Throw the tablecloth on tonight and see what happens

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how we help children be the best versions of themselves and how, in one particular regard, we (as adults) do such a terrible job of it. I’ve been reflecting on how we generally treat behaviour differently than other aspects of childhood learning, like mathematics, reading, and music (to name a few). We do, but we shouldn’t.

If we take mathematics as a familiar reference, we can all acknowledge that learning mathematics is a journey. It starts with learning numbers, then knowing that numbers have a value, and then learning that the values of numbers can interact through addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. As we develop our understanding of numbers and how they work together, we learn about more complex manipulations and delve into abstractions. Calculus, algebra, statistics, geometry, trigonometry and for the eager few, quantum field theory (!). We have all walked this path, some of us further than others and some with more (or less) enjoyment than those around us.

While that journey has been fraught for some of us and an absolute joy for others, we were generally never punished or given consequences for being unable to “do” something as we learned. It was (and continues to be) widely understood that math is something you learn. If we had a good math teacher, we would have been given opportunities to learn again, practice, practice, and try again. We were shown. We practiced. We tried to demonstrate. We made mistakes. We were shown again. We practiced. We tried to demonstrate. We made mistakes… and so on, until we could demonstrate. Then… we moved on to the next level or degree of complexity or topic that demanded that prior knowledge. We were not punished for not knowing, told you “should know how to do that”, or not given any more help. At no point were we “just expected to know”.

And yet, when we consider children and their behaviour… that’s often not how we approach it.

Instead, we generally expect kids to know how to behave; when they don’t, we punish or give them consequences. Of course, this is a generalisation. We do teach our kids how to behave. But how well do we follow the same learning path as we do with math? From my observations as a teacher, a school leader and as a father, not as well as we should.

Of late, I’ve been talking a lot with colleagues about this. About the need to really teach students how to behave, like we teach them how to do long division or understand their times tables. In those conversations, I’ve been discussing how this need has grown over the years.

When I stood before my first class as a teacher in 1992, students came to school with greater self-management competence than they do now. I know that most of those students went home each evening and sat at a dinner table with a tablecloth and ate dinner with their families. They learned to look at the person who was talking. They learned to take turns when talking. When Dad said, “Don’t talk to your mother like that!”, they discovered there were ways in which they spoke to adults that differed from how they talked with their brother or sister. They participated in the routines associated with dinner: helping prepare the meal, setting the table, clearing the table, washing the dishes, drying the dishes, etc. There was one screen only (in the whole house!!!), typically in the living room and usually off as the family ate. Again, it is a generalisation, but back then, more common than not.

Fast-forward 32 years, and that scenario plays out much less in our students' dining rooms now than it did then. My hand is up as a “guilty” father. I’ve thrown a tablecloth across a table maybe ten times this year (when Grandma came for dinner!). Usually, we sit facing a big screen with plates on our laps and phones by our sides. If the big screen is dull, the little screen serves up my algorithmic dopamine dipping sauce. Conversation… what conversation? Again, generalisations, but worth considering.

Malcolm Gladwell famously wrote about the 10,000 hours it takes to become an expert in something. I’m not sure I grew up with 10,000 hours of dining-table learning, but I know I had morning and nightly opportunities to learn, practice, and try my interact-at-the-table-behaviours again as I grew up. I also know that these days, our students are not receiving anything close to the hours of practice their parents did as children.

School is now where many children first begin to be exposed to the need to take turns when speaking. It is often the first place where they start to realise that you talk differently to adults than you do to your siblings or friends. It is the first place they begin to experience the accountability of being responsible for things. It is the first place they start to grapple with the challenges of waiting until it is their turn.

Of course, this is not true for all children, and for some, not at all. While all of these are generalisations, what used to be given hours and hours of time week after week, year after year, is now given less time. That set of skills and understandings that used to be given those hours and hours of practice time at home has now become the domain of school to provide time for, which brings me back to the start of this conversation.

We can no longer expect students to have all these behavioural/social skills in place when they arrive at school. We need to spend much more time teaching these skills. We must provide opportunities and time for students to be taught, practice, fail, and learn how to manage themselves in relationship with others.

While Faith is already doing well in this, we continually strive to improve and learn. Our Relational Development Program (previously known as a Behaviour Management Program) is designed to teach kids how to manage themselves within a group and how to navigate moments when friction occurs. It teaches students the skills to use when dealing with relationships and multiple opportunities to try, fail, and try again.

The aim is not for students to behave correctly. That goal is doomed to fail. The aim is for students to respond appropriately to interventions when they make mistakes rather than immediately punish moments when they “have not yet learned.”

If we are serious about helping our students be the best versions of themselves, we must give them opportunities to improve. That process of doing better, the attempt-mistake-intervention-attempt again-success process, is as critical to learning how to behave as it is to learning to solve a quadratic equation. “Attempt again” is essential to that process.

Kids are amazing. They learn so much so quickly. Regardless of what it is, it needs time, modelling, practice, and support and time to practice again when it didn’t work the first time.

Here’s an idea… throw the tablecloth on tonight and see what happens.