Lost at School (35 page)

She was greeted with silence and twenty-six blank stares. “I guess you need a little more detail than that. I’ve noticed that sometimes we’re having some trouble treating one another kindly, just getting along with one another, and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about what was going on.” She decided a little reassurance might help. “You’re not in trouble, I just wanted to know if anyone had noticed the same thing. If it’s a problem, we could talk about how to solve it.”

Now there were fewer blank stares and some uncomfortable shifting in seats. But still no raised hands. Finally, Taylor had a question. “You mean, like, teasing each other?”

“Yes, teasing is one of the things I’ve seen that I was thinking some kids might not be so happy about.”

Now some of the kids were exchanging knowing glances.

“Like, do you want us to tell you who’s teasing people?” asked Taylor.

“Well, that’s not exactly what I was shooting for,” said Mrs. Woods. “I was more interested in getting some ideas about ways people are being treated by their classmates that they’re not too happy about.”

“Isn’t teasing kinda normal?” asked Alberto. “I mean, kids tease each other all the time.”

“That doesn’t mean the kids getting teased are happy about it,” snapped Taylor.

“Let’s not forget our community meeting rules,” reminded Mrs. Woods. “I don’t think we’ll get very far if we don’t raise our hands and listen to what each of us has to say.”

“I think there’s a lot of teasing going on,” said Samantha. “And I don’t like having people pull my hair without my permission, either.”

“Who in our class has permission to pull your hair?!” shouted Alex.

The class burst out laughing. Mrs. Woods began to wonder if this topic was too much for them to handle. She raised her voice over the laughter. “Excuse me.” They quieted. “I can already tell this is an important subject for many of you, and we are going to have to pay very close attention to our rules of communicating to be able talk about it. I hope we can do it. Can we do it?”

The kids nodded.

“Maybe we should make a list of the ways people are being treated that they’re not happy about,” suggested Samantha.

“We could do that,” said Mrs. Woods. “Do you guys think that would be a good idea?”

This question was met with a mix of nods, blank looks, and smirks.

“Samantha, if you don’t mind, maybe you could keep our list for us. Then, if we get to it today, maybe we should make a list of people’s suggestions for what we could do about those things,” Mrs. Woods proposed.

“You mean, like punish people?” asked Taylor.

“Well, I suppose we could talk about punishing people,” said Mrs. Woods. “But I was hoping we could think about ways in which we might be able to help one another. Although maybe we should wait to talk about solutions until we know more about the problems. So far we know that people are not happy being teased or having their private space invaded without their permission. Although Alberto made a very good point that a lot of kids get teased, so it may seem kind of normal. But then Taylor made the point that teasing often doesn’t feel good to the person who’s being teased. What do you guys think?”

Consuelo cautiously raised her hand.

“Yes, Consuelo,” said Mrs. Woods. “Consuelo, before you start, I need to let the rest of the class know something. It is very hard for Consuelo to participate in our discussions if people raise their hands while she’s speaking. So I’d like to ask everyone to keep their hands down until she’s done. Consuelo, go ahead.”

“I, I learned, I learned in Sunday school, that there is good teasing and bad teasing,” Consuelo said slowly. “Good teasing is when the person, the one who is being teased, thinks it’s funny, and bad teasing … bad teasing is when the one who is being teased lets the person who is teasing them know they don’t like it.”

There was a brief silence after Consuelo finished.

“Can I ask a question?” Shawn said. “How come we’re not supposed to raise our hands when Consuelo is talking but it’s OK for us to raise our hands when other people are talking?”

“Excellent question, Shawn,” said Mrs. Woods. “We have all kinds of different learners in our class. Everyone has some things that they’re really good at, and everyone has things they’re working on. One of Consuelo’s
challenges is that it’s a little hard for her to say the ideas that she has in her head.”

“Is that why she’s so quiet?” asked Susie.

“Consuelo, would you like me to answer that question or would you like to?” asked Mrs. Woods.

“You can,” said Consuelo.

“Yes, I think that’s part of the reason Consuelo is a little quiet,” said Mrs. Woods. “One of the things Consuelo needs from the rest of us is more time to collect her thoughts, and one of the ways we can let her know we’re giving her more time is by keeping our hands down while she’s talking.”

Liz raised her hand. “Why don’t we just add that to one of our rules of communicating? Then we could all have time to collect our thoughts. I don’t like it when everyone’s waving their arms when I’m talking, either.”

“That’s certainly an idea we could talk about,” said Mrs. Woods. “But right now I was really hoping we could stick to the topic of things people are doing that are making their classmates unhappy. Does that sound OK?”

Another mix of nods and stares.

“Are there any other things people want to add to our list?”

“There are some kids in the eighth-grade class who like to boss people around,” volunteered Duane. “And if you don’t do what they say, they say they’re going to kick your—I mean beat you up.”

The kids snickered.

“Thank you for saying it that way,” said Mrs. Woods. “I’ve heard that there’s some bullying going on during recess and on the buses. Does anyone feel they’re being bullied by anyone in our class?”

“Maybe a little,” said Blake.

“Should we add it to our list?” asked Mrs. Woods.

The kids nodded their approval.

“This is dumb,” announced Kellen.

“What’s dumb, Kellen?” asked Mrs. Woods.

“Talking about bullies,” said Kellen. “It’s stupid.”

“I’m not sure what you mean, Kellen,” said Mrs. Woods. “What’s stupid about talking about bullying?”

“If someone’s bullying you, you got to show that person they can’t push you around,” said Kellen. “Survival of the fittest, man.”

“That’s an interesting take on things,” said Mrs. Woods. “What do you all think of Kellen’s idea?”

The kids looked reluctant to comment. Samantha, as usual, was undaunted. “I think if bullying is making people in our class feel bad, then we should be talking about it. I don’t think it’s stupid at all.”

Some of the kids nodded their approval of Samantha’s point of view.

“Well, those are both interesting points of view,” said Mrs. Woods. “To be perfectly honest, I was hoping we might be able to find ways of dealing with bullying that didn’t involve bullying the bullies. But it’s something we’ll need to keep talking about.”

The discussion continued for another ten minutes. Then, with only a few minutes of community meeting time left, Mrs. Woods decided it was a good time to give the class an idea of what was up next.

“We’ve made a list of the ways that kids are treating each other in our class that are making classmates unhappy. Something we haven’t talked about yet is
why
kids are treating one another these ways. The next time we meet we should probably talk about that. If you guys want to think about that before our next meeting, that would be fine. Oh, one more thing. I was thinking it might be a good idea for us to meet more often … like maybe three times a week instead of just one. What do you think?”

Consuelo raised her hand. “I think it’s a good idea. We have a lot of things we need to work on.”

With a new meeting schedule in place, Mrs. Woods and her students continued their discussion two days later in their next community meeting.

“OK, we’ve made a list of the ways that kids are treating one another that are making classmates unhappy,” Mrs. Woods began. “Something we haven’t talked about yet is why kids are treating one another these ways. Does anyone have any ideas?”

Again, mostly blank stares. But not Samantha. “Maybe they think it’s funny.”

“Possibly so,” said Mrs. Woods. “Now, in our last meeting, Consuelo said something about teasing that I thought was interesting. She said it’s not teasing if the person being teased thinks it’s funny, but it is teasing if
the person being teased doesn’t like it. What do you guys think of that idea?”

“I think it’s true,” said Austin. “I told my mom what we were talking about the other day and she said sometimes people are mean to each other because they’re not sure how to be friends with people.”

“Smart mom,” said Mrs. Woods. “Do you guys think that happens sometimes?”

Many of the kids nodded.

“I think some people just like being mean,” said Duane.

“Interesting possibility, Duane,” said Mrs. Woods. “But why would someone
like
being mean?”

“I don’t know,” responded Duane. “Maybe they don’t know how to be nice.”

“Ah, so maybe they don’t
like
being mean, they just don’t know how to be nice,” said Mrs. Woods.

“Maybe,” said Duane.

“Should I be making a list of these ideas, too?” asked Samantha.

“I think that probably makes sense,” said Mrs. Woods. “I’m glad we’re talking about this. You guys have some very good ideas. Are there more?”

“Maybe they’re just in a bad mood that day,” said Shawn.

After a few more ideas, Mrs. Woods moved on to the Define the Problem step. “Looks to me like there are lots of reasons kids might do things that make their classmates unhappy. Here’s my concern. If we’re trying to help one another in our class, and we’re trying to make sure everyone gets what they need, and if we want our class to be a safe place for everyone to learn … well, we should be trying to help people with these things, yes?”

The kids nodded.

“So the next time we meet,” she continued, “we should probably start talking about ideas people have for how we can make sure that these things on our list don’t happen so much anymore, and talk about ways in which we could help one another. Good idea?”

The kids nodded their approval.

“If you want to, between now and our next meeting, you could start thinking about how we might be able to do that. You could even discuss it among yourselves. Then we’ll make a list of everyone’s ideas when we meet again and come up with a plan.”

Plan B continued at the next community meeting.

“Well, we have our list of things that cause people to do things that make others unhappy,” Mrs. Woods began. “And we know we want to make sure that members of our community who are having difficulty with these things get our help if they need it. Let’s start talking about how we could be helping one another with these things. Anyone have any ideas?”

“Aren’t bullies supposed to get punished in our school?” asked Taylor.

“Yes, they are,” said Mrs. Woods. “But I don’t think it’s working too well. There’s still a lot of bullying going on. It makes me wonder if that’s really the best way to solve the problem.” Mrs. Woods pointed to the list. “I’m not sure if punishing people fixes any of these things on our list. I don’t know if it would help someone who thinks mistreating people is funny, I don’t see how it would help someone who doesn’t know how to make friends, or someone who doesn’t know how to be nice, or someone who’s in a bad mood, or someone who’s been mistreated themselves so they don’t know any better, or someone who’s mad because they aren’t popular. What do you think?”

“What else
is
there to do besides punish them?” asked Taylor.

“Well, let’s think about that,” said Mrs. Woods. “In fact, maybe we should take these problems one at a time. If someone thinks mistreating people is funny, and we wanted to help them with that problem, because it would be better for them and better for all of us, how could we help them?”

“We could tell them we don’t think it’s funny,” said Samantha.

“But you would have to tell them nicely, instead of getting all mad at them,” Eddie added.

“We could tell
you
what they’re doing,” suggested Taylor.

“These are very good ideas,” said Mrs. Woods.

“Should we be writing them down?” asked Samantha.

Mrs. Woods smiled. “Samantha, you are very good at reminding me that we need to do that.”

“These are wimpy ideas,” said Kellen. “If someone’s bugging you, you tell ’em to quit. And if they don’t quit, you
make
’em quit.” This idea drew knowing nods of approval from a few of the kids.

“How would you do that?” asked Mrs. Woods.

“Like I said the other day,” said Kellen. “Survival of the fittest.”

“Ah, yes, you did mention that the other day,” said Mrs. Woods. “So we should probably talk about it some more. I think you’re talking about fighting, yes?”

Kellen smirked. “Whatever it takes.”

“But why have a fight if you don’t need to?” asked Mrs. Woods. “What if some of these other solutions people came up with worked instead?”

“Where I come from, if you tell somebody what they did wasn’t funny,
you
get hit,” said Kellen. “Me, I hit first, ask questions later.”

More scattered nods of approval.

“Maybe that’s why there’s so much fighting where you come from,” said Tina, a girl who shared Kellen’s bus. “I’m sick of all the fighting. As far as I can see, it doesn’t fix anything.”

This comment drew nods of approval as well.

Mrs. Woods tried to empathize. “Kellen, it must feel terrible … worrying about getting hit all the time.”

“It is what it is.” Kellen shrugged.

“My concern is that if the only thing people do to keep from getting hit is to hit first, then the fighting never ends,” said Mrs. Woods.

Kellen and his classmates pondered this observation.

“Kellen, have you ever been hit by someone in our class?” asked Mrs. Woods.

Kellen looked around at his classmates. “I don’t think so.”

“Maybe, if you think it’s a good idea, you could think of our class as a safe place for trying out some new ways of dealing with people who you’re having a problem with. Maybe some of the ideas we’re talking about now will work for you.”