him alternatives to the rage. He is really improving. It just takes time. Consistency and love are the only real constants in teaching. You just have to be patient enough to see it. This is a long game here.”

Although we think Mr. Goode was clear in his explanation, we’ve outlined his big ideas in Figure 7.1 in an attempt to replicate his calm way of being with a student during a crisis.

This type of response to crisis behavior requires a teacher who is heart-centered and ready to deeply listen to and respond appropriately to the content and context of the student in a rage. Mr. Goode did not react when Sam shouted that he hated him. He did not react when Sam shouted that he hated the class. Instead, Mr. Goode responded by breathing. This is one of the most centering things we can do for ourselves and our students. Although not responding to Sam’s shouting could be misinterpreted as planned ignoring (Scheuermann & Hall, 2016), it is not.

The idea behind planned ignoring is to provide no feedback, no attention, no reinforcement to the student. The assumption is that when the teacher withholds

Figure 7.1: Six Steps to Holding Space During Crisis

1. Hold space and open your heart. Visualize your heart opening toward the student.

2. Reassure the student with a few words and imagine the student surrounded with healing light.

3. Examine your own reactions. Ask yourself, “Where does this hurt? What does this remind me of?”

4. Create space to calm and heal yourself. 5. Listen for the pause with your student. 6. Repeat and watch the magic occur over time.

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reinforcement or attention related to the behavior (e.g., yelling “I hate you!”), the student will cease to engage in the behavior. Often, when educators use planned ignoring, they do not make eye contact or connect to the student until they are engaged in more appropriate behavior. This is much different from Mr. Goode’s continuous and thoughtful connection with Sam. He created space for Sam by physically and emotionally witnessing the crisis, supporting, and providing love. Mr. Goode did not ignore Sam by not reacting. Instead, he provided an attentive response the entire time Sam was in crisis. Mr. Goode did not let Sam’s negative statements take him away from his plan to hold space and provide love. This is the goal for supporting students when they’re at their most vulnerable.

Staying Safe and Calm When our students are in crisis, it is important to think about the safety of the student, their peers, and yourself. The best way we can do this is to practice the act of remaining calm. Mr. Goode showed us a great example of what this can look like, as do the six steps for holding space during crisis. By using these six steps (and others we will share in this chapter), you can begin to build calming strength as a critical mental resource to help you stay in the present moment and be ready to work with your students when they are melting down, throwing, kicking, screaming, punching, or self-harming. These are some of the most challenging behaviors that teachers report and that we ourselves have experienced.

We’re sure you have heard of the so-called flight, fight, or freeze reactions that biologically occur when we are faced with the threat of emotional or physical pain. Broken down a bit more, psychologist Rick Hanson (Hanson & Hanson, 2018) describes the specific emotional responses in fight, flight, and freeze as fear, anger, and helplessness. These three emotions are present in a great spectrum when we are faced with the threat of emotional or physical pain—uneasiness to panic, annoyance to rage, and feeling overwhelmed to paralysis.

Though it is normal for us to experience these emotions, and as teachers we often feel many combinations of these emotions when we are engaged with a student in crisis, it is critical that we learn and help our students learn to meet these threats of emotional or physical pain with calm strength. When we are calm and present, we can maintain our own emotional and physical state that allows us to utilize all our mental resources to support students most effectively.

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Understanding the Science of Crisis When we feel stress—whether it is emotional, physical, environmental, or academic— our body responds by releasing cortisol. This cortisol then triggers physical reactions, sometimes manifesting in a depleted immune system, increased blood pressure, or tension in large muscles. When our students are stressed and release cortisol, their bodies’ physical reactions often result in behavioral outbursts and challenging, difficult-to-manage behavior.

When kids experience high levels of stress and continual high cortisol levels day in and day out, they can begin to react to everyday experiences as if their safety and security is threatened. For example, one student, Tommy, melted into crisis when he was asked to pick up his paper off the ground. This moment of crisis can often feel very confusing for us, but it is important to remember Tommy’s physiological response to the various stressors he may be under. His crisis was not a rational, cognitive choice. It was likely a physiological response from continuous exposure to stress throughout his day and life. He also likely did not yet have the skills required to manage his stress and calm his mind and body. Keeping all this in mind is useful as you commit to responding in calm, measured, and reassuring ways when your students are in crisis.

Becoming Mindful of the Breath When our students are in crisis, our minds and bodies often respond chaotically as we attempt to deal with our emotions, thoughts, body sensations, triggers, and actions all at once. Training ourselves to focus on our breath can help us cultivate a resilience and a calmness that allows us to be present during a student crisis. We can also teach our students this skill to help them come back to themselves from the pain, stress, anger, and powerlessness they are feeling. You can focus on your breath and then invite the student to do the same. We like using hand signals, such as palms up to breathe in and palms down to breathe out. Bringing attention to our breath gives us and the student a chance to move on from flight, fight, or freeze mode—and into recovery mode.

Don’t Overestimate Threats or Underestimate Resources As humans, biologically, we often overestimate a potential threat and under-

estimate our resources to handle that threat. When a student is crying or screaming,

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we might overestimate the problem or threat and react as if it were a crisis when in reality, it is not. Have we reflected on our own reaction? Did we breathe deeply? Is the student safe? Can you sit near her and breathe deeply, assuring her that you are there and will wait with her?

Pause and Avoid Speaking or Acting in Anger This doesn’t mean we are asking you to never feel anger when a student says

something hurtful to you or another student. You might feel anger. This is normal. But we want you to practice not speaking or acting from that anger toward the student. Instead, pause and assess your emotions underneath the anger, such as your concerns or fears. For example, you can say, “I’m angry Joe is calling me hurtful names. Pause. Underneath that anger, I’m concerned because he has disrespected me in front of the class, and I will lose the respect of all the other students if I don’t discipline him now.”

Once you’ve acknowledged the anger and its underlying concern, we want you to practice self-compassion and talk to yourself in a heartfelt way. Separate your anger from everything else. Doing these steps will help you stay calm and speak in a way that aligns with the belief that no student is bad—and their behavior is a form of communication.

This is also a practice we can teach our students and colleagues. In many instances, these two steps can help avoid turning challenging behavior into an even greater crisis. For example, take our friend Shane, the assistant principal of a middle school in a small rural district in the northeast United States. One day at her school, a fight broke out between two 8th grade girls. Hair was pulled, faces were slapped and scratched, and yelling echoed through the hallway. Shane was in her office with the principal when the two girls were brought in by a science teacher who had stopped the fight. The teacher began explaining what he had seen. The principal began to order suspensions for both girls while asking who had started the fight and why. In response, the girls started to scream at each other and at the principal.

Shane interrupted and said, “Why don’t we all pause?” She paused, took a deep breath, and then continued, “Before we pass blame or suspensions. Let’s take some time to cool down and come back together to talk about this when we’re not all in such a heated zone.” The girls looked at Shane. The principal looked at Shane but

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then nodded and said to the girls, “Yes, Mrs. Ruddy is right. I’ll call your parents to have them come get you today. Tomorrow morning, once we’ve had time to cool down and think, we’ll have a talk to figure out the best consequence and course of action.”

We love this example because Shane was able to model the practice of pausing and not acting or speaking from a place of anger or fear for her two students in crisis. After sharing this story with us, Shane reflected on the issues that can arise when adults hastily dole out consequences in the heat of the moment before anyone has had a chance to cool down or discuss what happened. Students feel they are not listened to. They often don’t have a chance to attempt a mediation to resolve this issue, and they don’t feel connected to the consequence. Instead, Shane likes to pause and come back together when everyone—adults, students, and parents—are calmer and ready to at least attempt to discuss the issue and come to a resolution. When this happens, she says, students feel supported, respected, and listened to.

In this particular crisis at Shane’s middle school, the girls did not receive suspensions. Instead, they participated in a mediation session with Shane, who had been formally studying Restorative Practices (RP) and conflict resolution in order to prepare for implementing RP schoolwide the following academic year. Shane, in collaboration with the principal and the two girls, decided that an appropriate consequence for their actions both in harming each other and their 8th grade community hallway would be to provide a service to their peers. They would create a project highlighting the importance of respect and healthy communication between friends and peers.

With the help of their school health teacher, the girls planned a 30-minute lunchtime event for their fellow 8th graders about healthy relationships. This led to an activity about setting boundaries and having clear communication. They shared with their peers that their fight had resulted because of rumors instead of clear communication. Shane was inspired by how effective this approach was to the girls’ crisis, how much more the girls learned from mediation and service work in lieu of traditional suspensions, and how it not only helped mitigate the negative impact on the school community but also provided a positive impact.

After dealing with that crisis using RP, Shane was even more committed to implementing the approach schoolwide. Three years later, both her district’s

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middle school and high school use RP as a foundation for supporting all students. Shane reports that in-school and out-of-school suspensions are significantly down, and the attendance and graduation rates at the middle and high schools are up. Her district’s positive outcomes are not singular. Research has consistently shown that schools that strive to keep students in school—compared with schools that more actively suspend students—have increased student achieve ment outcomes (Osher, Poirier, Jarjoura, & Brown, 2014).

Creating Your Own Success Plan In Chapter 6, we outlined our process for heartfelt problem solving that results in developing a success plan for students. Sometimes, though, when crises erupt, we also need to create our own success plan. We recommend using the steps in Figure 7.2 alone or with a friend, colleague, or loved one.

Another important factor in effectively supporting students in crisis is to understand that public reprimands always increase the chance of escalating the student’s behavior. Whether it is raising your voice or using a public behavior chart, these types of public displays send a negative message to the student who will then experience a swell of anxiety, embarrassment, and shame. Certainly, we know that students can press our buttons even when we acknowledge and try to always honor these important truths.

Kate vividly remembers during her first month as a teacher, she sent a student named Jonas out of her classroom after getting into an argument about his independent research project.

Jonas had cursed at me and told me he hated me and my stupid class. I remember turning bright red, feeling my flight-or-fight response kicking in, and telling him, “We don’t speak to each other like that in here. You better leave now and go to the office to cool down before returning.” Oh, did I make a mistake.

At that point in my career, I didn’t have the skills to deal with behavior and crisis that I needed. I hadn’t committed to understanding that student behavior is communication, and I certainly didn’t pause to avoid acting in anger before doling out a consequence. I took everything Jonas said personally. I thought, “He is right; I’m a terrible teacher and my class is stupid!”

Worst of all, I knew I had branded myself as a teacher who sends students out of the room, signaling to Jonas and his peers that he did not belong in our class. This

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Figure 7.2: Creating Your Own Student Success Plan

What do I need to recover from this situation?

What might need repair? How can I repair it? What might I need to restore? How can I restore it?

What types of supports can I put in place?

In what ways do I need to fill my cup to be even more prepared for this situation in the future?

What are three steps I can put in place to help me feel more successful? 1.

Is there anyone I need to talk to about this?

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was not the teacher I wanted to be, and it was not the teacher Jonas needed me to be. Jonas tested me and instead of leaning in, I pushed back.

When Jonas left my classroom, he didn’t come back that period. Or the next day. Or the next. I knew he was skipping class because I made him feel bad, and I had done so in front of his peers. I needed to check in with him and apologize. I needed my own success plan. I sought him out during lunch time in the courtyard where I knew he often hung out with his friends. When I approached the group, he was there but avoided looking at me. I asked if I could speak to him privately and, without speaking, he moved to one side, away from his peers.

I told him that I’d messed up. I shouldn’t have raised my voice at him or sent him out of the class. I told him I was sorry I had done it, sorry if I had hurt him, and sorry that even though it hurt my feelings that he had called me names, I was the one who was there to protect him and teach him, and I hadn’t done that to the best of my ability. I finished by telling him that I missed him, his humor, and his ideas in class a great deal. I told him I really wanted him to come back to class and figure out how I could help him better—and how he could help himself, too.

He didn’t say anything in return, but he came to class the next day. I spent the next few weeks earning his trust back by talking to him quietly; learning more about him, his strengths, and his needs; and leaving him positive and encouraging notes. Jonas was one of my most important early lessons as a teacher. In fact, he helped me determine who I wanted to be as an educator and commit to many of the ideas and strategies discussed in this chapter:

• Practice the pause. • Avoid acting or speaking in anger. • Hold a private conversation with the student. Create conversations that

maintain their dignity and connect with love, patience, and persistence.

When faced with a student’s challenging behavior, imagine you are the parent of that child or someone who loves the child deeply, even if you are still learning to embrace the child, behaviors and all. Consider how you would react from that loving perspective. By reacting from a position of love and acceptance, your response will be with kindness, patience, and humanity—rather than with punishment or control. A crisis response must express compassion for all involved.

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Healing with the Arts Sometimes students aren’t able or ready to communicate about pain or suffering. Miranda Field (2016) shows that music, creative writing, performing arts, and fine arts can help calm the body’s stress responses and help our students feel safer and calmer in our classrooms. Let’s look at a couple examples.

Writing a New Path Aiden was a student who had been educated full time in self-contained, special

education classroom for students with emotional disabilities during 4th grade and part of his 5th grade year. In 5th grade, though, his special education teacher, Kim, and one of the general education teachers in the school, Nancy, wanted to see him included in the general education classroom full time.

Nancy and Kim worked together collaboratively, even shifting Kim’s schedule so the two of them could coteach for part of the day in order to provide Aiden and other students with disabilities appropriate services in the general education classroom. With this important collaborative support in place, Nancy and Kim soon realized that Aiden seemed most engaged when writing stories and most energized when playing basketball. They decided that tapping into Aiden’s interest in basketball, writing, and stories would be a great way to start building his strengths, show him that they truly believed in his success, and help him identify his feelings and challenges.

Nancy and Kim began by giving Aiden time to write about what he was feeling and experiencing in his life, and when he had freedom to write about his feelings and experiences, he seemed to unlock a whole world. They not only saw the birth of a writer but also witnessed how he began to use written expression to work through some of his own trauma (the death of a grandparent). Over time, his negative behaviors decreased and he was able to make it through an entire school day without any emotional outbursts. Nancy and Kim helped him articulate that he could channel his anger and pain into writing and release some of his anger and pain by playing basketball; thereby, he could be more calming, more soothing, and more loving to himself.

When that school year came to an end, Nancy and Kim wanted to make sure Aiden continued to grow his writing as a powerful coping strategy and creative skill. They encouraged and helped him apply to a summer writing program at The

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Telling Room, an organization in their community that supports and empowers youth through writing. Aiden attended the program that summer and continued to hone his writing and even got involved in documentary filmmaking. Later that year, Aiden took part in The Telling Room’s community anthology event. He read one of his poems (see Figure 7.3) in front of hundreds of supporters who attended. His teachers were profoundly moved by Aiden’s growth as a writer and an empowered communicator of his own trauma—along with the self-compassion and self- understanding he’d learned along the way.

For the Love of Dance Jane was a 2nd grade student who went into crisis during transitions. Her

teacher, Dave, explained, “If she was happy where she was, that’s where she wanted to stay. If she was asked to leave that happy place, she’d throw herself onto the floor and kick, scream, and thrash around.”

At first, Dave was stumped. He called in the behavior specialist, the special educator, the occupational therapist, and anyone he could get to help figure out Jane’s transition crises. During one meeting with the behavior specialist, Trina, Dave explained all the various scenarios in which Jane had been in crisis during transition. Trina looked at him and smiled kindly. She then said, “This question might seem off topic, but I promise it’s not. What does Jane love to do?” Dave replied, “I guess she loves to dance. She’s actually a terrific dancer.” Trina and Dave brainstormed how to incorporate dance into transition time for Jane.

The next day, when Dave asked his class to transition from recess back to class for math, one of Jane’s happy places, he told them they would be dancing back to class in a conga line. Jane’s face lit up and she beelined to the front of the line in order to lead the conga. When the conga line was such a success, Dave began to brainstorm other types of dancing transitions throughout the day to support Jane. Soon, he realized it would be more fun and collaborative to enlist the help of the entire class. Dave and his students brainstormed a long list of dance transition possibilities, including tangoing with a partner from the desk to the rug for reading (one of our favorites). He hung the list prominently on the classroom wall and referred to it throughout the year to support transition decisions. Dave reflected that although Jane still occasionally struggled with transitions, the dancing was a huge support for her, and his class sure had a lot more fun.

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MY LIFE Cancer took a person I loved It’s hard not getting to say goodbye the way I wanted to I never even got to say the word

It’s hard having anger inside Like a volcano Ready to erupt a giant rock that shoots out lava Smells like ash and fire breathe me in and you will suffocate

No one wants a life full of anger I never wanted a life Full of anger

I hear my anger Like a roar of a lion it gets me mad My heart pounds with anger it always pounding like a drum in me

I feel different than other people I sometimes feel like I don’t belong on Earth No one wants a life full of anger I never wanted a life Full of anger

I’m alive when I play basketball I turn my anger into energy I get rid of the energy By playing basketball

Writing is how I express my feelings you can figure out if I’m happy or mad Hopeful or sad By reading my writing the words might have hate or happiness I express my feelings through these things Nothing helps but writing and basketball

Figure 7.3: Aiden’s Poem

Source: Poem by Aiden G. Reprinted with permission.

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Following (and Changing) the Plan Educators often create a crisis plan for any type of emergency, particularly for times when they must react to extremely challenging behavior. Research indicates that a crisis intervention plan offers a coordinated approach for responding to serious incidents (Bender & McLaughlin, 1997; Skiba & Peterson, 2000). Create a crisis binder that includes a note so that in an emergency situation, any adult in charge can follow specific directions for the class. Determine a neutral place where the class could go (e.g., the media center), and have independent work prepared for students. This allows the teacher to be available for an individual student, perhaps simply to sit and breathe together, while maintaining the highest level of safety for the rest of the class in times of crisis.

Although there can be many steps to support a student, sometimes changing those steps is just as important. Simply because you or an entire team has created a fully detailed and scripted crisis plan does not mean you need to stick to it 100 percent of the time. You can decide to change the plan if it will help the student. Just be sure everyone is clear on the changes. Most importantly, be sure the student understands the changes.

There’s never a good time to implement a new way to do things in schools, especially if we don’t feel ready or if we know it will take a lot of our time and energy to do it well. Nevertheless, if we’ve learned one thing in our decades of work with educators to create inclusive change, it is this: It will always be too soon.

We were recently inspired by author and entrepreneur Seth Godin (2014), who writes, “There is a fundamental difference between being ready and being prepared. You are more prepared than you realize. You probably aren’t ready, and you can’t be ready, not if you’re doing something worthwhile” (p. 80). Johannes Gutenberg, Godin explains, launched the printing press when 96 percent of the population was illiterate. Karl Benz introduced the car to Germany when it was still against the law to drive one. No one knew how to drive, there weren’t roads, and there were no gas stations.

You might not be ready to implement new ways to support kids with challenging behavior, but you are more prepared than you think. Getting started is always worthwhile, especially when you consider that you’ll be starting something that will lead to a safer and more loving environment that provides more positive and creative support for your students and for you.

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Tiny To-Do List

❒ Create your own success plan and have it ready for a crisis. ❒ Consider getting students access to artful healing. ❒ Write down all the ways you are prepared to do this important work. ❒ During a crisis situation, practice the following actions:

❒ Hold space. ❒ Practice pausing. ❒ Breathe.

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