What is the hardest part about teaching a class? Most folks would not say teaching the content, or waking up early. Most teachers will tell you that “Classroom Management” is by far the hardest aspect of being a school teacher. I agree! Reflecting back on my eleven years working in the classroom teaching instrumental music and arts integration, I realize that I never liked the term itself and that it always made me quite uncomfortable. Being an English Language Learner myself, when I feel icky about a word, I look it up and try to translate it back to Spanish, then make sense of it in context and after that, translate it back to English. Fairly recently and through re-reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, and studying the work of bell hooks, I realize that the reason the term “Classroom Management” makes me queasy is because it is utterly oppressive. In this blogpost, I’d like to discuss 3 aspects of why “Classroom Management”feels oppressive to me (and of course to my students) and why I prefer to think of it as “Classroom flow.” 

First off,a confession: I did not know that the words disciple and discipline are related.  let’s look at the word disciple:

disciple |dəˈsīpəl| noun

• a follower or student of a teacher, leader, or philosopher.

To have a disciple is to have students, and to discipline them, is to teach them. 

Now, let us look at the dictionary definition of two words associated with classroom management; management, and discipline.

management |ˈmanijmənt| noun

1 the process of dealing with or controlling things or people

discipline |ˈdisəplən| noun

1 the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of controlled behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience.

What do these two words have in common? What do they make you feel? If you were to attach a feeling to them, what would that be?

Take a moment to think about it.

To me, these two definitions when combined and applied to a discipline approach smell like (destroying) (teen) spirit. They imply that human beings are things and that as things, they need to be controlled and that we, the teachers, are the puppeteers who make our students do whatever things we want them to do; regardless of if they want to or not.

To me, we manage stocks, we manage cattle. When we look at and treat our students like cattle or stocks, we dehumanize them. When we train people to obey rules regardless of whether or not they understand them, believe in them and/or are invested in them, we strip them of their decision making abilities. Creating and enforcing rules that are designed to end up with “because I say so”,or “because I am the teacher” is a controlling and tyrant act; not an educational and humanistic one. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed,  Freire states: any argument based on authority is in an on itself, oppressive. The correct method lies in dialogue.”

I am by no means advocating towards not having any rules, expectations or guidelines. That would be the kind of chaos in which nothing would get done and nobody would feel safe, accounted for and accountable. To the contrary, I am advocating we stop looking at discipline as punitive, students as things, and we start looking at discipline for what it is; to teach and students for what they are; human beings. I suggest we stop teaching like champions and start teaching like humans. 

Lately, I have been thinking of classroom management as classroom flow. When we are in flow, we are happier, we are more engaged in what we are doing and we produce better work. Looking at how can I make my classroom environment happier, safer and fairer for my students, has ultimately been the best tool “disciplining” them.  Is it 100% effective? Does it work all the time? Does it work for all students? Nope. If you tell me any single thing that does, please let me know! What it does do, is open safe and respectful channels in which we can talk about what is going on in our lives, what we set out to do together, and how we are going to achieve those goals.

How do we transform classroom management into classroom flow? I’d like to share the three things that I have been doing.

1) Going from “Rule Making” to “Hopes & Dreams”

Hopes and Dreams comes from the Responsive Classroom methodology; which I love very much, although I recocgnize it does not work well for everyone. Nothing in life does,right? No size fits all and one size fits none….

If you’d like to learn more about Hopes & Dreams, as described by Responsive Classroom, click here.

I like to start with having honest conversations with my students about what are hopes for the year are. What do we dream to do together? Why do we want those things? After brainstorming, I like to lead the conversation into how will we make those things happen? What do we have to do as a community so that we can achieve our hopes and dreams? After doing this for a few years, I have found out that students’ ideas fit into the following three categories:

1. Relationship between self and self; how,why,what,when I will do things myself.
2. Relationship between self to and others; how,why,what,when I will do things with my peers,comrades,friends.
3. Relationship between self and things; how,why,what,when I will use the manipulatives in the room to do things alone and with others.

This past year, I compiled a list of over 445 ideas of how we can achieve flow in our Hopes and Dreams from 445 students ranging from Kindergarten to 3rd grade. Being that I am a specials teacher and I teach all the students in the classroom, it is not feasible for me to have a separate lost for every class. So I compiled all the students’ comments and put them into simple words that I then used as Classroom Promises, so that we can reach our hopes and dreams. After posting them in my classroom, I taught it to my students. I taught them what we mean specifically when we say “Keep our bodies Safe” and how they themselves said it would be a good idea to do be super careful when dancing so that we don’t hurt each other. I taught them the specifics of “keeping our hearts safe” and I made connections to the examples they gave as to being nice to each other and using kind words, and I taught them how and why must “we keep our things safe.”

After the initial mini lesson, we practiced, practiced, and practiced these. Every class for the first six weeks of school, we talked about it, we debated, we added, we took away, we role played, we came up with real examples of how to do this, and we came up with fantasy examples of how to do this. We made this into a game that lasted way longer than the firs six weeks of school. During these games, we talked about feelings, emotions and how to “manage” those (pun intended) We talked about privilege and what a privilege it is to have so many amazing, good quality and magical musical instruments which we can learn to use to express ourselves.

We also talked about logical consequences. We talked a lot about what happens when we don’t or can’t adhere to what we said we would do. We talked about the difference between a logical consequence and a punishment. We talked a whole lot about the idea of “you’re in trouble” and how a logical consequence is an opportunity to reflect and turn our chosen behavior around and not a punishment for making a bad choice. We talked a whole lot about the commitment that we must have with one another in order fro our classroom to flow and to be a healthy ecosystem. We also watched videos of ecosystems. We truly understood the imagery of our classroom as an ecosystem.

Again, did all my students follow all my directions/expectations the first time around? Nope. Did most of them do? Yep. Did all of my students stop chit-chatting when I asked them to and reminded them what we had to do in order to achieve our hopes and dreams? Nope. Did most of them do? Yep. Did all my students try their hardest? YES THEY DID. And when they failed to do so, that in my book is a sign of something bigger, which nobody taught me in teacher training school and I wish they did.

2) Recognizing Trauma

I have two short stories. About four years ago, I was teaching a lower elementary grades after school percussion club. I had been noticing that of my girls 3rd grade girls had been very sluggish and falling asleep for a few class sessions. The “disciplinarian” in me, wanted to yell at her to get it together and wake up. For about two class sessions I decided to let it be and observe her. After all, she was not being disruptive class and it was after school. At the beginning of class #3, I asked her why she was so sleepy. She said: “Mr. Martini. My mamma just had a baby and I am in charge of waking up in the night and feed her her bottle.” Think about this statement. A nine year old baby does not sleep through the night, because she has to be a caregiver to her brand new baby sister. I seriously think this was the first time, my privilege was checked. By a sweet,respectful, kick-ass, smart nine year old. I said, “Here is my sweater, go take a nap in the back of the auditorium and I’ll send a classmate to wake you up” That child slept through 15 3rd graders banging on orange buckets for 45 minutes straight.

Story number 2: Last year, one of my kindergartners became very upset because I would not “let” him play the big Orff Xylophone. We had a short conversation about it and i reminded him that he himself had picked the colorful Glockenspiel and that he had a very important part to play in our song. The more we talked about it, the angrier he became and so I sent him to cool of to the bean bag area and I continued instruction for the rest of the class. As he walked, he kicked the marimba very hard. Hard enough to make his classmates remind him of our classroom promises. I stopped instruction and went to talk to the student. I offered my hands and said: “What can I do to make you feel better right now?” He did not answer with words. This time he kicked a wall. I told him that I understood he was so frustrated and mad, and that was OK, but that did not mean he could break our classroom promises and that we also could not deal with it now, as it would not be fair for his classmates to lose on music making. I asked that he stayed in the bean bag reading a book an that we would deal with our feelings at an appropriate time, but given his actions, the logical consequence is that he dos not get to use the instruments and that I have to call home and let his guardians know. He looked at my and YELLED: “SHUT UP! YOU DON”T TELL ME WHAT TO DO. YOU AIN’T MY SON!” My first reaction was to laugh about a cute and angry child loosely quoting “Billie Jean” but quickly I realized that this child is most likely just repeating what the adults around him tell him. Once again, a seven year old checked me on my privilege of never having had to hear my guardian;dad or step-dad telling me “you are not my son”.

I am by far not an authority on recognizing trauma. I have not gone to social work school. I have only taken two psychology courses and I can’t remember a single thing from them. However, I have always loved teaching and I have always loved kids. And loving kids and loving teaching, means that I do not teaching subjects; I teach individuals. Treating kids like human beings, allowed me to see the trauma in these two cases. Recognizing trauma is something that I need to learn more of. I would love to be in conversation with you all about this.

How can we understand what our students “misbehave” if we don’t understand them for who they are? How can we truly teach them if we don’t know who they are? I believe it is our ethical duty as educators to learn how to recognize trauma; not to excuse our students’ emotions and behaviors but to better understand them and help them maneuver them in healthy ways. Punishing our students for their behaviors rooted in trauma is unethical, oppressive and harmful. Also, punitive discipline rarely creates the kind of lasting change that truly matters. It is exhausting for the students and it is exhausting for the teachers. Do you ever feel like a walking fire extinguisher putting out fires as you walk? That is what punitive disciplining feels like to me. Students learn to cope with, accept and even expect the punishments, so after a while, everything loses importance and we all throw in the towel. How many times can you send a student to the dean’s office? Have you ever had a student laugh in your face when you threaten to call the principal? I have, and I didn’t like the feeling.

3) The No Excuses, Zero Tolerance approach to discipline

I myself believe in second chances and in restorative justice because I see and own the fact that I too have shortcomings. I too interrupt people, speak out of order, go places/do things without asking for permission, do inconsiderate things,  and even sometimes act out of spite. If I was to be treated in a “Zero Tolerance” or “No Excuses” kind of way, I would not have a masters degree, be married, have a job, or even have friends. The truth of the matter is, and we must not deny this fact, is that  “Zero Tolerance” and/or “No Excuses” approaches, mostly fly in schools where the majority of students are students of color. When is the last time you heard of a posh, mostly white school treated students like this?

These approaches are racist. The moment a teacher or staff treated a privileged students in such a manner, the media would hear about it, the politicians would hear about it and that person would get fired. Yet in schools of mostly students of color, this kinds of approaches to discipline are much too common. In a very important way, breaking these bad habits as teachers is a great first way towards creating a safer, fairer, happier and all around better symbiotic ecosystem in our classrooms; where the students, the teachers, and the things are working together for one common goal; the realization of our hopes and dreams.

Because those who love me, trust me, work with me, challenge mea and teach me, I can self actualize. This is also true for our students.

In conclusion,  transforming our investment in better “classroom management” for one of better “classroom flow”  offers a more humanistic approach to discipline, and in my opinion; a more effective one.  Discipline does not mean “To Punish”. It means “To Teach.” Some lessons can be learned in one session. Other lesson take longer. We must hold space for our students to work it out, while being clear with our expectations, being fair with our logical consequences, being consistent with everything we say/do while holding them accountable to be all of who they can be.

Mr. Martini