Student behavior is a funny thing.
Yes, I always say it comes down to teaching self-discipline.
But then there are those strange anomalies that occur, those strange confluences of what is accepted at home but not at school, old habits dyeing hard, and a momentary lack of good student judgment.
We had a student at one of my larger elementary schools; we’ll call him George. George was given a cell phone by his parents and the rules in our school were for all student phones to stay in book bags until the end of the day. George often inappropriately used his phone during the day, texted people, took pictures, made phone calls, and got away with it, primarily because George fell into that category of kid you would call “cute”.
George was a great kid, talented in music class. George’s cuteness was not malicious – it was a learned behavior. Kids learn what behavior gets them their desired results and will use that behavior forever until it doesn’t work. The same can be said of adults.
There was often talk at the staff lunch table about how George improperly used his phone with no consequences. George would amp up his cuteness quotient with the principal, say he wouldn’t do it again, and the principal would just tell him not to take it out during the day. No consequences.
Even worse, his classmates and other kids in school were beginning to deride him because of his perceived privileged phone status.
One morning in the middle of music, I turned to see George sitting in the second row, madly texting away on his phone, a first for my room. As usual in situations like this, I said nothing and performed a silent movie by holding out my hand for him to place the phone in it which he woefully did.
As I was walking to my desk at the back of the room to put his phone in a safe place for the remainder of class, I realized I had an opportunity in the making to modify George's phone behavior in a way that hadn't been done before in school.
Earlier that morning, I had found an old broken pedometer that I used for a staff contest to see who walked the most during the school day. It was in that junk desk drawer that we all have, the one where we keep all that small stuff we really don't want but aren’t ready to throw away yet.
The pedometer was on my desktop as I was putting George's phone down next to it. In a second I knew what I was going to do.
After putting it down, I continued walking back to the front of the class to pick up where I left off but suddenly I stopped and looked as if I was coming to a slow realization about something in my mind.
I walked up to George, bent over, and said, “Not today”.
I then started searching for something in the room.
“What are you looking for, Mr. Holmes? We’ll help you find it!”
“Three Mr. Holmes guitar picks for the first person who can stay seated and point to where my bass drum beater is.”
“Over there, Mr. Holmes by the bass drum!”
“Why, thank you, Janine. Here are your three guitar picks.”
I picked up the bass drum beater, walked to the back of the room where my desk was, raised the bass drum beater as far as I could over my head and slammed the butt end of the beater toward my desk, squarely hitting the . . . . pedometer.
Ka-boom!
The kids were far enough away and couldn’t accurately see what I hit. But that didn’t matter.
In a split second, hundreds of little pieces of plastic resembling a vaporized phone were space-bound, in orbit around my desk.
The kids were in shock. It was a toss-up which were wider: their mouths or their eyes.
Somebody whispered, “George, he just blew up your phone.”
I calmly walked back to the class and told George, “Message: not received.”
In actuality, the substance of the real message was received by everyone in the room.
After class, I took the phone to the principal, explained the situation, and advise her to keep it to the end of the day, and give it back to George before he boarded his school bus for home. She said, “No, I think we're onto something here. I'll keep it overnight.”
Within an hour, the story had spread through the school. When kids saw me walking down the hall, you could see the look of wonder and disbelief in their eyes.
The buzz at all the lunch tables that day was about how Mr. Holmes blew up a phone, how George has learned his lesson, and how Mr. Holmes had taught it to him.
The next week, after George had gotten his phone back, his class came to music. He was at the end of his line. Before he came in the music room, I said to both George and his teacher, “I might not miss next time”.
George knew exactly what I was saying.
I believe the changing of a mindset is easier than changing a behavior.
George continued to be great in music, especially chorus. Some would say that George “learned his lesson”. Actually, I’d wager that every kid in the school learned that lesson by third period lunch that day. As in, “Don’t mess around in Mr. Holmes’ room”.
What I would say is that I modified George’s behavior along with that of the school body.
Behaviors are often ingrained by repetitive physical actions, not by cerebral backlog. Sometime, a single jolt of conflicting behavior can create the new behavior pattern.
From what I could tell from that day on, George’s phone behavior changed for good.
I never heard of another instance of him taking his phone out inappropriately in the school again.
He still played the “cute” card whenever it was to his advantage but he learned that there were limits to what cuteness could buy him, especially in my class.
As for the bass drum beater, its reputation lived on in infamy and was my trusty companion, always within eye-shot of when I was at the front of the class. When kids were on “go” time, they would take turns pretending they were me, get the bass drum beater, and blow up an imaginary phone.
While a picture may be worth a thousand words and a bass drum beater may be worthy of changing just as many behaviors, somedays street cred is the only openly traded currency worth having.
Now THAT’S a message worth receiving.
Yes, I always say it comes down to teaching self-discipline.
But then there are those strange anomalies that occur, those strange confluences of what is accepted at home but not at school, old habits dyeing hard, and a momentary lack of good student judgment.
We had a student at one of my larger elementary schools; we’ll call him George. George was given a cell phone by his parents and the rules in our school were for all student phones to stay in book bags until the end of the day. George often inappropriately used his phone during the day, texted people, took pictures, made phone calls, and got away with it, primarily because George fell into that category of kid you would call “cute”.
George was a great kid, talented in music class. George’s cuteness was not malicious – it was a learned behavior. Kids learn what behavior gets them their desired results and will use that behavior forever until it doesn’t work. The same can be said of adults.
There was often talk at the staff lunch table about how George improperly used his phone with no consequences. George would amp up his cuteness quotient with the principal, say he wouldn’t do it again, and the principal would just tell him not to take it out during the day. No consequences.
Even worse, his classmates and other kids in school were beginning to deride him because of his perceived privileged phone status.
One morning in the middle of music, I turned to see George sitting in the second row, madly texting away on his phone, a first for my room. As usual in situations like this, I said nothing and performed a silent movie by holding out my hand for him to place the phone in it which he woefully did.
As I was walking to my desk at the back of the room to put his phone in a safe place for the remainder of class, I realized I had an opportunity in the making to modify George's phone behavior in a way that hadn't been done before in school.
Earlier that morning, I had found an old broken pedometer that I used for a staff contest to see who walked the most during the school day. It was in that junk desk drawer that we all have, the one where we keep all that small stuff we really don't want but aren’t ready to throw away yet.
The pedometer was on my desktop as I was putting George's phone down next to it. In a second I knew what I was going to do.
After putting it down, I continued walking back to the front of the class to pick up where I left off but suddenly I stopped and looked as if I was coming to a slow realization about something in my mind.
I walked up to George, bent over, and said, “Not today”.
I then started searching for something in the room.
“What are you looking for, Mr. Holmes? We’ll help you find it!”
“Three Mr. Holmes guitar picks for the first person who can stay seated and point to where my bass drum beater is.”
“Over there, Mr. Holmes by the bass drum!”
“Why, thank you, Janine. Here are your three guitar picks.”
I picked up the bass drum beater, walked to the back of the room where my desk was, raised the bass drum beater as far as I could over my head and slammed the butt end of the beater toward my desk, squarely hitting the . . . . pedometer.
Ka-boom!
The kids were far enough away and couldn’t accurately see what I hit. But that didn’t matter.
In a split second, hundreds of little pieces of plastic resembling a vaporized phone were space-bound, in orbit around my desk.
The kids were in shock. It was a toss-up which were wider: their mouths or their eyes.
Somebody whispered, “George, he just blew up your phone.”
I calmly walked back to the class and told George, “Message: not received.”
In actuality, the substance of the real message was received by everyone in the room.
After class, I took the phone to the principal, explained the situation, and advise her to keep it to the end of the day, and give it back to George before he boarded his school bus for home. She said, “No, I think we're onto something here. I'll keep it overnight.”
Within an hour, the story had spread through the school. When kids saw me walking down the hall, you could see the look of wonder and disbelief in their eyes.
The buzz at all the lunch tables that day was about how Mr. Holmes blew up a phone, how George has learned his lesson, and how Mr. Holmes had taught it to him.
The next week, after George had gotten his phone back, his class came to music. He was at the end of his line. Before he came in the music room, I said to both George and his teacher, “I might not miss next time”.
George knew exactly what I was saying.
I believe the changing of a mindset is easier than changing a behavior.
George continued to be great in music, especially chorus. Some would say that George “learned his lesson”. Actually, I’d wager that every kid in the school learned that lesson by third period lunch that day. As in, “Don’t mess around in Mr. Holmes’ room”.
What I would say is that I modified George’s behavior along with that of the school body.
Behaviors are often ingrained by repetitive physical actions, not by cerebral backlog. Sometime, a single jolt of conflicting behavior can create the new behavior pattern.
From what I could tell from that day on, George’s phone behavior changed for good.
I never heard of another instance of him taking his phone out inappropriately in the school again.
He still played the “cute” card whenever it was to his advantage but he learned that there were limits to what cuteness could buy him, especially in my class.
As for the bass drum beater, its reputation lived on in infamy and was my trusty companion, always within eye-shot of when I was at the front of the class. When kids were on “go” time, they would take turns pretending they were me, get the bass drum beater, and blow up an imaginary phone.
While a picture may be worth a thousand words and a bass drum beater may be worthy of changing just as many behaviors, somedays street cred is the only openly traded currency worth having.
Now THAT’S a message worth receiving.
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