He Hit Me Back First! -- Love and Will

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Love and Will

From He Hit Be Back First!: Development of the Will in Children for Making Choices*, Revised Edition, printed by Jalmar Press, (800) 662-9662, blwjalmar@att.net, reprinted with permission.

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An incident occurred a few days later while I was substituting in another school—an incident that made a lasting impression on me and deepened forever my commitment to developing a "better way" of working with children.

I had the children in the library when two boys got into an argument over a comb and started to physically battle it out. The class went wild, jumping up and down, yelling whooooeeee! I had caught the two boys by the arms and had them on either side of me, each straining to reach the other, when the door to the next classroom opened. A teacher stood quietly in the doorway and said, "May I help you?" I looked at him. The children looked at him. Silence. A respectful silence. The man was of slight stature, plain in appearance, and had a slight limp. He also had a quiet presence that penetrated us all. He asked what the problem was and listened quietly and fully. He then placed a gentle hand on one boy's shoulder and suggested that he "come with me for a while." The class quietly returned to work.

At lunch time I sought out that man and what a time of sharing we had! He was a dedicated teacher who firmly loved the children. He evoked a disciplined response from them without resorting to "rule with an iron hand" or "just love them, the poor dears."

Three teachers, three approaches to discipline. One using love without will, evoking disrespect and non-cooperation. The second (myself) using will without love, evoking cooperation with resentment. The third creatively using love with will, evoking trust and growth.

I left that day determined to discover and develop within myself that same inner presence that radiated love and will, gentleness and firmness, and loving strength.

A few months later I was assigned to a school as a full-time teacher with my own class of fourth graders. These children were in an elementary school of a large inner-city school district in California's San Francisco Bay Area. Ninety-five percent of the students were African American and the remaining five percent Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic, and Native American. Because students' math, reading, and language scores on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) were below the 50th percentile, the school was part of the Compensatory Education program funded by California's Senate Bill 90.

The following statements about the children in my classroom were given to me by parents, foster parents, and social workers:

"An incorrigible discipline problem.""Aggressive and undisciplined.""Constant fighting and use of obscenity." "A foster child. Mother in an institution and father an alcoholic. Three brothers in jail, one in San Quentin." "When she was five years old she saw her father kill her mother after he found her in bed with a lover."

How does a classroom teacher help children with such problems? Children who, because of life experiences, have a low sense of self-esteem and little awareness of how to correct their behavior? Children who, in order to survive, are behaving the only way they know how?

I continued to search for alternative ways to give concrete, practical help to the children and for a greater sense of purpose and direction in teaching based on that radiating sense of "knowing who I am."

In this process, I discovered that I placed many demands on myself, on the children, and on the educational system. Some of the heaviest demands were that I "be the perfect teacher" (the teacher-God complex!) and that the children "be the perfect students."

It was difficult and even painful for me to learn that I could not be "responsible" for the behavior of my students. Each student ultimately makes his own choice of response, even within a limited environment. I was setting myself up for failure. That demand created a tension within me that absorbed a great deal of my attention and energy, thus limiting my creativity and my ability to see problems in a larger perspective. Such demands for perfection placed both me and the students in a closed box, allowing no room for creative choices. There was no way I could "make" a child learn to multiply, learn to read, learn to "be good" unless the child's awareness at the time permitted her to choose to do these things. However, I could be responsible for my own behavior. I could be responsible for creating an environment that motivates, challenges, and invites a disciplined, creative response to learning.

I began to trust the inner wisdom of the child to teach himself. I began to trust the teaching of others along the child's way, to trust the life process itself to teach the child. . . and to teach me. I no longer had to demand that every child learn in the way I thought she "should." As these demands were released I experienced a deeper sense of freedom and creativity than I'd ever experienced before.