Yelling at Kids
Teachers, Use Your Voice
I’ve scolded kids.
Sometimes too harshly.
I’ve gone into complete daddy monster mode and laid into students as if they were escaped Nazi war criminals. I have come off somewhere between the crazed Earl of Lemongrab from Adventure Time screeching, “Unacceptable!!” and Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest screaming about wire hangers. In these moments I was usually at my wit’s end, having had enough of not simply their mischief but, in particular, their malicious and cruel mistreatment of one another. Children can be brutal to each other, as I’m sure many of us recall from our own childhoods.
However, at this point of modern schoolteaching, there seems to be simply no more appropriate consequences left to dole out in response to the hurtful or bad behavior done by students unto other students or to their teachers. In my former school district, there are limited suspensions or expulsions, particularly after a district ban on suspensions for willful defiance.
Children are seemingly allowed to defy their teachers and not face any significant penalties. Disruptive students are to be, supposedly, sent to a counselor. But rarely is a counselor ever available. At my schools, an unruly student would, maybe, receive an inconsequential “talking to” by an overworked administrator and then promptly returned to class or made to be babysat by annoyed office staff. The issue of their misbehavior was hardly ever resolved and more often postponed until the next, bigger problem arose. Students do not have to respect or follow the directions of their teachers. There are simply no more true or appropriate consequences to dole out.
On top of this institutional failure, often no parental support is provided for the handling of disobedient children. Parents themselves are overwhelmed and seem glad for the respite from their own kids that school offers.
This lack of support often leaves teachers with a paltry set of options for discipline. The last effective tool in my tool kit was becoming a Fee Fi Fo Fum giant gnashing my terrible teeth at misbehaving students whenever they were out of bounds. I especially become incensed when students bit other students or stole from me. Those two infractions would really rile me up.
When said students suffer no consequences, and no one else is telling them their behavior is wrong, I don’t know any other effective way of communicating my anger and displeasure than roaring. Reasoning with a child is like vomiting incomprehensible words over them in a slow, boring speech. It’s my former school principal Mr. Quihuis’ lackluster, ineffective lecture on the use of the n-word when I was in third grade. I might as well offer misbehaving students a slow, reasoned course on quantum mechanics. And quiet time is often the equivalent of a coffee break with a cup of decaf—pointless and unsatisfying to everyone.
Scolding seemed for me the best and only option in many situations.
I’ve scolded kids in front of their parents or guardians trying to emphasize how important the issue was, only to have the parent end up angry at me. When that has happened, I wash my hands of the child and no longer consider the parent a partner. An internal countdown begins in me, enumerating the days until the child is no longer in my presence. The student and I may have an institutional relationship, but our personal relationship can no longer move forward.
Other times, guardians have sought my assistance in disciplining their own children.
The Time a Ten-Year-Old Tried to Send Her Grandpa Home
I once encountered a grandfather looking perplexed on the play yard after school.
He approached me and softly asked if I spoke Spanish. I said yes. Then he asked if there was anyone in charge of discipline. At that time, I was an out-of-classroom teacher/coordinator. I again said I could help. He then proceeded to tell me that his granddaughter, whom he was in charge of picking up from school, wouldn’t listen to his directions. He said he had to drive to go pick up her brother at the local middle school, but she wouldn’t stop playing on the play apparatus with her friends and get in the car so they could leave. He was already running late. He pointed to his ten-year-old granddaughter having the time of her life summiting the play apparatus. She had not a care in the world.
I approached the area of the yard she was in. For dramatic flair, and to get to her quicker, I jumped over the four-foot-tall fence instead of walking around it. I wanted her to know I was coming for her and was the opposite of her frail, old grandfather.
The kids playing with her harmonized a collective “oooooh!” The drama queen entrance was working.
The girl saw me coming toward her. I asked, “What’s the problem?”
She angrily insisted, “I told him to go pick up my brother first and then come back for me!” (I hope you’re as incredulous reading this as I was experiencing it.)
I started in on her, “You don’t get to decide that. You’re not in charge. You don’t drive. You don’t have the car. You’re not in charge of picking everybody up from school. You don’t have a driver’s license.” I was trying to delineate the different responsibilities and privileges of being an adult.
“My mom does,” she said promptly. She was the type of child who had a rapid retort for everything and had to have the last word. We were playing verbal Ping-Pong.
“Your mom’s not here picking you up. Your grandfather is.”
“I have a California ID,” she countered. Child was spitting up nonsense.
In the sternest Latino man voice I could conjure up from my abdomen, I ordered her out of the play yard and into her grandfather’s car. It was a get-your-ass-in-that-car type of tone. You’re ten years old, you don’t get to decide these things. The Boom Boom Voice I used worked. She grabbed her backpack and stomped off into the car. The grandfather waved a ‘thank-you’ with his hand.
That’s all I have as a teacher—a loud voice coupled with the humiliation in front of peers. It’s the wand in the illusion of the very minimal control I can exert. There is nothing else. There are no objects or special touch I can use to push or pull children toward action, no threat of taking away of privileges that is significant (recess is mandated, field trips must be accommodated, stickers and cheap toys lose their allure after a while—plus, they cost money), and many parents are either helpless, clueless, or unwilling to castigate their child, especially for something they did not witness themselves. Often, they believe their children are the true victims—even when they’re the perpetrators.
I don’t know what a child therapist or positive behavior support facilitator would judge about how I handled the situation with the little girl trying to commandeer her grandfather’s pickup schedule, but in acute situations of misbehavior there is no time for reason, bribery, or positive behavior supports. They just need to just get their ass in the car.
There was a time at A. Elementary when we had a rash of false fire alarms being set off by some boys for kicks. Our overpopulated school of 2,000 children and over 100 staff had to be evacuating our rooms every week because the alarms kept being pulled. I’ve seen this epidemic of false fire alarms become a trend at multiple schools to the point where it feels like a rite of passage for fourth and fifth graders.
The only strategy I’ve witnessed that put a stop to this mischievous but highly disruptive and expensive trickery is a principal dressing-down the child in front of the entire school, reading them the riot act in no uncertain terms with an audience present. I understand some psychologist or Brene Brown or parents might not approve of this shaming, but after the sixth false alarm in a row, the entire school is being collectively disrupted by this misbehavior while the fire alarms begin losing their psychological efficacy. There needs to be a balance between the individual needs of one child and that of the collective group. In The Boy Who Cried Wolf folktale, the boy gets eaten; at school, he gets yelled at in front of everyone. After I watched a red-faced lady principal lay into a child in front of all the school and then have the child go from room to room to apologize, the false alarms stopped.
When we got a new principal, they started up again.
I’ve obviously been wrong and crossed many lines in my career. I once castigated a preschooler for his misbehavior by rescinding his Student of the Month award in front of the other children. The mother was very much displeased. She spoke with me after class and explained how she felt about this unnecessary shaming. I understood her point and apologized to her. I agreed that I shouldn’t have done the castigation so publicly. I didn’t revoke my punishment, but I comprehended her concern and so apologized. At a later month, the child received the certificate he deserved.
Shame, Shame, Shame
How does one control a crowd of children unless shame, in some degree or another, is used to instill safe and correct behavior? I really don’t know. I wish I did. Many of the mechanisms teachers have in place traditionally have been degraded by district administrators—some justifiably so. But if a teacher’s control is illusory, we only have illusions to invest in. We have to pretend we have control and utilize sly tactics that can feel similar to running a psych-ops campaign for the CIA.
How do you prevent a small child from running out into the street, knocking down a tall tower of heavy wooden blocks, running with scissors, grabbing objects away from people, using their teeth to argue with their friends without the use of stern protestations called up from a loud place of authenticity? Children can sense when you’re not being serious. Shouting “No! Stop that right now!” loudly and forcefully doesn’t feel good to anybody because it is not supposed to feel good. There’s no way around that. That’s the point. Its purpose is to shock and thwart any further action without putting your hands on anybody.
Admittedly, shaming is a clumsy, blunt-force trauma. And half the time it’s haphazardly and accidentally deployed.
I’d find a puddle on the floor in the classroom and suddenly shout, “Who spilled all this water on the floor!!!??” Then, after a closer inspection, I would realize that it wasn’t water. But by that time everyone’s attention was focused on the pee puddle and the suspiciously quiet student who stood nearest to it. Suddenly culprits were being named out loud and I realized I should’ve been a little more discreet.
And then there is always that one kid who smells. The Pig Pen of the classroom. It becomes a real issue when the other kids begin to announce that they do not want to partner with a certain child because he or she smells. And they’re right. They do smell. Even I don’t want to stand too close. The thing is, I’ve usually already gone through the various steps of sending the smelly child to the nurse, involving administrators, filing neglect reports, providing soaps and free clothes from Operation School Bell, but often the family has bigger issues that apparently take precedence over frequent bathing. I understand how doing laundry can be an expensive, burdensome chore done infrequently by many poorer families. The entire family stinks, and their team of social workers already knows it. It’s not a secret. The children have been fostered and returned to their home, and still they smell. They have been counseled, and still they smell. They have been given free, new clothes, and still they smell. They probably will always smell, and there is not too much I can do to protect them from the shame of that besides hold my breath and pretend they don’t.
I remember Derrick sitting next to big boy Guillermo in first grade and, after suffering a few weeks of the bigger boy’s stench, Derrick couldn’t take it anymore. The six-year-old said out loud like some grown irritated man, “Daaaamn, Guillermo, why you stink?!” Guillermo, who was the sweetest big lug ever, just said, “Stoooopp!” in that plaintive, helpless voice children often use when they don’t know how to clap back at antagonists. I couldn’t really reprimand Derrick because it was true, Guillermo did stink. I just moved them away from each other in a class short on available chairs and desks—but Guillermo still knew why. I couldn’t protect him from that knowing. He’ll probably need therapy when he’s older because his mom didn’t teach him how to properly wipe his ass. The school house can only provide so much.
It seems like these small episodes of humiliation simply come with the territory of schooling. An unkindness is baked into the educational experience and teachers have to constantly nuance their behavior if they are to make it even a little bit better. But they also don’t want to give up too much control.