Well I met with the vice principal to debrief an interaction that occurred several weeks ago when there were high school boys in the classroom who were not supposed to be there and didn’t want to leave, and on whom I did not want to call security due to the BLM movement and the criminalization of Blackness in our society.
First of all, I got the administrator’s number and he said I could text him if I had any issues in the future, and he also said that he had talked to the boys and found out their real names, and that they cared about their mothers finding out about this issue. I wasn’t going to call the parents, but he said it is a good sign when children care about their parents’ finding out about their behavior.
The main thing the man emphasized was relationality. I should have remembered this from my time as a teacher, but I had gotten out of practice because of being out of the classroom due to the pandemic. But really, if we build up relationships in the first place, we then avoid issues coming up later, and also, we have the rapport to be directive about students and their making better behavior decisions in the future.
So it’s all about relationships.
