#blog: Turning School Libraries into Discipline Centers Is Not the Answer to Disruptive Classroom Behavior
by Stephanie McGary
Special thanks to Next Generation Learning Challenges for allowing us to cross-post this blog post :-)
A proposal in Houston to replace school libraries with discipline centers fails to address the root causes of student misbehavior. A more constructive response can repair harm and address the underlying issues.
School libraries should be places where students can learn independently and think creatively outside the traditional classroom. But that won’t happen under a new plan proposed for Houston, the largest school district in Texas. Instead, spaces once reserved for quiet contemplation of books will now be transformed into disciplinary spaces for troubled students.
This summer, the Houston Independent School District decided to close school libraries and replace them with discipline centers. Parents and educators are concerned that this might harm struggling students in a state with the country’s fourth-lowest literacy rate, and fear that the new policy will do nothing to address some of the root causes of student misbehavior, which often include difficulties with literacy.
Superintendent Mike Miles, who was appointed by the Texas Education Agency to lead the district after it was taken over by the state, is pushing the policy. In an NPR interview, Miles explained that disruptive students will be sent to these discipline centers and then rejoin their classmates virtually.
Schools have attempted to address misbehavior with stricter discipline practices for years, but resorting to virtual participation—and virtual problem solving—is not the answer.
Districts should examine why a student chooses to communicate an unmet need by disrupting the classroom. All behaviors are a form of communication; misbehavior specifically is sometimes the only form of expression available to a student at the time.
If Houston’s plan is truly a systemic reform, as its proponents claim, why aren’t we also holding these larger systems responsible for the impact they have on student behavior?
More times than not, misbehavior is a response to a perceived stressor in the child’s environment hindering them from making more “appropriate” choices in the moment. Learning how to read, write, speak and listen—communication—requires more than understanding phonemic awareness, spelling or vocabulary. It requires the activation of the frontal lobe, which is responsible for reading fluency, speech, grammatical usage and comprehension.
In their book The Whole-Brain Child, Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson refer to this area as the “upstairs brain.” They explain that the lower and mid parts of the brain (the “downstairs,” or survival, brain), must feel cool, calm and collected before access is granted upstairs. Many things can contribute to the downstairs brain hijacking everything and revoking access to the part our students need to control their impulses, problem solve and excel in communication.
Traumatic experiences are the main culprit. They include not only the difficult childhood events we often hear about but also detrimental community and environmental experiences, such as structural racism, low pay, a global pandemic and climate crises. All can have negative effects on growing and learning. If Houston’s plan is truly a systemic reform, as its proponents claim, why aren’t we also holding these larger systems responsible for the impact they have on student behavior?
Feelings of anger, frustration or stress, which can be caused by struggles with reading or other comprehension, can also lead to the downstairs brain hijacking the upstairs brain. When this hijacking happens, it can look like students are highly anxious or behaving aggressively toward themselves or others. Struggling with any academic skills can bring feelings of shame, which is a vulnerable emotion often hidden under challenging behaviors, many of which could get a student sent to the proposed “team centers.” A library and supportive librarian would benefit them more.
Not every misbehavior is the result of an issue with literacy, but every misbehavior communicates a need. While discipline is necessary, it should not end there.
Districts and school administrators need to recognize that a student’s behavior might be a trauma or stress response, and they need to learn how to respond constructively. This is known as a trauma-informed approach. Concurrently, restorative discipline practices focus on repairing any harm caused, while sparing the dignity of the student without excluding them from their community.
Not only does student behavior deserve to be fully understood and supported, but our educators, including our librarians, deserve to be allowed to work in their areas of expertise. When students are feeling unmotivated or defeated and communicate this through disruption, they should be met by individuals who not only understand the function of that behavior but also use their unique skills to quiet the downstairs brain to better attend to the upstairs brain, putting students in the best place to learn and grow. This is true system reform.
Educators cannot do this alone. Caregivers can also integrate trauma-informed and restorative practices at home. Parents know their children better than anyone and have a responsibility to advocate and assist schools in understanding the child behind the behavior.
Infusing trauma-Informed and restorative practices into schoolwide policies and procedures will help schools attend to the root causes of misbehaviors without the risk of re-traumatization.
Protecting learning, literacy and libraries and addressing discipline issues are not mutually exclusive. Our school systems can and should do both.
About the Author
Stephanie McGary
Licensed Professional Counselor-Supervisor and Registered Play Therapist
Stephanie McGary is a licensed professional counselor-supervisor and registered play therapist who finds joy in advocating and training around the mental, social, and emotional wellness of children, youth, and educators. A Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project, Stephanie is currently the director of clinical programming at Communities in Schools of Dallas Region and the owner of Tots N' Teachers Counseling and Consultation where she focuses on the mental health and wellness of children and educators.
#blog: Building the Bridge through Courageous Conversations: An Interview with Shomari Jones and Paul Sutton
by Shomari Jones, Bellevue School District, and Paul Sutton, Pacific Lutheran University
Cross post from the NGLC blog.
Educational equity leaders (and podcast hosts) Shomari Jones and Paul Sutton examine courageous conversations, what they are, why they are important, and how to have them.
Could you introduce yourselves?
Shomari: Sure! I'm Shomari Jones. I am the director of equity and strategic engagement for the Bellevue School District [Washington].
Paul: I'm Paul Sutton. I'm associate professor of education at Pacific Lutheran University [Washington].
How did you meet and start working with each other?
Paul: I've been working with Shomari for several years now. We work on various projects together, but mostly, the thing that we do together is this podcast, this little project that we started. Coming out of COVID, we started having conversations with each other just about stuff that we are noticing and just issues that were surfacing, and so we decided to start recording it. That turned into this podcast that we have called Coffee with a Little Bit of Cream, which is Shomari and I talking about all things related to equity and education; we bring on guests, and it's fun.
Could you talk about your work around engaging in courageous conversations? What are they?
Shomari: Courageous conversations are opportunities for us to engage with each other, seeking opportunities and ways to learn and grow within ourselves and within relation to one another. We start with this compass.
Credit: Creative Conversations about Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools and Beyond by Glenn E. Singleton
The compass in and of itself is just a tool that we utilize to express that sometimes when we come to the table, we're coming to the table from a different space than the person who we may be engaging with. And we really boiled this down to four spaces in which you traditionally come from. You don't have to only come from one specific space. You can have a couple of different spaces that you react to immediately. But most often we gravitate to one. So for example, I tend—specifically, when engaging in conversations that are complicated—I tend to show up a lot of times in my emotional space. After some practicing, Paul, I’m actually seeing that I no longer hardcore die in the emotional space. It's interesting to see how I've progressed through my continual practice. Instead of landing in emotions, we want to evaluate and assess where you are in each one of these categories so that you can be centered. Because centered is a way that we will most achieve opportunities to build bridges and build relationships with other individuals.
And so just looking around the compass, oftentimes we either fall into the feeling or the emotional quadrant, the believing or the moral quadrant, the thinking or the intellectual quadrant, and the acting or the relational quadrant. And there's nothing wrong with any of them. We want you to experience all of them, but just note this example from my personal experience:
I was in conflict with the community in which I serve around building a body of work, specifically equity, that I thought was really important to the success of our students. This particular part of the community was not in agreement with what my beliefs are. They were operating from and coming to the conversation in their feelings quadrant. I was operating from and coming to the conversation in my head or in my thinking/intellectual quadrant. And when we engaged in discussion, we were not seeing eye-to-eye. We were planes crossing in the air, without having any opportunity to build relationships or build bridges.
So, what would have been best served for me is to maybe show up in my thinking and take time to think about my beliefs a little bit, then explore my emotional quadrant, and then proceed to my action quadrant. Because if I’m seeking to transform someone else's belief, I need to meet them where they are.
Paul: Courageous conversations really revolve around coming to the table with people who think differently than you, revealing needs, shining light on fears, identifying preconceived beliefs or understandings, and spending time building a pathway to better comprehend each other’s perspectives, creating an atmosphere of patient listening that blends the elements of mercy and truth. I really want to know where you're coming from and why you're coming from there as much as I want you to know where I'm coming from and why I'm coming from there.
The goals of courageous conversations are to:
Gain wisdom to see from a bigger perspective.
Gain understanding that will help establish truth in relationships.
Build bonds and bridges, and a lot of times, cross-sectional with individuals who may not come to the table believing what we believe.
Ultimately, if we continue to share or shirk our responsibility to involve all different perspectives and all different voices, we will not be moving together.
Shomari: These conversations can sometimes be challenging, and they can sometimes be revealing and make us vulnerable, so these three guidelines kind of provide us with some rules or norms about how we can be in that space:
Stay engaged.
Be authentic by sharing honest feelings.
Maintain confidentiality.
Remember these five anchors to take care of yourself during difficult times in courageous conversations:
Quiet your mind.
Notice the sensations, the vibrations. What's going on in your body?
Accept the discomfort.
Stay present.
Safely discharge the energy that remains.
Paul: I hope that folks who are reading this just find some small part of their life to lean in and just give it a go and see what happens. Enjoy the wallowing and enjoy the awkwardness and know that every time you do that, you just get a little bit better at it.
Shomari: Yes, that's awesome, Paul. To gain wisdom to see from a bigger perspective, I involve myself in conversations with others, especially those who I don't see eye to eye with for a multitude of reasons. I was told once that I am not going to be ever capable of changing who you are. You have to change who you are. I can provide you with a perspective. I can take you on a journey alongside me. I can show you the way, but until you make the decision that you are going to be the one who changes for you, it just won't happen. And so to gain wisdom, to see from a bigger perspective—to me, [this] involves me walking and taking a journey with you to a place where we can both come to an understanding and an agreement. And I want to gain some understanding that will establish trust in the relationship; relationships are built on trust. That trust is going to allow me to continue to come back to the conversation with you.
Because of that established relationship, I can pause and not be salty [laughing]. And start off from a space of listening and then engaging, which would help to lead to a quicker bridge to the other side and to gain knowledge so that you can take the next steps, right?
I want to encourage you all who have the opportunity to read this, to reach out to us if you want to practice, to find pathways to try this and practice this at home with your loved ones or with—let's not try it on your boss first. Let's practice a couple of times before you take it off, and then suddenly, you don’t have a job anymore [laughter]. Let's practice in some spaces where you feel the least amount of negative impact as possible so that you can continue to build up that courage to engage in courageous conversations.
About the Authors
Shomari Jones is the director of equity and strategic engagement for the Bellevue School District. He is a co-host of the Coffee with a Little Bit of Cream Podcast.
Paul Sutton is an associate professor of education at Pacific Lutheran University and co-host of the Coffee with a Little Bit of Cream Podcast.