I’ve been reading and learning about Self-Reg for over eleven years now. Sometimes I think that I have Stuart Shanker and Susan Hopkins’ voices playing in my head, and yet, it always makes me pause when I realize what I’ve missed.
The Day I Saw Misbehaviour
The other day, I started our class together as I always do, introducing some provocations for our literacy centre learning. While I try hard to think about all students, and what learning opportunities might capture their interest, I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about one child. This student always settles into something, but usually, she needs to talk through different possibilities with me. She does not always seem as happy as I wish she was, and while I know that there’s so much she can do, I want her to find joy in literacy learning.
On this day, I thought I had it. She’s incredibly artistic, as are many other students in the class, so I found a few different ways to link reading, writing, and art. I used some of her work to help inspire this learning too. I couldn’t wait to see her get started! Then I got students to start making choices, and I heard her grumble. She did not want to do anything. She would not even create a reading and writing option of her own. All she did was put her head down on the table, sulk, and tell me how much she hated everything.
What?! Was it possible that I completely misread her interests? Not only was I feeling frustrated that I got everything wrong, but I was acutely aware that I needed to get started with my Acadience assessments. Instead, I was sitting here trying to convince a child to do one of many things that I knew she could do. I always find it frustrating when students just sit there and do nothing, so I couldn’t walk away seeing her doing just that. I went and grabbed a few books, took a piece of paper, and wrote down …
- Choose one of these 2 books.
- Read the book.
- Write me sentences about 3 things that happened in the book.
Ugh! Even I did not like this literacy centre choice, but I was frustrated and felt that this child was making a choice to do nothing. Now the choice was up to me. But you see: I was wrong. I was interpreting this behaviour as misbehaviour, but instead, it was stress behaviour.
The Child Helped Me View Things Differently
I then walked away, left this child at the table, and called a student to come and read with me. I was sitting down on the carpet doing the reading assessment, and I saw the student at the table writing something on the paper. Was she actually doing my task? She waited until the assessment was over, and she walked over with her paper. I looked. She wrote me a note. “I didn’t eat breakfast and I’m hungry. That’s why I’m mad.”
I felt terribly. That morning, she told me about the problem that she had at breakfast and why she didn’t eat it, but when I asked if she wanted something to eat, she said, “I’m fine. It’s okay.” I left it. I should have realized that the hunger was triggering the behaviour. This happened before, and a snack, completely changed her attitude.
All of the students know that I have a cupboard of food and I always have snacks out for them to eat. I told her, “We can fix this problem.” I then asked her, “What do you want to eat? We have granola bars, Goldfish crackers, and cereal.” She chose a couple of things, sat down to eat, and then happily picked one of the centre options. I wish that I saw this behaviour differently from the beginning.
Err on the side of “Stress Behaviour” …
I remember many years ago when I took Foundations 1, and I was reminded to, “err on the side of stress behaviour.” Yet on this day, I completely forgot to do just that. How do you remind yourself to see behaviour through this lens? What has been the impact of doing so? Thank goodness for the power of a note and a child who helped me view her behaviour differently. We can all make mistakes. Now I want to make sure that I learn from one of mine.
4 Comments
Thank you for this amazing reminder to “err on side of stress behaviour”. I think that even though we may have years of learning behind us and lots of experience with self-reg, our stressors show through and it may be that we are tired or hungry. Often it’s our students who remind us in those small, quiet and sometimes desperate ways, that they need our help and thankfully, self-reg comes to the rescue. Your work is always so thoughtful and student centred, they are lucky to have you.
Kim
Thanks so much, Kim, for the kind words! No matter how much I might have learned about Self-Reg, I am forever reminded by my students about those times that I might forget. I appreciated this child’s note and the important reframe. I wonder when others might have found themselves in similar positions.
Aviva
I think this is another situation that show how the “why” is important. When you finally find why a child is behaving a certain way, you can help them accordingly. Sometimes, it is easy to forgot to look at a situation with another perspective. I am pretty sure that lots of educators must have face the same thing. But, the most important thing, is that when you finally find the “why” you can help them as much as possible.
Thanks Annie! This is such a great point. When we figure out the “why,” we often see behaviour differently. I wonder if others have stories of their own to share.
Aviva