Let your Wisdom be viral, not your Pain.

Often as teachers we spend most of our time managing behaviours. As humans our first choice at correcting behaviours is inflicting a punishment of some sort as a corrective measure.

Let's take a situation- A child throwing pencil case from a distance at another student who also might be a party to receiving it. An immediate response could be detention, calling up parents, giving extra work or so on. But this is not going to reform the students' actions. It might be a good idea to temporarily remove the student from the situation but it is not the solution to the problem.

In order to bring about a reform, two things are a key:

1. An ongoing rapport with the student ensuring a free dialogue.

2. An action suggesting repair done to the stakeholders affected.

REFORMATIVE Or PUNITIVE ? 

After an incident has occurred, it is important to address the situation and start a dialogue to engage the student to identify and regard the harm done due to their action. A dialogue needs to be two way and under all respectful conditions, in no way blaming the student even if you were the eye witness. Give some time to the student to reflect on their doing even if they deny at first and aren't respectful of the rules. Imposing your thoughts and judgements will lead to more harm and damage the rapport between you and the subject. With a little calmness and perseverance will come a lot more cooperation.

Once the students' have shown responsibility of their action and the harm it has caused, they need to identify the stakeholders. Most of the times, the list is longer than they expected. It might be the parents, cleaners, friends, teachers, school property and so on. It is important for the students' to think deeply how they were impacted- may it required addition 10 minutes of work for the cleaner, or disruption in parents' work  because they needed to care for the hurt child. This will create empathy for the others and eventually help them come with a reformative plan themselves rather than a teacher or an administrator coming up with a punishment which could be more traumatic. 

Sometimes just saying sorry is enough. Having the courage to stand up in front of the entire class and owning up to the actions is a demonstration of courage and much appreciated than just missing the school the next day. And sometimes it isn't enough. In those situations appreciate that the student took the onus of their actions but also seek further action to alter the damage created. It could be offering help to clear the mess they created or taking the student to the nurse and carrying his or her belongings as after care.

As a teacher, I am aware that punishments are quicker and also sometimes our way to vent out frustrations created by the students. But in no way will it reform the student and will create even more problems in future. On other hand reformative practice will take time, even more patience and understanding but eventually will make a student more responsible of his or her actions and create a culture of empathy for the stakeholders, one of them being yourself. 

Let your wisdom be viral and not your pain.