Teachers & Parents - Student Misbehavior Masking Grief

A boy refused to open his notebook for three weeks. His teacher warned him. His name went on the board. He was sent to the Vice Principal. His parents were asked to meet the following PTM. On Monday morning, he still would not open his notebook. Everyone responded to Rohan. Nobody asked why. Weeks later, a counsellor discovered what the discipline system never thought to look for. Rohan's grandfather had died in October. The grandfather who sat with him every evening and helped him with his work. The grandfather who told him — in the way that only grandfathers can — that he was going to be somebody. Rohan was not refusing to write. He did not know how to write for an audience that was no longer there. —— Every discipline system is designed to respond to what it can see. The closed notebook. The defiance. The silence. What it cannot see — the grief, the fear, the need that has found no better language than misbehaviour — that is left untouched. And so the behaviour returns. Consistently managed. Completely unchanged. Because we keep solving the wrong problem. —— There is a difference between a reaction and a response. A reaction addresses what is visible. A response asks what lies beneath. The question that changes everything is not: what did this child do? It is: why? —— My book — Lead the Room, Keep the Child — is shortly coming out. It is for teachers and parents who believe that how we respond to a child's worst moments shapes the person they become. Chapter 1 is called: You're Solving the Wrong Problem. Because most of the time — we are. —— Have you ever discovered — too late or just in time — that a child's behaviour was saying something completely different from what it appeared to be saying? I want to hear your Rohan. #TeachersOfLinkedIn #PastoralCare #EducationIndia #ClassroomManagement #LeadTheRoom #MayoCollege #Parenting #Dignity #CBSESchools #BoardingSchool