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I once convinced an 8th grader named Sarah that I kept an otter in my desk. I did such a good job convincing her, in fact, that by the time I decided to come clean and admit the truth, I was then unable to convince her that I did not keep an otter in my desk. Even when I invited her to open the desk drawer and look for herself, “You must have taken him to the vet” was her explanation for why there was no otter in my drawer. 

 

When I first set out on my road to become a principal, I began compiling pieces of wisdom for a poster to hang in my future office. I have a draft of that poster by my desk right now. Number nine says, “Even the most troublesome generally handle things the way they think is best. ‘These kids don’t want to behave’ is DEFEATIST.”

 

It took me a while to learn that one. Really, all the thoughts swirling around student behavior suddenly coalesced while doing a clinical experience at an early childhood center. When I saw a three-year-old pushing and shoving a four-year-old to get him to stop stealing toys, I had my lightbulb moment: He’s not hitting because he’s a bad kid, he’s hitting because that’s the only way he knows how to solve problems!

 

That same rule applies to kindergarteners, middle schoolers, and high schoolers. When faced with a problem, a kid will generally solve it the way they think is best. That doesn’t mean they will choose the way that IS best, but they also won’t choose the worst option out of spite. They want the problem solved and if they think hitting is the best way to do it, they hit. If they think graffiting the bathroom is the best way to get the attention they want from their peers, they graffiti. 

 

Or lie. And some of them are so comically good at it. 

 

Macy was a first grader when I first met her. When I pull kids into my enrichment groups, they get tickets for being safe, thoughtful, and responsible. Some days, they’ll get candy. Today was a candy day. Macy, this particular day, was… not responsible. I led this devastated, candyless little girl down the hall, and her brown eyes welled with tears as she refused to go back into her classroom. 

 

Now, back up a few weeks. After seeing a picture of my dog Avila on the wall, who we call “Noodle,” Macy visited my room every day for a week to give me a gift for Noodle. One day, it was a set of googly eyes for Noodle’s collar. Another day was an actual dog biscuit. But every day, this first grader smiled through her missing teeth to say, “This is for Noodle!”

 

Now, laying on the floor, tears streaming down her face, I could see it. I could almost physically see the gears spinning in the back of her mind. How do I convince this guy to give me candy? she thought as she cried to stall long enough to come up with an answer. Then, clear as day, I saw her lightbulb moment:

 

He’s a dog person.

 

“My parents told me I had to have a good day,” she wailed between dramatic huffs, “And if I bring home a piece of candy, I can show them I had a good day and then they’ll let me play with my new puppies… for… the… FIRST… TIME!!!”

 

It almost worked. And if her parents had actually withheld her from the puppies for two weeks, as she claimed, they are truly awful people and I need to adopt her. 

 

Other than actually seeing her lightbulb moment, how did I know she was lying? When she was “allergic” to Starbursts a few weeks earlier, I asked her teacher what Macy could have, to which her teacher warned me, “She’s not allergic, she just wanted something better. Don’t believe a thing she tells you.”

“If I wanted kids to be nice and polite to me all day,” my former middle school behavior disabilities teacher once told me, “I’d teach TAG.”

 

I can tell you for a fact that is not the case. TAG kids can make fun of you accurately and with a better vocabulary. I have a third grader who can sass me so hard it truly stuns me. This particular third grader spoke nearly zero English two years ago; now, I think she speaks too much. 

 

They use words even I don’t know, like “rizz”💭 “Rizz,” according to Urban Dictionary, is the “ability to generate romantic or sexual interest.” According to the third grader who used it in his fiction writing, the way to get more rizz is to jump on stage and kiss Taylor Swift. and “skibidy.” 💭 This is the reason I use Incognito Mode on my browser at school. I don’t want third grade nonsense tainting my search history and raising flags with HR.

 

And if you think gifted third and fourth graders don’t exhibit avoidance and escape behaviors just like anyone else… you must be a BD teacher. 

 

What I see a lot is seeing a student who is not used to having work be hard, not used to struggling or failing. Teaching this persistence is one of the main points of my class. 

 

One of my favorite math methods I call the “Three Step.” You get two tries to find the right answer. If you get it wrong on the first try, I just tell you it’s wrong and give you no additional help or comment. After the second wrong attempt, I give you the right answer and your job is to reverse-engineer it and figure out how to arrive at that answer. 

 

So many kids would rather be the bad kid than the dumb kid, including TAG kids. Especially TAG kids. This is the point where chaos breaks out - one kid is doing a handstand against the wall, another abandons his group to count the number of cinder blocks under the window, and another writes “5” or “poop” as the answer to every question. 

 

I wish I understood this as a GenEd teacher. They’re not being defiant and they’re not being “bad.” They’re demonstrating point number eight on my poster: “Most kids don’t hate ____________; they hate feeling frustrated and confused.” Especially when frustrated and confused are feelings they’re not used to experiencing. 

 

Makes for a fun day when the point of the lesson is to make them frustrated and confused. 

Last week, I had a conversation with a second grader. While doing a math activity where the theme was to use math to “defeat an attack from a Klingon spaceship,” he just took multiple colors of markers and scribbled all over his white board. Remember - he’s in the top five percent in math in his regular class. 

 

“Hey,” I calmly explained to him, “A lot of the time, when something gets hard for you, I see you stop trying and just act silly. What might be some other things we can do when it gets hard?”

 

This week, we took the same activity to the next level. I looked over and saw him sitting, head in his hand, erasing and trying different combinations of numbers. “This is hard, but I’m trying to figure it out instead of getting silly,” he told me. 

 

That’s called an Expectation of Success. Kids are better able to persist through trouble if they expect they will be able to succeed in the end. They can, if given the proper tools. 

 

Looking back, I remember an 8th grader I had in my first year of teaching who looked me dead in the eye during detention and told me she hoped I got run over by a bus on the way home. I imagine she didn’t have much of an expectation of success. Also, I’m still here. 

 

Teachers, like students, also need to have an expectation of success. If they don’t feel like they can make a difference with the troubling student, or if they don’t feel like they can get control over the unruly class, or if they don’t feel that Central Office Initiative #127 will make a lick of difference, it’s easy to give up or get silly - such as when the social studies department where I student taught had me photoshop a teacher’s face onto an 80s senior picture of a guy with a mullet and a cat, then printed 100 copies and hid them all over his room in the textbooks, in all the pulldown maps, in student work folders, on the wall of presidents, and in the refrigerator. 💭 This is when I learned the phrase, "Teachers make the worst students."

 

As a building leader, I’ll work on giving my teachers an expectation of success while they work on doing the same for their students. 

 

Kids these days don’t want to behave. They never have. I was one of the “good kids” in high school, but I hung a sign on all the bathrooms that said, “Welcome to John’s.” When my chemistry teacher warned us that spilling a certain chemical on the floor would cause it to turn purple when the custodian came to mop it, my lab partner and I snuck a vial into the cafeteria and dumped it all over the floor before the custodian came through with the power washer. 

 

Saying “These kids don’t want to behave” is defeatist. It robs us of power to do anything about it. When kids don’t have better ways of handling situations, teach them new ways and incentivize them until those new ways are their first choice because they see them work better. 

 

In my case, no one ever found out (until now) that I was the one who temporarily stained the cafeteria floor. My internal punishment as a God-fearing Lutheran was to develop a hero complex and devote my life to public education. 

 

Kids these days don’t want to behave, but they are real people with real personalities who have real problems. They may not come into school with the skills to solve these problems productively, but they can learn by the time they leave unless we rob ourselves of our power first. 

__________________________

 

David Dubczak is an educator and writer documenting his final year in the classroom before transitioning into school administration. Follow David Dubczak - Writer on Facebook to keep up with semi-weekly posts. 

 

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