Not a Pal, this Princi-Pal

About three years ago, I had a teaching job at a charter school in Palm Beach County, FL. Prior to this, I had always taught at your everyday normal-type of public school. It was a pretty small charter school, and the principal was odd: she wore fluffy pink slippers to school most days. Also, she built almost like a fortress of computer screens around her desk in her office so that if you went in to see (bother) her, you could barely detect her behind all the huge monitors. Plus, she was the definition of micro-manager. To my 30+ years of teaching experience, she had 3 years, but she felt justified in critiquing most curricular decisions I made.

Trouble in the Classroom

Let me not turn this into a whining festival, so I’ll get to the point. I had a student who came about 30 minutes late to every class with no explanation offered at all. He would just saunter in ever so slowly. However, this school did not allow teachers to give detentions for tardiness, which is what I had always done before. That same student entered class and promptly put his head down to sleep. I spoke to him privately several times, tried to help him get caught up, and so on. Then, he started to get up, walk over to several of his buddies, and convince them to not do any more work. The students told me he did this!

As a result, I requested a meeting with his parents (mother, it turns out), and all the other teachers wanted to be there as well. It is usually true that if a student is acting out in one class, s/he is likely to be doing the same across the board.

Parent-Teacher-PrinciPal Conference

The day of the conference arrived, all the other teachers were there, and so was the principal. Usually, I would be happy about an administrator showing up, but this one just made me nervous. Was she wearing her slippers today? Ok, well thank goodness no. The meeting began with each teacher telling the mother their own narrative of the offenses this kid had committed. He was pretty bad, and seemingly kind of disturbed. Meanwhile, at about 6 feet tall with a blank stare, he even felt a bit intimidating. The whole time we were in the meeting, his mother was rubbing his shoulder and back tenderly.

Finally after all the teachers stated his numerous infractions, our pal the PRINCIPAL had her turn. She said, ” Well Mrs. ______, it is obvious that your son possesses LEADERSHIP QUALITIES.”

Take a moment to let that statement sink in. That was her insightful contribution.

At that moment, the miscreant’s eyes lit up! I suppose it might have been the first time he heard anything like that. His mother was pretty chipper after the surprising declaration, too.

Rewarding Bad Behavior

To give you the upshot, no, the kid did not improve; he kept doing the same things the rest of the year on the rare instances he decided to show up for school.

Now…………..let’s change this subject just for a moment, as I so often do, to an event I saw on the news yesterday. The prezident of America received a gleaming gold medal from a large sports organization as a PEACE PRIZE. He was told that he has caused so much peace around the world and it just follows that he deserves this medal, the one he was denied by the actual Nobel Organization. A moment later, Monsieur Orange-Face Prezident grabbed the medal and placed it upon his own neck, like a braggadocious, gloating four-year-old with a new toy.

A Parody by Gov. Newsome

When people get rewarded for either bad behavior, or for nothing at all, they obviously become even more confident in their troublesome actions.

Can we agree to save the awards or the congratulatory words for those who do GOOD THINGS? Can we do that?

I genuinely hope that the boy in my class turned out ok and that he started to do productive things in his life. I also hope that the principal’s compliment did not embolden the boy to do worse things than walk into class late.