Rediscovering Hope by Solution Tree

REDISCOVERING HOPE Our Greatest Teaching Strategy Curwin

Copyright ÂŠ 1992, 2007 by Solution Tree 304 West Kirkwood Avenue Bloomington, IN 47404 (800) 733-6786 (toll-free) (812) 336-7700 FAX: (812) 336-7790 email: info@solution-tree.com www.solution-tree.com

Cover art and design by Grannan Graphic Design Ltd.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-879639-24-9

Table of Contents About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Chapter 1

The Seed Is Planted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Chapter 2

A Society at Risk: Children Without Hope . . 17

Chapter 3

Hope, Risk, and Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Chapter 4

Professionalism and Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Chapter 5

Responsibility and Effective Discipline Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Chapter 6

Diagnosing the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Chapter 7

Discipline Methods That Do Not Work . . . . 79

Chapter 8

Effective Discipline Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Chapter 9

Altruism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Chapter 10

Competition and Students at Risk . . . . . . . . 111

Chapter 11

How Grading Affects Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Chapter 12

A Structure for Motivating the Hard to Motivate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Chapter 13

School Policies and Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

Chapter 14

Life After School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 References and Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Solution Tree

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About the Author Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.

ichard L. Curwin, Ed.D., is the coauthor of Discovering Your Teaching Self, Discipline With Dignity, Am I in Trouble? Developing Responsibility and Self-Discipline, Discipline With Dignity for Challenging Youth, Making Good Choices, and Children Left Behind. In addition, Dr. Curwin has written articles that have appeared in Educational Leadership, Instructor, Learning, and other education journals. He has taught at both the junior high school and university levels, and has presented trainings throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

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Preface

hen I first wrote Rediscovering Hope in 1992, I was deeply concerned about the growing number of students who seemed to have stopped caring about learning, withdrawn from the school community, and given up hope for a successful future. Personally, I was going through my own crisis of hope. Writing this book was a catharsis that played a major role in restoring my faith within myself. The feedback I received from readers and participants in training sessions validated my belief that negative attitudes can be changed by effective teaching, positive relationships, carefully planned discipline, grading techniques, school policies, and, most importantly, educators who believe in their students. Students who feel helpless and hopeless can rediscover within themselves the same faith in their future that I rediscovered in mine. However, it has come to seem over the years that even more students are losing hope than ever before. I have worked as a long-term consultant in a middle school in San Jose, California. When I asked students what they wanted to do when they graduated high school, three said, “Go to prison.” When I asked why, their answers ranged from, “People respect you,” “You earn your bones,” or “It’s cool,” to, “So I can see my father.” Nowadays for some, prison is a career choice. Students who have been to lockdown facilities and returned to regular school are often proud, rather than ashamed of their circumstance. Other students often admire them. Solution Tree

REDISCOVERING HOPE

Another factor that has intensified hopelessness in many students is the increased use of standardized testing as part of No Child Left Behind. My chapter on evaluation in this book is even more relevant today than when I first wrote it. I firmly believe in standards and having high expectations for all students, especially minority children who are at risk of being written off. But using the same standards for all students regardless of their abilities, home life, special needs, and disabilities is, simply put, crazy. Each child needs an appropriate goal based on his or her needs, abilities, and circumstances. Hopelessness is the result for the students and teacher when students fail to reach inappropriate standards. In the years since this book was written, the media has had an even stronger influence on young people. There is even less of a line between virtual reality and the real thing. With websites like YouTube, Metacafe, and MySpace, many kids live more of their lives online than in flesh-and-blood reality. While there are many positive outcomes from the interactiveness of the virtual world, for some children its influence is destructive. I had dinner and conversation with a close friend of a notorious school-shooting perpetrator, who said his friend played Grand Theft Auto and enjoyed the killing part most of all. Yet within each of these destroyers of hope lies the seed of renewal and faith in our future. Private citizens the world over contributed millions to hurricane and tsunami victims. People opened their homes and their hearts to those made homeless by these disasters. Scrutiny from the virtual world has made it increasingly difficult for prominent figures to hide illegal and inappropriate behavior. Racism, once exposed, can be confronted and reduced. It is not our responsibility to point out to children how much worse the world is today. It is our responsibility to teach children how to survive, thrive, and prosper in the world in xii

Preface

which they live. This book—even more than when it was first written, I believe—has the concepts and tools to reach even the most discouraged learners and give them hope. —Richard Curwin January 2007

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Introduction

he last question the principal asked me during my job interview was, “Can you teach hard-to-motivate kids?” I answered confidently, “Of course. That is one of my greatest strengths.” Back in the late 1960s, teaching positions in English were rare; so if he had asked me if I could motivate comatose kids, I would have said, “Of course. That is one of my greatest strengths.” I was so happy to get the job, I did not ask what he meant by “hard-to-motivate.” My class consisted of 10 seventh-grade boys who were considered by everyone to be the dregs of the school. No other teacher wanted them, so the principal put them in an isolated, self-contained class; and he hoped he would never hear from them or from me until June. I spent most of the month before school developing learning activities for hard-to-motivate seventh-graders. I asked everyone I knew how they would motivate “hard-to-motivate” kids. The mood of the 1960s influenced most of the answers, which ranged from blowing up the school, to sharing my feelings so they could feel good about me, to relating to them with all levels of my inner consciousness. I was more comfortable designing motivating classroom games. I made felt board games to teach vocabulary and baseball games to teach math. I had Jeopardy-type games to teach social studies and “mad scientist” games for science. I figured everybody loves to play games. The boys would have so much fun that they would not even know they were learning. Solution Tree

REDISCOVERING HOPE

The day before the kids came, I took my three boxes of games and set out to prepare my classroom. I was full of energy and hope. Ideas buzzed around my brain like bees around a hive. Sadly, I never had a chance to use any of my games. On the morning of the first day, one of my students stole his father’s car and drove it to school. He was 14 years old. The principal, in a state of panic, immediately called me to the office. “Get that kid and that car out of here,” he shouted. “I don’t want the police and the newspapers here on the first day of school.” By the time I got back to my room, the other boys had found the boxes and made confetti out of them. The trashed games were a perfect metaphor for the entire year. I eventually had to trash all of my preconceived plans and concepts of how to motivate “hard-to-motivate” kids. Their problems were severe. During the course of the year, one boy tried to hang himself in the coat closet and nearly succeeded, two got arrested, and all of us were thrown out of a zoo by an irate zookeeper who threatened to let the animals out of the cages and lock my class in. Police had to be called into the planetarium because two of my boys almost managed to remove the main lens during a light show. I developed headaches, severe stomach disorders, and a strong desire to apply to graduate school for the following year. My students taught me the true meaning of “at risk,” a term that had not yet been invented. For that entire year, I was a teacher at risk. I also learned some important lessons about students who are hard to motivate. I learned that all my expectations of how things would affect them were guesses at best and foolish at worst. For the last 15 years, I have focused most of my professional life on the issue of discipline. If I were to summarize what I have learned in those 15 years, I would say something that anyone who works with children already knows 2

Introduction

well: Most techniques for behavior management work best for the kids who do not need them, and it is extremely difficult to find techniques that consistently work for those kids who need them most. The most difficult students are those who no longer care, those who have lost hope for their future both in school and in life. I also learned that I had to let go of my ideas of what a teacher was and did, what a school was and how it should function. Since no method or procedure typically used in school had worked with these kids, I had to find new ones or continue to fail. I came to understand the theory of holes that says, “when you are in one, stop digging.” And I learned that all kids, even those who make serious attempts at suicide, have dreams and hopes about their future. They all prefer to be successful in school and feel genuine joy when they learn and master something new. They also are reachable at least some of the time, want to be liked and respected by teachers, and deserve the best chance that we can give them. THEY’RE STILL HERE During a visit to Tokyo, I had the opportunity to visit a large junior-senior high school and chat, with the aid of an interpreter (who was also an educator), with the principal and assistant principal. I asked many questions about how they dealt with students who were discipline problems with little success in eliciting an answer. When I changed my focus to motivation, I was more successful. “What do you do with students who don’t want to learn?” I asked. “They’re not here anymore,” was the reply. “Where are they?” I asked. “We don’t know,” was the answer. In America, students who are removed from the classroom always seem to come back (at least until some decide to quit). And the time interval is far too short for the beleaguered Solution Tree

REDISCOVERING HOPE

teacher who removed them. This book is written with the hope of not only keeping them in the classroom, but for helping them to learn during their stay—and minimizing the sense of relief when they are absent by changing the nature of their relationship with those around them. Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe once defined insanity as “continuing to do the same thing expecting different results.” It is insane to think that simply by doing more of the same things, we can positively influence hard-to-motivate students. Hope intrinsically means desire for change for the better. Change will only occur with the courage and commitment to stop doing what we are doing, and start doing something else. WHAT DOES THE TERM “AT RISK” MEAN AND HOW DO I USE IT? Nicholson looked up at him, and sustained the look—detaining him. “What would you do if you could change the educational system?” . . . . “Well . . . I’m not too sure what I’d do,” Teddy said. “I know I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t start with the things schools usually start with.” He folded his arms and reflected briefly. “I think I’d first just assemble all the children together and show them how to find out who they are, not just what their names are and things like that . . . I guess, even before that, I’d get them to empty out everything their parents and everybody ever told them. I mean even if their parents just told them an elephant’s big, I’d make them empty that out. An elephant’s only big when it’s next to something else—a dog or a lady, for example.” Teddy thought another moment. “I wouldn’t 4

Introduction

even tell them an elephant has a trunk. I might show them an elephant, if I had one handy, but I’d let them just walk up to the elephant, not knowing anything more about it than the elephant knew about them. The same thing with grass, and other things. I wouldn’t even tell them grass is green. Colors are only names. I mean if you tell them the grass is green it makes them start expecting the grass to look a certain way—your way—instead of some other way that may be just as good, and maybe much better . . . I don’t know. I’d just make them vomit up every bit of the apple their parents and everybody made them take a bite out of.” (Salinger, 1953, pp. 195–196) Care must be taken when using labels with children. Terms such as “at risk” are best used to identify special needs and services, not to predetermine abilities or achievement. They are not helpful as explanations of why a child does something: “He is constantly out of his seat because he is emotionally disordered,” or “She doesn’t do her homework because she is at risk.” Used in this manner, labels are misleading and block deeper investigation into what motivates the student’s behavior and what the student truly needs. Students often live up to or down to the expectations expressed by their labels, even though the labels are inaccurate, incomplete, or unfair. This book is about “students at risk.” This is another label. It makes for more efficient communication, but it limits perception. I cringe a little every time I use that expression, but I was not wise or clever enough to write this book without it. I have tried to use the “at risk” label diagnostically, as a description of a set of circumstances rather than as a judgment of character. Solution Tree

REDISCOVERING HOPE

It is what students do under the conditions they are in, not who they are, that puts them at risk. Generally, for one reason or another, they have stopped learning, have stopped caring, have stopped believing that school will make a positive difference in their lives. They accept the limits others have given them. More than discipline techniques is needed for these students. They need hope. The purpose of this book is to give hope to students who have lost it: first by understanding how hope was lost, then by suggesting both schoolwide and classroom changes to bring it back. Without hope, nothing else we attempt will matter. Students without hope put us all â&#x20AC;&#x153;at risk.â&#x20AC;? It is also easy to label all schools as inadequate and all teachers as unable to handle the student at risk, mired in unfeeling lectures, caught up in outmoded grading systems, and helplessly throwing up their hands in despair. This is far from the truth. There are many exemplary schools throughout the United States that reach the student at risk. There are many teachers who expertly change the perceptions of these students from hopelessness to believing in themselves. If you ask students at risk who their favorite teachers are, they always have an answer, and those teachers have found the key to unlock the door that separates the learner at risk from his or her more successful peers. STUDENTS AT RISK AND MINORITIES Minority students comprise the majority of students at risk. African-American males are almost an endangered species in America. The largest growing minority in America are the Hispanics, who are even less noticed by the bureaucracies than are African-Americans. Minority children need special services at the youngest ages possible, especially programs like Head Start. The strategies and suggestions in this volume are not written only for minority children. These are universal suggestions 6

Introduction

for all children who have lost their hope for learning. Children at risk come in all sizes, colors, and flavors, and speak a variety of languages and dialects. They come from both impoverished and advantaged homes and from parents who might abuse them or care deeply about them. Every individual in school who feels hopeless deserves the opportunity to renew feelings of hope. This book is for all of them. IS THERE REALLY HOPE? Gathering information for this book was, at times, very discouraging. The picture appears rather gloomy when all the problems facing children are pieced together. As the Phi Delta Kappa Study of At Risk Students clearly shows, the number and severity of social ills is overwhelming. I asked Jack Frymier, the author of the study, if he still had hope after working on this project. He was very hopeful, enthusiastic, and positive that schools can and should make a significant difference in what happens to these children. “Heart attacks are caused mostly by factors related to heredity, which are not controllable,” he said. “Yet doctors do not give up. They do as much as possible to understand what they can’t change and manipulate what they can. The result has been vast improvements in both the frequency and treatment of heart attacks. Educators can do the same.” Of course there is hope. Schools cannot cure all the evils of society. Schools might not be able to guarantee a successful future for all students. But schools can, at the minimum, provide an oasis for those children who desperately need one. The school may be the only place where all children are treated with dignity, where they learn to behave responsibly and discover the magic of learning. Educators must put forth the effort.

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REDISCOVERING HOPE

We can even hope for more. Not every student will succeed, but many can. Each of their lives is important and worth fighting for. Schools can become the opposite of our throwaway society, a place where every individual matters. As Jack Frymier said, “Let’s get going.”

Introduction

WRITTEN IN MATH CLASS I sit here in my prison cell, With its malodorous prison smell. They always ask me what I’ve learned. I tell them “nothing.” They get burned. Escape is easy if I try, But if I succeed, I’ll surely die. With a section two feet wide, Surrounded by myself on every side. I wonder. I think. I comprehend. Will my sentence ever end? Eleven years down and one to go. It’s all an act; it’s all a show. “Brutality,” is what I cry, As the wardens waddle by. I’ve done no crime. Why am I here? I believe it’s to better me, and give me fear. They don’t answer, don’t inform. They just pressure me to conform. If I do badly I’ll stay longer. Which makes my feelings even stronger. To keep me here that’s their only goal. You can have my body but not my soul. — Andrew Steven Curwin a junior at Brighton High School Rochester, New York

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REDISCOVERING HOPE Our Greatest Teaching Strategy Curwin