Category: Behavior-Specific

‘You are a new (hu)man that must adapt to this new world. Go on triumphantly. I am here to help you.’ ”

This quote, a new one to me, landed so perfectly as a reflection of recent work I’m doing with a specialized Montessori program whose staff faces extraordinary challenges. I’ve not met a more dedicated, caring staff of both Montessorians and teachers trained in working with students experiencing a variety of disabilities.

We must give him the means and encourage him. ‘Courage, my dear, courage! You are a new man that must adapt to this new world. Go on triumphantly. I am here to help you.’ This kind of encouragement is instinctive in those who love children.

Many of the children in this publicly funded charter school are both significantly and seriously impacted by physical and emotional limitations. It’s common for families to be separated by divorce, incarceration, or even death.

I’m sure that it will come as no surprise that behavior issues occupy a great deal of the teachers’ energy and time. Try as they might to avoid it, teachers and specialists sometimes, maybe even often, resort to practices that would not typically find their way into Montessori “best” practices. But, truthfully and in their defense, determining what would be a “best” practice in some of the difficult circumstances is elusive. 

That’s why I often exercise a caveat when sharing my ideas or advice for handling a problem. Regardless of my well-intentioned desire to help, I’m not present in the classrooms day in and day out. I can’t know whether the help I believe I’d try would be well-received or would cause more problems. So, I share the thoughts underneath my choice of action and give the teacher some freedom to choose the action they feel comfortable taking. I offer encouragement to try my ideas, but I also exercise patience with decisions that might come from either knowledge or insecurities held by the guide.

I consider Dr. Montessori’s words about adapting to a new world. The world these children are facing is not only different by at least one if not two generations than my own, but my cultural background can only provide me with an awareness that I simply can’t know the stresses these students are trying to manage. I have a little experience with raising a child with a significant disability, but the systemic racism and difficult homelives so many of these children face is quite far from my life experiences. The best I can do is admit my bias, acknowledge my lack of personal experience, and practice good listening and thoughtful problem-investigation to help those on the front lines. 

So, how do we decide which actions will help? It’s been my practice to give things a try using what I know about human development and tendencies. Recently, I suggested a conversation with a 9-year-old about trust.  This could have easily backfired, but when I suggested the teacher show the student how their behaviors had caused the guide’s trust to fluctuate. I suggested the guide might even draw a picture illustrating when trust was high, when trust diminished, and when trust returned. The child appeared not only to understand, but also to care about it.  The student asked for the opportunity to earn the teachers’ trust back. At the end of the morning, they asked if they’d been successful. They said they really wanted to be part of the class and would do their best to keep her trust. 

For this child, who may not have a lot of trusting or trustworthy relationships in their life, this was a concept that seemed to appeal. In this case, the help that was needed by this child was the opportunity to feel triumphant through the courage to earn trust, an experience they hadn’t had…maybe ever. 

It was well worth the reminder that the help may not come in the form of a Montessori lesson or a traditional approach to achieving concentration. This case of following the child meant offering help that might have been rejected. 

The teacher got a great lesson, too. She exercised courage in offering a behavioral boundary that the student could control. And with this student, whose tendency is to tantrum, yell, and run away, that was a scary risk to take! But from the text I received at the end of her morning, I could tell she was beaming…not so much for herself, but for this student who will benefit greatly from learning to navigate the waters of trust and how they can be managed from both sides: the side seeking to establish trust and the one desiring to feel trust for others.

There’s a lot of frustration in the Montessori community. By this time of year, experienced guides expect their classrooms to be buzzing with focused excitement. Typically, you’d find even the youngest students choosing work and finding interest in the prepared activities on the shelves.

But this year is different. And Montessori teachers around the globe are resorting to teacher-imposed silent time, assigned seats and independent work choices, and often without any real change in student behavior.

What about a different approach; one that worked with the incessant chatter instead of trying to stop it? What about freedom, even encouragement, to talk?

Why would I do THAT?

Most importantly, because talking may be the exact “work” the children need to be doing. Among the items on a list of appropriate responses to traumatic experiences is…drum roll…talking!  (I attached the full list along with some suggestions for application in class situations as a little Freebie!)

But mindless, unbridled talking all day would not be an acceptable exercise of freedom, so I have a couple of suggestions to get your students focused on talking with a purpose.

• Plan a debate Even with the youngest students, using their opinions to express themselves
  about just about any topic can lead to skills of critical thinking, communication, and responsive
  listening.
  • For example, try something simple: Soccer or Softball (Two team sports that tend to be
    non gender specific. I’d choose two that were popular in my community.)
  • Divide your students into two random groups and assign one of the topics to each.
  • Break the large group into small discussion groups to create their list of evidence for
    preference.
  • Have the small groups write legible lists of at least 4 arguments in favor of the topic.
  • Next, trade lists and have the small groups write rebuttals.
  • Then have a large group discussion following, albeit loosely, the “rules” of a debate.
• The “1-work-period” research and presentation This can be attached to any topic of
  interest or subject in which you’d like to inspire some engagement.
  • • Choose a few topics related to something you’ve introduced in class. Have enough age-
      and ability-appropriate resources available for each topic so that a reasonable amount of
      data can be gathered within a short period of time.
    • Share guidelines:
      • Each student is responsible for discovering at least one, and no more than two,
        unique and interesting facts about the topic. 10-15 minutes
      • Small group discusses the facts found and decides on the facts they will share
        with the large group. 15 – 20 minutes.
      • Create a visual to aid in your presentation of information. (30-45 minutes)
      • Plan for questions: discuss the kinds of questions they might anticipate from their
        classmates.
      • Present.
      • Discuss the interest and quality of the presentations as a group:
        • What made presentations interesting?
        • What was an effective visual aid?
        • What did you learn?
        • What do you want to learn now?
• Shared Reading I’ve used this with a variety of texts, but I designed this activity to go with our
  Paleontology for Kids books because there is a fairly well-balanced design of illustrations and
  text.
  • Choose a book with a partner.
  • Go through the book and look only at the pictures. Talk about what the pictures mean or
    are saying to you. (You could stop here or go on to the next instruction.)
  • Go through the book again and look for interesting words. Discuss with your partner why
    you would choose a certain word. Write your words in print and cursive.
  • Go through the book again and try reading the words. Did the pictures give you clues to
    the information? What did you learn? Choose something you learned that you’d like
    other students to know. Plan to share this with the class.

These three activities give students permission and guidance in talking. The activity of talking will soothe them and the work will refocus their attention to something less anxiety producing.

Once you’ve had some success with these strategies, I’d encourage you to have small sharing circles in which students can reflect on how they are feeling in their bodies. You can begin to teach calming activities and brain breaks as a way of making your students aware that they can actually take care of the heightened feelings in their bodies.

You can also plan a free drawing time. We did this at the very beginning of every day, providing a sketchbook and drawing pencils. Students could return to their drawing any time during the day, but they were encouraged to start every day with drawing. It was a calming way to begin and to ease into the activity of the day.

Don’t forget to try some of these suggestions yourself, perhaps with a group of staff. Find a book that everyone would be interested in. (I’ve got a few by my bedside, but your staff might be particularly interested in What Happened to Your? by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey. It’s easy to understand, conversational, and filled with hope!  

Did you know there’s a thing called compassion fatigue? We teachers are certainly feeling it and these strategies will help you, too! You can bring about support for yourself and your adult colleagues as you come together to face this period of adjustment to the collective trauma we’ve all experienced. Rest and rejuvenate…make it a daily priority that you share with your children!

Maria Montessori called it deviant behavior…deviant from the normal, focused, concentrated attention to activity that she realized could be achieved by all children given a stimulating environment, freedom within limits set by a code of respect, gentle guidance and time to explore.  The last few weeks, ever since the first four to six weeks of school got behind us, the concerns for lack of settling in have emerged everywhere in my mentoring work. It seems that in so many classes, the children are just not responding as teachers expected. Teachers are following the principles: the prepared environment and lessons given to spark engagement, but students persist in behaving outside the lines.

Yesterday, another cry for help passed through my Facebook feed. This time with a class of older elementary students; the age-group I spent most of my teaching years guiding. The responses were supportive and all things that I successfully used throughout my 30+ year Montessori career:

• spend more time building community through play,
• give lots of lessons,
• use assigned seats,
• develop community service,
• encourage art with an emphasis on emotional literacy,
• just wait it out.

All those suggestions are good things to try; things that just might work in this new class of children in a normal year. But this is not a normal year.

There was one comment that caught my attention: “a way out of self absorption.” I wondered about this perception and how it might influence the adult’s response to the child. I’m still scratching my head, without conclusion, over that. But the comment did cause me to consider how Montessori asked us to understand the child. 

Dr. Montessori shared a lot about this in the collection of speeches gathered into Education and Peace. (Montessori, Education and Peace, 1992) She writes,

“Let us suppose now that the characteristics and goals of the independent life of childhood are not recognized and that the adult takes those characteristics that are different from his own to be mistakes on the part of the child and hastens to correct them. At this point a battle will take place between the weaker and the stronger that is crucial for humanity, because the sickness of health of man’s soul, his strength or weakness of character, the clear light or dark shadows of his mind depend on whether or not the child has a tranquil and perfect spiritual life.” Pg 17.

“The child bows to the cruel necessity of hiding himself, burying in his subconscious a life force that cries out to express itself and that is fatally frustrated. Bearing as he does this hidden burden, he, too, will eventually perpetuate mankind’s many errors.”

“Let us suppose now that the characteristics and goals of the independent life of childhood are not recognized and that the adult takes those characteristics that are different from his own to be mistakes on the part of the child and hastens to correct them. At this point a battle will take place between the weaker and the stronger that is crucial for humanity, because the sickness of health of man’s soul, his strength or weakness of character, the clear light or dark shadows of his mind depend on whether or not the child has a tranquil and perfect spiritual life.” Pg 17.

In group meetings, give opportunities for children to share their fears, worries, angers and frustrations. Help them to understand how the trauma of the last few years can cause any of us to behave outside our normal human tendency to be kind and caring for one another. Ask them what they might need so they can develop a peaceful internal feeling and see how that could be provided to them.

While I fully believe that all of us can “normalize” through work, I also recognize the challenge of trying to work when upset, worried, anxious, or unsettled in any way. Remember that our work with children is to build “a new humanity” and a culture of peace. I encourage you to begin with understanding each individual child as best you can…and go from there.

The problem we face are students whose behavior is not settling in to what we Montessori guides call normalized. It’s eight weeks into school and these children are still unfocused, talkative, and disengaged with the learning opportunities you’ve presented. In part 1 of this I suggested that I’d focus on building relationship with those students…any way you can.

How do we do that?

First, practice pausing. Dr. Montessori encouraged us to observe and stay in the background. She said that as a guide we should work at doing less; taking less action.

The environment itself will teach the child, if every error he makes is manifest to him, without the intervention of a parent or teacher, who should remain a quiet observer of all that happens.

What about the behaviors we see while we are pausing and refraining from intervention?

While it can be difficult to be objective, learning to make note only of those actions we actually see can be very helpful. I liked using timed check sheets for this purpose.  What’s a timed check sheet? It’s a check sheet with columns where you make tally marks at regular short intervals of 2 to 4 minutes. For example, watch for 2 minutes, refrain for 2 minutes, watch again for 2 minutes, refrain again for 2 minutes…continuing for as long a period as you wish. Here’s a sample check sheet you can easily set up on your own, or click here for a downloadable full-page copy with instructions.

Typically, when I observed using this sort of timed sheet, I saw a number of things that I had not expected and, most notably, I tended to witness more of the behaviors that I thought didn’t exist. I was made aware that my attention gravitated to the times the student was performing the undesirable tasks. This exercise opened my eyes.

Once you have some behavior data to analyze, the next step is to get clear on how those behaviors make YOU feel. I would go through every single behavior and choose the first feeling that came to mind and record it next to the stated behavior.

This step is important because our emotional response to student behavior can cloud our judgments and our own behavior in response to our students. Don’t be afraid to be brutally honest with yourself. You don’t need to feel ashamed of your feelings, nor do you need to justify them.

What you do need to do is be honest with yourself. You’ll get a chance to figure this part out eventually, but for now the most important thing you need to get clear on is that those feelings (the ones that are in response to the student’s behaviors) belong to you. They are yours to own, to figure out, and, for the most part, leave at the door to the classroom so that you can separate your feelings from your students.

Finally, once you’ve done all this, you will want to examine all the possible reasons for the behavior. Don’t just go with your first thought. Instead, write that thought/explanation down and then ask yourself, “What else could it be?” Write that down, too. Ask again: “What else could it be?”

Continue this deepening explanation until you have 6 possibilities. From these, choose one to test. You might decide to set up a little “experiment” to see how your student responds. Then you start the observation process again.

Last question: What should I be doing with the behavior while I’m doing all this observing?

This is relationship building time. Spend time talking with the student. Sit near them during work periods or times when the child tends to be distracted or distracting. Have them join you in the observation to make them aware of behaviors that students exhibit in a classroom. Discuss the behaviors and whether they are desirable or not. Discuss why or why not. Talk about learning and what behaviors support it.

Your goal in all this conversation is to understand what this student thinks about the learning process and whether they see themselves fitting into a learning process at all. Helping students learn how to learn and how to be engaged in their learning is really what our role is all about. Then you can leave the rest up to the environment!

Concerns about behavior challenges often seem to arise at this time of year…after the honeymoon period of getting back to school. Especially this fall, when many students are returning to the classroom after more than a year of remote learning, the newness of being back with friends and enjoying the social aspects may have added more than a few days to the honeymoon period. The long period of social distancing may also make the settled-in feeling that we expect at this time of year to be missing or even challenged by some students.

This last bit, problems surfacing or failing to settle down, is a pretty common problem among the teachers I mentor and strategize with each week.

Most often, those children who, for one reason or another, are becoming confrontational, defiant, and/or bullying with both children and adults are the students who are being brought to our discussions.

This is the time of year when responses can be tricky. How should we respond to challenging behaviors? Does the timing have anything to do with the level of challenge? If this is a new problem, how did I miss it earlier in the year? If this was a recurring problem from previous years, why did it just now really get ugly?

If you’re asking questions then the first thing I want to say is, “YAY YOU!!!”

Questioning is the first step to finding a solution. Often we adults are tempted to see a recurring behavior and jump right to assuming we know what’s going on. Often this assumption leads us to take actions that only make the problem worse. It’s not too long before we are locked in an entanglement that is difficult to unravel.

If we are able to stay in our questioning mode a bit longer, we may find that the true reason for the unruly or downright abusive behavior is something totally different…something we might have missed had we jumped in with a corrective action too soon.

So how do we do that?

I have two responses to this question and I’m going to give you the short answer first: Hang out with the student and get to know them. Talk about ANYTHING, but show interest in them. Ask them how they are doing? Ask about what they are interested in learning this year. Ask what they hope school will be like this year and if there is anything they’d like you to do to support them in their quest to achieve that vision.

Anything that I will suggest in my second response must be built on a foundation of relationship. Sometimes, when you concentrate on the relationship, the undesirable behaviors begin to slip away or at least become manageable with just a smile or a glance in the  general direction of the student.

So do whatever you can to build relationship.

This can be difficult. We have feelings, too, and we have SOOOO much to accomplish with the entire class. But I assure you, that spending time getting to know that one student who is occupying all your after-school thoughts will pay off as you begin to sort out what’s going on underneath the unwanted behavior.

A process for that sorting out continues in part two which will drop next week!

“If a child carries out the will of a teacher because he is afraid or because his affection is exploited, he has no will, and obedience that is secured by suppression of the will is truly oppression. Such is often the obedience obtained in schools, but the finesse of discipline is to obtain obedience from developed wills, and this is based on a society by cohesion, the first step to organized society.”

Faced with challenging behaviors that don’t seem to be impacted by our typical responses, we (meaning, ME TOO! I’ve done this.) tend to tighten down, to force, to coerce.

I woke to just such a plight…Facebook, of course. The plea was for some way to deal with a student who talked incessantly and was constantly up and down, moving around the classroom. The teacher was seeking advice beyond some things she’d already tried, including withholding recess.

That response sure brought out a lot of criticism! There was some support for the recess response, though, if couched properly in a verbal response I know flew out of my own mouth a few times: “If you play during work time, you’ll have to work during play time.”

I know that Dr. Montessori did not shrink from expecting children to develop discipline. She was also clear about how that happens: through engagement with work.

I didn’t return to the thread to see if that suggestion ever came. The truth is there isn’t a Montessori teacher anywhere who hasn’t had this child, or several like them, during their career. One Montessorian wrote the book on it: Children Who Are Not Yet Peaceful.l (Goertz, 2011) ^[1]The child whose story particularly spoke to me and hangs in my memory is “Herzog: The Web of a Magnificent Mess”.

What I distilled from this story, and others among the pages, was Ms. Goertz’ unwavering willingness to continue observing, withholding action until she felt she might have a glimmer of what was going on for Herzog. While she waited, he regularly emptied shelves on the floor, leaving them for others to clean up. By her words, I pictured Herzog as a human tornado; the funnel cloud always threatening to drop down from the clouds he lived in to wreak havoc on some shelf or another.

When this happened, the children were stunned, turning to her to see how to react…she didn’t. When the children thought she’d missed the incident, they came to her. She asked them to put the things from the shelf on a rug so Herzog could return to clean them up when he was ready. For many days, he wasn’t; he didn’t clean up. In the meantime, she watched, reflected, and waited to respond.

You’ll have to read the rest of the story elsewhere…but her eventual actions did the trick AND it changed me and my awareness of what is possible when the adult reaction is to observe instead of react or take a stand for our classroom rules by withholding what should be the regular expectations of a child’s day…like recess.

So what would I do with that child from the FB post?

I’d watch with as much objectivity as I could muster, jotting the thoughts down moment to moment, and doing nothing. Later, I’d read through those jotted notes for clues to this child. I’d be asking myself, “What is behind this behavior?” and then over and over asking again, “What else could it be?”

I’d watch for glimmers of interest and introduce “works” just for her to see what sparked increased concentration and engagement. And then I’d watch some more. If I believe in the Human Tendencies (Montessori), continue to trust the child’s inner knowing, and have great patience as I observe, question, and reflect, I will begin to see opportunities to support the child in the development of her concentration. Sometimes it takes a while…even a long time. It took this child 6 or 7 or more years to get to this moment; to undo those years will take time.

Here’s a little anecdote that may help you trust in my “believing is seeing” perspective. It was shared with me just last evening and I vowed to add it to this post:

An intern guide was troubled by a 12-year-old student’s withdrawn and abrasive behaviors because they were impacting his relationship with his peers and his belonging in the class. The science lab team was working on without him when the teacher asked the student if they’d like to do the lab on their own with their own microscope. This lit the student up; his engagement continued for days and caused a shift. Since that day, work is being completed. Conversations to more deeply understand the student’s nature have been had. The student recently volunteered for service in the class and just this week, volunteered to work on the class newsletter. WOW!

What if that teacher had instead, forced the issue of working with a group of peers that were reluctant to include him? Thankfully, that won’t be necessary!

^[1] You can pick up a copy from Montessori Services: https://www.montessoriservices.com/children-who-are-not-yet-peaceful