Why I’m Failing At Participative Rule Setting
Yesterday I tried to have a participative rule setting session with my students. Since I’m obviously not a big fan of imposing rules on children or using a system of rewards and punishments I wanted to attempt a group discussion on what classroom rules we should have. Here’s the basic idea behind participative rule setting:
This process can be initiated by teachers at the beginning of the term to establish rules that the whole classroom finds fair and are willing to follow. Students are more likely to keep to their end of the bargain when using No-Lose Conflict Resolution and participative rule setting because of a simple bit of common sense called The Principle of Participation.
Simply stated, the principle holds that people who are invited to participate in making decisions or setting up rules that affect them somehow are more willing to abide by them or keep to their part of an agreement. We all like feeling that our views are being represented.
Sounds great. But it isn’t easy to do. Yesterday’s class didn’t go well. I’ll explain some of the reasons I think I failed.
I Don’t Speak Chinese
This is a pretty obvious one but I think it’s important to understand how hard it is to communicate with children that don’t speak the same language.
There are some native English speakers and a few kids who are semi-fluent. But for most our interactions involve very basic, merely functional English communication. It is simple stuff like hello, how are you, go outside, go to the bathroom, who wants to play and whatever phrases we’re learning that day.
Oh yeah, there is also upside down. (This is a frequent request from the girls who want me to pick them up and carry them around upside down. It’s like some kind of drug; they get high on having blood rush to their brain. Anyway, I love the game too so I’m not complaining.)
The rest of the communication is nonverbal. This shouldn’t be underestimated. I know 100% that the kids can tell from my body language, the way I smile or laugh, how I pick them up, and everything else that I’m different from the Chinese assistants.
But when it comes to communicating an idea it gets much harder. I said to the whole class “I know this classroom has a lot of rules and I know that you guys don’t like some of them. I was hoping that we could spend ten or fifteen minutes and talk about the rules and see if we can come up with some that everybody agrees on.” The English speaking kids understood this sentence (partially at least, more on that later) but the Chinese kids had no clue. And how could they? I tried to simplify what I wanted but it isn’t easy to do. And it just confused them more. This led to the second problem.
The Chinese Translators
In my classroom there are a couple Chinese teachers who are there to help. One of them is my assistant and part of her job is to translate for me.
Usually, this isn’t a problem. She’s the nicest of the Chinese assistants and treats the kids very well. Unfortunately, this whole Principle of Participation thing wasn’t something she was even remotely familiar with. So when I said “I know you guys hate the no-talking-during-lunch rule” she translated it to “no talking during lunch.”
She wasn’t doing it maliciously or anything. When I told her I wanted to talk about the rules, she probably just assumed that it meant we were going to recite the rules. What else could it mean?
Either way, her translations essentially came out the exact opposite of what I wanted. She turned it from a participative rule setting session into a reminder about all the rules currently imposed. Fail.
This Idea Is More Foreign Than A Second Language
This is the issue that even had the English speakers confused.
Children in schools are not used to getting a say in the rules. Even if they have great parents that practice these techniques (and there is probably a 1-in-2-billion chance of that being the case) there are even fewer schools that do. Kids are used to being ordered, prodded, pushed, commanded, controlled, subjected, restrained, adjusted, confined, directed, punished, silenced, and finally questioned. They’re like terror suspects minus the water-boarding (or not).
I’m some foreigner, that they’ve only known for a week, sitting them down and essentially saying “we’re going to do things the exact opposite of every thing you’ve previously experienced.” They had no idea what I was getting at. It was kind of like when I first told them we weren’t going to do rewards and punishments back on day one and they all just looked at me like confused puppies. Only then it was cute and funny. This time it was sad.
So What Do I Do?
I think I’ve laid out the biggest three issues. I can’t speak Chinese, my translators don’t know what the fuck is going on, and my kids aren’t used to this sort of thing at all.
So how can I make this work? I don’t know actually. I’m going to keep trying. But short of learning Chinese myself or hiring my own excellent translator I’m not sure what to do. I can’t go back in time and make their parents start them on this system. And I can’t change the way the entire school works.
This is why I’m writing this post. I want your ideas. I know there are some extremely intelligent people who visit this blog and I’m sure you are one of them. Help me.
Leave a comment or email me. Or, if you have no ideas, maybe you could pass this post on to a friend. Thank you!
3 Things Wrong With The Rewards System
Most schools use a rewards and incentives system for teaching children. They are particularly prominent in younger classes where you will see things like star charts and sticker boards. The idea is that the a student earns stars or stickers or happy faces for good behavior and gets nothing (or maybe frown faces) for bad behavior.
Before I talk about some of things wrong with this system, let me first say that it is way better than a strict “do as the authority figure says or get punished” method. It actually tries to establish a consistent set of rules for what constitutes good behavior and leans much more on the rewards side as an incentive. Compared to a system that essentially treats kids like slaves to be yelled at and bullied into behaving, the rewards and incentives approach is a great leap forward (China pun, har har).
The rewards system is to strict authority what democracy is to dictatorship. Sure, democracy is better than dictatorship, but it’s still a piece of shit. Here are three things that are wrong with the rewards system:
1. It Only Teaches One Thing: Obedience
The reward system is supposed to incentivize good behavior but what it really does is teach children that being “good” means following the authority figures’ rules. Now it doesn’t really matter what the teacher defines as good behavior. It might be not talking during class or always raising your hand before asking a question. Sometimes it’s just a reward for the correct answer — which sends a terrible message to the kids that don’t know the correct answer: you’re not good.
This is especially bad when you have a big old heap of arbitrary classroom rules. For example, my Chinese assistants don’t want the kids to talk during their meals. They have a good reason for it: there is only limited time to eat and once the kids start talking they almost always ignore their food. Then lunch will end and won’t be finished and they’ll be hungry the rest of the day. But if you combine this with the rewards system you end rewarding the kids that sit quietly during their meal and punishing (with frowny faces or loss of playtime) the kids that chat while eating.
I don’t know about you guys, but punishing a kid for talking while he’s eating seems like a pretty asshole thing to do. And it certainly isn’t going to teach them anything about morality. The only lesson they will get is do what you’re told and you’ll be rewarded.
What if the rules are rational and fair? Well that certainly would be better, but I’ve just never seen it. Sure there are classroom rules about hitting and fighting — I would consider those “rational” — but there are plenty more that are about things like sitting quietly, listening to the assistants, sharing toys, not speaking out of turn, lining up before going outside, washing hands before food, etc. Again, rewarding a kid for lining up before going outside just teaches them to obey authority, nothing more.
Even if you could establish a set of rational rules, I think the message would be the same. The authority you were learning to obey would be less random and make more sense, but you’d still be learning to obey. Consistent and reasonable authority is absolutely better than random and arbitrary authority, for sure, but the lesson is unchanged.
2. It Punishes The Wrong Person
Wait, what? I’ll explain. If I’m teaching a lesson and my students aren’t listening, if they are talking amongst themselves, or staring bored out the window how is that their fault? I’m the one who is being paid to teach them. It’s my job to make my lessons and engaging and interesting. If the kids are finding my lessons boring or uninteresting I’m pretty sure that it’s my fault, not theirs.
Instead of giving them frowny faces for not listening or stars for paying attention maybe I should just focus on being a better teacher. My students don’t owe me anything, and rewarding them for paying attention to my boring ass flashcard game is just a lazy excuse for being a shitty teacher.
It applies for almost every classroom rule that you might enforce using the rewards system. You can’t settle disputes between children without the threat of a frowny face? Fail. You can’t get the students to wash their hands before eating unless you give them stickers? Fail.
I’m not saying that it’s easy to do. It’s hard as hell. I know. I’m struggling to do it. But I refuse to switch to a system that punishes or rewards the students because of my shortcomings.
3. It Establishes Artificial Consequences
When it comes to kids you hear a lot of talk about having to teach them the “consequences” of their actions. This is always done by making up some bullshit fake consequence and then imposing it on them. This is often the excuse you hear for spanking kids. Besides it being just plain wrong to hit a kid, the excuse of “it teachers them consequences” is so retarded I hate even having to address it.
Guess what everybody? In the “real world” as “mature adults” you don’t get spanked for not behaving. Excluding the one violent relationship we are all forced to participate in with our benevolent political masters, nobody is allowed to use force against you when you “don’t behave.”
What are the types of consequences we do have to face? Well, there are the outright cause and effect ones. For example, if you don’t eat, you die. These are pretty straight forward and no child needs to be taught cause and effect through punishments and rewards. Kids learn cause and effect just by interacting with the world.
There are other types of consequences too, like how your actions affect others emotionally. These aren’t learned as easily as the physical cause and effect consequences, but you don’t need a rewards system to teach them. In fact a rewards system can’t teach these types of consequences. The only way you grow to understand the emotional effects of your actions is through empathy. You have empathy for yourself and understand how others effect you and then you have empathy for others and understand how you effect them. How do you encourage this in kids? That’s probably a topic for another post, but I think you start by showing them empathy.
McCoy’s First Day
Okay so my first day was much like Anderson’s in that they just threw me right into teaching, even though I made sure this morning that I wasn’t going to be teaching they still put me in a classroom completely unprepared. It didn’t go as well as I had wanted it to but in the end I was fairly satisfied.
My first class was half an hour and it was a group of 5 and 6 year olds. I got them up and moving with Head, Shoulders and then did some body part flash cards with them, and then played a game with them. This class was only 30 minutes and went pretty well considering the circumstances.
The second class went much worse. It was what my placement coordinator called an international class, of 2 and 3 year olds, who speak very little English. The first problem with this, as Anderson pointed out, was the fact that 2 year olds have much more important things to learn. Why the hell are they even in school at this age. The second problem is that the Chinese teachers for whatever reason don’t give a crap about these students.
So I was left basically alone, unprepared with teachers who refused to really help me or the children. I suppose it could have been worse, they could have been ass holes to the students like the ones at Anderson’s school. So I tried as hard as I could to keep their attention and to teach them colors and body parts and did really enjoy it when the students knew what was going on.
The best part of my experience with the second class was when I was saying goodbye to them. They were all very sweet and were telling me that they would see me next week, and were excited to give me a handshake or a high five as I was leaving which I found to be incredibly sweet and awesome.
That was pretty much it for my first day, and I’m getting excited for teaching these kids when I actually have some plans and music for them.
And one other note. I also met another American who teaches at the same school that I am going to be at. We went out for a beer at the end of the day and I asked him his motivations for teaching and what he thought about the kids. The first thing that he said was that he believes that there are no bad children, and we went on to talk about methods for teaching and stuff.
It is refreshing, after seeing so many of the new recruits, and how they don’t seem to give a shit, to meet somebody who when you ask them a question like that, that their first response is that there are no bad kids. It really does make me excited to know that there are other people out there who are doing this for all the right reasons, and realize the impact that we are going to have on these children, as opposed to people who are doing this just to get to China.
So overall a pretty bad day considering the circumstances, but one that affords me great hope for this coming year, and has made me really excited for being here.
Anderson’s First Day
So I’ve had about 2 days of full work and I thought I’d write a post about how it has gone so far. Especially the first day which will likely be the template for what I will experience every other day.
The Worst Parts
Pretty much any time I was dealing with adults. Like McCoy explained in his last couple posts, trying to get things done (in an honest and legitimate way) is like pulling teeth in China. I spent all of my “adult interaction” time trying to figure out if I was keeping my job, if McCoy was getting one, where we were going to live, and why no one would just deal plainly with us.
But that wasn’t so bad. The absolute worst part — and will continue to be the worst parts of all my days — was seeing the poor treatment of children. It’s mostly a lot of little things that show how little respect adults have for children. The worst incident happened during the students’ lunchtime.
I was in my classroom sitting with my students when a Chinese assistant stormed into the room with a student of a different class. She was pulling him along with one hand and had his plate of food in the other. The assistant forced him into a seat at a far table and slammed the food down in front of him. She yelled at him angrily. Then, she pulled him out of his seat and dragged him toward our table while pointing and yelling. It was in Chinese but I guessed it was something like “Look at how well behaved they are!” She put him back into his seat, hard, and then walked out of the room.
My kids were just staring at me, trying to read my reaction. I got up and walked over the boy who had just been yelled at and sat down in front of him. He was sitting silently, staring at his plate of food, and brooding. After a few seconds of me sitting there he looked up.
“My name is Anderson. What’s your name?”
“My name is Derek…” And he burst into tears.
Jesus Christ, I hate this. “What’s wrong?”
He mumbled some words in Chinese and English. It sounded like “I don’t like this food. I don’t want to eat it.”
Suddenly the Chinese assistant appeared back in the room and came stalking over to our table. She slowed down when she saw me sitting there and sat down without saying anything. I asked her what the problem was. Her response was in Chinese, angry, and directed at Derek.
“He doesn’t like the food?” I asked.
The assistant nodded but gave Derek a look like You’re such a bad kid for not wanting to eat this.
“Can’t he just eat something else?”
She looked at me. Angrily at first, but then her face sort of… calmed. She picked up the plate of food and led Derek out of the room, presumably to find him something else to eat.
This was a small incident, especially in the grand scheme of how children are treated around the world. But it doesn’t matter. It’s a perfect example of adults not treating kids like they’re human beings.
I talked to the other teachers about it later and they agreed that it was terrible, but also warned me that I would see a lot of more it. “This is just how things are here. You can try to report the assistant, but since she didn’t hit the kid no one would do anything. Hitting isn’t even a big deal in China, let alone yelling. And if you do try to get the assistants in trouble it will just hurt you more. They are the headmaster’s eyes and ears and if you get on their bad side you won’t be here long.” Great. I’m going to see this happening over and over and every time I will have to walk the thin line of trying to help and protect the kids without pissing off the assistants. Because truly going after the aggressive assistants would mean losing any chance of helping the kids.
But this is the shit you have to deal with when you’re trying to do decent things in a world full of terrible things. What other choice is there besides giving up and accepting that the world will always be full of terrible things? That’s something I would be more inclined to accept if it wasn’t for what’s next…
The Best Parts
Easy, the kids. Spending the day playing with 5 and 6 year olds. How could that not be the best part? And the hundreds of moments of them learning and playing and laughing and just enjoying themselves that I got to witness and be part of.
I’m going to do a post describing my kids, but for now trust me that they are totally awesome. There are so many conversations and interactions that I want to explain, but I’ll just give you my favorite.
I was beginning my English lesson that was all about introductions. Every student is supposed to say something like “Hello everybody, my name is [whatever]. I’m five years old and I’m from [wherever].” So the Chinese assistants wheeled over a big whiteboard for me and I started writing out the introductory phrase.
“Excuse me, excuse me!” called Roxy. “But the last teacher used to write down all of our names and if we behaved we would get a star next to our name. And we got three stars then we’d get a sticker.”
Obviously, I was not going to do the whole rewards and punishments thing. “Hmm, well, what if we just forget about that whole star and sticker thing and you guys just behave on your own?”
I watched seven heads tilt like confused puppies. “Um, okay, I guess…”
So that was definitely my favorite moment. I just laughed and we moved on. It worked and the kids all behaved. It probably won’t always work. But the kids can’t ever really misbehave anyway. They want to do certain things and I want to do certain things. It’s not “misbehaving” just because I don’t want them to do it. The challenge is finding ways to work together so we can both get what we want. It’s definitely much harder than just “I’m the authority figure so do what I say.” But so what? The price for treating someone like they are a real human being and not a slave to be ordered around is never too high.
Anyway, this is a pretty long post so I should wrap it up. There are more sad moments that I could recount, but many more happy ones. I think I’ll save both for my next 360 days.
