The Joyful School

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about school culture and the roles that student behavior and classroom management play in helping create that culture. I came across a posting, “10 Belief Statements About Student Discipline,” that really pushed my thinking about student behavior. (The blog is written by Chris Wejr, an elementary principal in British Columbia, Canada, and his posts always get me thinking. Thank you, Chris!)

As I’m sure is true at most schools, a popular topic of conversation among our faculty this year has been related to how we approach student behavior. A lot of these discussions have been focused on how we encourage students to take responsibility for their inappropriate actions. While I agree that it’s vital to be held accountable for bad behavior, I’ve been thinking about how we can take a more proactive approach with our students. How can we reach them – and how do we reach them – before misbehavior occurs?

Perhaps the foundation for this would be to create a school culture where everyone cares for everyone else. Wouldn’t that be a joyful school? Just imagine a school where everyone is cared for, where students are excited to be, where behavior issues are minimized, and where learning is optimized.

As a first step toward creating a joyful school, perhaps we need to examine our beliefs about student behavior. In the video at the top of this blog post, Ross Greene says that we need to have a philosophy if we work with kids because our philosophy will guide our actions. He challenges us to believe that kids do well if they can, which is quite different from believing that kids do well if they wanna. (Please take four-and-a-half minutes and watch the video. I’ll bet it will get your thinking going, too!)

If we have the mentality that kids do well if they can and we have a child who isn’t doing well, we’ll approach the situation by finding out what’s getting in the child’s way so that we can address the problem head on. Isn’t that what caring is all about: supporting each other during challenging times? Just imagine if we all shared the philosophy that kids do well if they can, and just imagine if we focused on creating a culture of caring. What a joyful school that would be.