Jim Sporleder, principal of Lincoln High School
THE FIRST TIME THAT principal Jim Sporleder tried the New Approach to Student Discipline at Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, he was blown away. Because it worked. In fact, it worked so well that he never went back to the Old Approach to Student Discipline. This is how it went down:
A student blows up at a teacher, drops the F-bomb. The usual approach at Lincoln – and, safe to say, at most high schools in this country – is automatic suspension. Instead, Sporleder sits the kid down and says quietly:
“Wow. Are you OK? This doesn’t sound like you. What’s going on?” He gets even more specific: “You really looked stressed. On a scale of 1-10, where are you with your anger?”
The kid was ready. Ready, man! For an anger blast to his face….”How could you do that?” “What’s wrong with you?”…and for the big boot out of school. But he was NOT ready for kindness. The armor-plated
defenses melt like ice under a blowtorch and the words pour out: “My dad’s an alcoholic. He’s promised me things my whole life and never keeps those promises.” The waterfall of words that go deep into his home life, which is no piece of breeze, end with this sentence: “I shouldn’t have blown up at the teacher.”
Whoa.
And then he goes back to the teacher and apologizes. Without prompting from Sporleder.
“The kid still got a consequence,” explains Sporleder – but he wasn’t sent home, a place where there wasn’t anyone who cares much about what he does or doesn’t do. He went to ISS — in-school suspension, a quiet, comforting room where he can talk about anything with the attending teacher, catch up on his homework, or just sit and think about how maybe he could do things differently next time.
Before the words “namby-pamby”, “weenie”, or “not the way they did things in my day” start flowing across your lips, take a look at these numbers:
2009-2010 (Before new approach)
- 798 suspensions (days students were out of school)
- 50 expulsions
- 600 written referrals
2010-2011 (After new approach)
- 135 suspensions (days students were out of school)
- 30 expulsions
- 320 written referrals
“It sounds simple,” says Sporleder about the new approach. “Just by asking kids what’s going on with them, they just started talking. It made a believer out of me right away.”
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The dark underbelly of school discipline
Take a short walk on the dark side of our public education system, and you learn some disturbing lessons about school punishment.
First. U.S. schools suspend millions of kids — 3,328,750, to be exact. Since the 1970s, says a National Education Policy Center report published in October 2011, the suspension rate’s nearly doubled for white kids, to 6%. It’s more than doubled for Hispanics to 7%, and to a stunning 15% for blacks. For Native Americans, it’s almost tripled, from 3% to 8%.
Second. If you think all these suspensions are for weapons and drugs, recalibrate. There’s been a kind of “zero-tolerance creep” since schools adopted “zero-tolerance” policies. Only 5% of all out-of-school suspensions were for weapons or drugs, said the NEPC report, citing a 2006 study. The other 95% were categorized as “disruptive behavior” and “other”, which includes cell phone use, violation of dress code, being “defiant”, display of affection, and, in at least one case, farting.
Third. These suspensions don’t work for schools. Get rid of the “bad” students, and the “good” students can learn, get high scores, live good lives. That’s the myth. The reality? It’s just the opposite. Says the NEPC report: “…research on the frequent use of school suspension has indicated that, after race and poverty are controlled for, higher rates of out-of-school suspension correlate with lower achievement scores.”
Fourth. They don’t work for the kids who get kicked out. In fact, these “throw-away” kids get shunted off a possible track to college and onto the dead-end spur of juvenile hall and prison.
“Studies show that one suspension triples the likelihood of a juvenile justice contact within that year,” California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye told the California Legislature last month. “And that one suspension doubles the likelihood of repeating the grade.”
Fifth. All these suspensions have led many communities to create “alternative” schools, where they dump the “bad” kids who can’t make it in regular public school. Lincoln High School was set up as one of those alternative schools.
How Mr. Sporleder stumbled across an epiphany in Spokane
It’s the Spring of 2010, and Jim Sporleder’s mind more or less silently exploded.
This is the guy with 25 years experience as a principal. In Walla Walla, he’s got a rep for really connecting with kids. He preaches “discipline with dignity”.
John Medina – a developmental molecular biologist who’s an improbable cross between an old-time rip-snortin’ preacher and Jon Stewart – just drilled a hole in Sporleder’s brain and dropped this in:
Severe and chronic trauma (such as living with an alcoholic parent, or watching in terror as your mom gets beat up) causes toxic stress in kids. Toxic stress damages kid’s brains. When trauma launches kids into flight, fight or fright mode, they cannot learn. It is physiologically impossible.
Sporleder was three years into an exhausting stint as principal of the Lincoln Alternative School. He’d asked for the position after reading a report about the troubled school. The report quoted a couple of Lincoln High’s kids: “We’re the dumping ground,” one said. “Who cares about us,” another said. It wasn’t a question.
“That report riveted me,” says Sporleder. “I’m a person of faith. I felt called to come over here.”
Gangs controlled the school. It had only 50 students, but they were the toughest in the school system – the kids who’d been kicked out of other schools. Lincoln was their last chance.
“I didn’t know if I was going to make it,” recalls Sporleder. “We had some pretty rough kids. It took me quite a while to get on top of that.”
And then, at the behest of Teri Barila, co-founder of the Children’s Resilience Initiative in Walla Walla, he goes to this meeting where this guy who’s part comedian, part evangelist, part scientist (and best-selling author of Brain Rules) more or less tells him that this “discipline with dignity” stuff is, well, useless. Punishing misbehavior just doesn’t work. You’re simply adding trauma to an already traumatized kid.
“He explained it in lay terms,” says Sporleder. “I got it.”
Now, some people who are well into their careers can’t handle a paradigm shift. It’s overwhelming. That’s mostly because it’s just too much trouble to change the way you do…everything.
Spoiler alert: Sporleder isn’t one of those people.
He returned from Spokane to light a fire under his teachers. He felt compelled to figure out a way to do something different to reach his kids, but wasn’t sure exactly how. Teri Barila was in a perfect position to assist.
This is your (damaged) brain on ACEs
Really good ideas that help people solve problems often take such a long time to move from research to implementation that it can cost a community millions of dollars. Twenty years ago, Washington State created a state network — the Family Policy Counciland 42 community public health and safety networks — to share good information FAST to tackle a big, expensive problem: the high rates of child abuse and youth drug and alcohol abuse in the state. Teri Barila, a former fish biologist, leads the network in Walla Walla, a city of about 30,000 people in southeastern Washington.
Teri Barila
About 10 years ago, the council caught wind of two major game-changing discoveries. One was the CDC’s Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study). It showed a stunning link between childhood toxic stress and the chronic diseases people developed as adults. This includes heart disease, lung cancer, diabetes, some breast cancer, and many autoimmune diseases, as well as depression, violence, being a victim of violence, and suicide.
The ACE Study measured 10 common types of childhood trauma. Five were the usual suspects: emotional, sexual and physical abuse, and emotional and physical neglect. Five were family problems: a parent addicted to alcohol or other drugs, seeing a mother being abused, a family member in prison, a family member diagnosed with a mental illness, and a parent who’s disappeared through abandoning the family or divorce. (Although the word “trauma” is more commonly used to describe physical injury, in this milieu, it refers to any experience that causes toxic stress.)
The study’s researchers came up with an ACE score to explain a person’s risk for chronic disease. Think of it as a cholesterol score for childhood toxic stress. You get one point for each type of trauma. The higher your ACE score, the higher your risk of health and social problems.
A whopping 70 percent of the 17,000 people in the study had an ACE score of at least one; 87 percent of those had more than one. With an ACE score of 4 or more, things start getting serious. The likelihood of chronic pulmonary lung disease increases 390 percent; hepatitis, 240 percent; depression 460 percent; suicide, 1,220 percent.
The percentages climb to grim and astounding levels as the ACE score climbs – people with an ACE score of 6, for example, have a 4,600 percent increase in the risk of becoming an IV drug user. Grow up with an ACE score of 10, and you’re likely to find yourself homeless, in prison for life, or end up dead by your own hand. People with high ACE scores die, on average, 20 years earlier than those with low ACE scores.
By the way, lest you think that the ACE Study was yet another involving inner-city poor people of color, take note: The study’s participants were 17,000 mostly white, middle and upper-middle class college-educated San Diegans with good jobs and great health care – they all belonged to Kaiser Permanente, a health maintenance organization. As Dr. Robert Anda, one of the co-founders of the ACE Study says, “It’s not them. It’s us.”
The second game-changing discovery explained why childhood trauma had such tragic long-term consequences: Toxic stress physically damages a child’s developing brain. This was determined by a group of researchers, including neurobiologist Martin Teicher and pediatrician Jack Shonkoff, both at Harvard University, and neuroscientist Bruce McEwen at Rockefeller University. In a nutshell, toxic overdoses of stress hormones stunt the growth of some parts of the brain, and fry the circuits in others.
Children with toxic stress live their lives in fight, flight or fright (freeze) mode. They respond to the world as a place of constant danger. They can fall behind in school, fail to develop healthy relationships with peers, or develop problems with authority because they are unable to trust adults. With failure, despair, and frustration pecking away at their psyche, they find solace in food, alcohol, tobacco, methamphetamines, inappropriate sex, high-risk sports, and/or work. They don’t regard these coping methods as problems. They see them as solutions to escape from depression, anxiety, anger, fear and shame.
When Barila learned all this at a meeting that the Family Policy Council organized, it chilled and angered her. Determined to do something about it, she co-founded the Children’s Resilience Initiative to educate the Walla Walla community about ACEs and to build resilience to combat ACEs.
Barila brought Natalie Turner, an expert in creating trauma-free schools, to town to help Sporleder and his teachers.
Natalie Turner’s two simple rules for dealing with troubled students
When she met with the Lincoln High staff, Natalie Turner, from Washington State University’s Area Health Education Center, picked up right where John Medina, who lit up Sporleder’s brain, left off.
Toxic stress comes from complex trauma, she said.
Complex trauma ain’t pretty.
It’s when your dad’s in prison AND your mom’s a meth addict AND she’s too drugged out to move in the mornings, so you’ve got to take care of your little brother, get him fed and off to school, AND you’re despairing about being evicted for the third time because she hasn’t paid the rent and the landlord’s screaming at you to do something.
Or your dad’s a raging alcoholic AND he beat the crap out of your mom again last night AND the cops came and took him away at 2 a.m. AND the EMTs took your mom to the hospital and you hardly slept a wink and you’re frantic with worry because you don’t know what’s going to happen, but you’ve got to stay cool or otherwise you’ll have a complete meltdown.
Or your fat step-dad’s sneaking into your bed in the middle of the night AND you’re too terrified to move because he says if you say anything he’ll kill you and your sister and your mom, who’s depressed AND doesn’t talk much anyway.
Teens who live with complex trauma are walking post-traumatic stress time bombs, says Turner. They teeter through their days. The smallest incident can push them into a full-blown meltdown. Some kids run away. Some explode in rage. Some just mentally check out.
“In flight, fight or freeze mode,” Turner explains, “survival trumps everything else.” So when a kid who’s got complex trauma feels threatened or overwhelmed, exploding in rage at something that most people wouldn’t even shrug over is a perfectly normal response.
That’s worth repeating: exploding in rage, getting pissed off, stomping, hitting….it’s all normal. Until a school helps kids learn how to control their emotions, they’ll just keep losing it. For some kids, erupting is a stress reflex response.
“That’s the hardest pill to swallow,” says Erik Gordon, a science teacher at Lincoln High. “Trying to figure out how much of their behavior is from a choice and how much is outside their control. It’s a drag when you believe it’s outside their control, because all of the easy disciplinary action doesn’t work.”
There are just two simple rules, says Turner.
Rule No. 1: Take nothing a raging kid says personally. Really. Act like a duck: let the words roll off your back like drops of water.
Rule No. 2: Don’t mirror the kid’s behavior. Take a deep breath. Wait for the storm to pass, and then ask something along the lines of: “Are you okay? Did something happen to you that’s bothering you? Do you want to talk about it?”
It’s not that a kid gets off the hook for bad behavior. “There have to be consequences,” explains Turner. Replace punishment, which doesn’t work, with a system to give kids tools so that they can learn how to recognize their reaction to stress and to control it. “We need to teach the kids how to do something differently if we want to see a different response.”
Kids need adults they can count on, who they know will not hurt them, and who are there to help them learn these new skills, Turner tells the Lincoln High staff. If it’s not happening at home, it had better happen at school. Otherwise that teen doesn’t have much of a chance at life.
(For those of you who are interested in the underlying model that guides Turner’s teaching, it’s the ARC model developed at the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute. Turner and her co-workers were also influenced by the trauma-sensitive classroom movement, for which more information can be found in Helping Traumatized Children Learn (also known as the purple book), published by Massachusetts Advocates for Children.)
The red zones of Lincoln High
The Lincoln High staff took Turner’s information and flipped its system of school discipline like a pancake.
The changes began in the classroom. “Teachers started becoming detectives,” says Gordon. “We began focusing our concern on what we know that’s going on that might be causing behavior in a kid,” versus what type of punishment to mete out.
When a kid erupts in class, teachers intervene quickly. “A kid that I have a really great relationship with might blow up,” says Gordon. “So, I step out of the classroom with that kid and ask: ‘What’s going on? Because that was really intense.’ I know that something is bumming this kid out, because normally, we really enjoy each other.”
Other responses include:
- “Class isn’t working today, how about taking a time out with Shelly (in the ISS Room) so that you can get yourself calmed down?”
- “I feel that I really blew it and I feel like I have set you off. I want to apologize and see if there is anything that I can do to help you.”
- “You seem really upset, would you like to speak to someone in the Health Center?”
If it escalates to principal level, Jim Sporleder uses his infamous zone system: red, yellow and green. Here’s how that works:
Three boys don’t respond to their teacher, who asks them politely, but firmly to leave class and talk with the principal. Although three fuming teens sit down in front of Sporleder, he sees three brains under extreme stress, unable to take in anything useful or to solve a problem.
“You’re in the red zone,” he tells them succinctly. He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t roll his eyes. There’s no body language that says “I can’t stand you kids,” because he actually thinks the world of them.
“Let’s meet tomorrow morning. You’re going to take the rest of the day and night to process this.” (Sometimes Sporleder has found himself in the red zone, and tells the kids: “I’m in the red. I don’t want to make any decisions that could come from my own anger or stress. Let’s take a break and meet later.”)
The next morning, Sporleder says, all three approach him and say they’ve talked over the problem with the teacher, have apologized and figured out a solution. “We’ve got it all worked out,” they explain.
“That’s more common than not these days,” says Sporleder.
But if they had refused to apologize to the teacher and refused to solve the problem, or their infraction was more serious, they would have gone to ISS – in-school suspension.
“I don’t have kids arguing about the consequences,” says Sporleder.
Well…mostly he doesn’t. Sometimes he still gets kids asking to be suspended to home instead of in school, which tells him that ISS may be more uncomfortable, but it’s more effective. In that quiet room, they can’t distract themselves with TV, video games or drugs. A staff member offers conversation – about how the teen is dealing with the incident, or other issues in her or his life. Other teachers stop by to make sure the teen is caught up on homework.
“At home, there’s no accountability,” he explains. During in-school suspension, the teens can’t escape their issues. It’s not fun to have to give up old beliefs and habits. But they all get lots of support to get into the green zone.
“We tell our kids we love them,” says Sporleder. “They’re important to us.”
The third big change occurs in the school’s monthly staff meetings. Instead of talking about disciplining problem kids, they focus on why that teen’s having problems, develop a plan to help the teen, and make sure to follow up.
In the last two years, the Lincoln High staff has noticed that the kids’ ability to regulate their own emotions has dramatically improved. “There’s not near the number of huge emotional explosions that there used to be,” says Gordon. “Even the way the kids interact with each other is more subdued.”
They way the kids see it is that the teachers have chilled out.
What else do the kids say?
At Lincoln High, the kids not only live ACEs, but they talk them.
As senior Heidi Schoessler, 18, explains it: Students have ACEs (adverse childhood experiences). Those are the bad things going on in their lives. Resilience factors – such as asking for help, helping a friend, experiencing success, having hope — trumps those ACEs. They’re beginning to learn about those resilience factors in school and in the school’s health clinic.
When Schoessler showed up at Lincoln, she couldn’t be in a classroom with more than two or three people at a time, says Sporleder. She’d been bullied and harassed so much in elementary and middle school, that being around too many students caused a stress response that made her sick. Sixteen-year-old Aron Wulf was so withdrawn, he hardly talked. Jordan Massey, 17, had anger issues. Brendon Gilman, 15, who was removed from a family of meth addicts and has lived in several foster homes, says in this video about The Health Center at Lincoln High he was so angry with life that he didn’t care about the future because he was so mad about the present.
Today, all four chat easily about the school and its changes. Gilman went from failing grades to A’s. Schoessler’s taking college classes. Wulf is active in the production of the school play. All four do presentations for the community about the changes in the school.
“I got here, and my whole high school experience flat-out changed,” says Massey, a junior who transferred in halfway through his freshman year. “People came up to me and greeted me. It felt like I had real friends here. I loved it. I call it my home away from home. It really feels like a family here. The teachers are amazing. That’s how a high school should be.”
Here’s how Wulf describes the changes in his life: Shortly after he was born, his parents divorced. He’s been living with his mother. When he was younger, he spent every other weekend with his father.
“My dad’s verbally abusive. He has a really bad temper,” Wulf says quietly. “My mom has always been sick in bed pretty much. The people who should have been around were never around, basically. She has problems with depression and what not. She might commit suicide. There are financial issues.”
When he talks about Lincoln, his voice gets strong, and hopeful. “Lincoln’s the first school I’ve been to that I actually loved,” he explains. “It was the first time I ever felt that somebody actually cared to hear my story to know how I was feeling. My own teachers understand me better than my mom does.”
Wulf is an example of the type of quiet, isolated student that Dr. Vincent Felitti, co-founder of the CDC’s ACE Study, advises educators to “make sure you always connect with,” says Sporleder. The quiet students – the ones who respond to toxic stress with “fright” or “flight” – sit quietly in the back of the room with their heads down. They’re often labeled as “lazy” or “unmotivated”. They might not be as loud or belligerent as those who drop into “fight” mode, but they’re hurting just as much.
“I’m always looking for kids who are isolated,” says Sporleder.
“What is happening at Lincoln is completely different,” says Schoessler. “There’s so much more of a caring atmosphere. Students will come to the teachers when they need help. It’s something I have never seen in any other school.”
Even in-school suspension is useful, says Gilman, who spent time in ISS for getting in a dust-up with his ex-girlfriend at school. “I couldn’t handle being around her,” he says. “It kind of helped, even for just the day, to be away from everyone and everything, including her. It helped me reflect why I was there and why I had acted the way I did — without someone telling me how I’m wrong for what I did. It helped me look at the situation and what I can do to prevent it from happening again.”
School’s ACE survey helps kids, teachers understand each other
The kids talk ACEs because, as part of a science class on data and analysis, they developed a survey of 96 questions that include the shortened version of the ACE survey.
“It is so invasive,” says Sporleder, barely suppressing a shudder. “If an outsider developed it, it would never have been used.”
Since the original research in San Diego, 18 states have done ACE surveys, including Washington. If not the first high school in the U.S., Lincoln is certainly among the first in the U.S. to do its own ACE survey.
The survey’s anonymous, and students can skip questions if they want to. Some examples:
- “Has there ever been an adult in your household that has hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?” One-quarter of the kids said yes.
- “How many sexual partners have you had? Ten percent said 4 to 6.
- “Have you ever been forced to do something sexual that you didn’t want to do?” Almost 20 percent said yes.
The results show that these kids are grappling with way more than any kid – or adult, for that matter — should:
- 25% of the students are homeless.
- 84% have lost a loved one.
- 66% feel abandoned by their parents.
- 65% have an immediate family member in jail.
- 80% have suffered serious depression
- 50% live with someone who abuses alcohol or other drugs.
The survey’s useful, says Gilman, because “it gives you this feeling that ‘I’m not the only person who’s gone through that’. It’s easier to interact with people and to understand the way some people act.
The staff uses the survey to help understand the level and intensity of the teens’ stress. They also use it to teach the students that they cannot control and are not accountable for the trauma they have endured.
“When students understand they’re not responsible for the family they were born into, but they are responsible for who they will become as adults, and when they can see the power in that, it’s just amazing what happens,” Barila says in the Health Center video.
The grim reality is that the average ACE score for the teens at Lincoln High is 4.5. These kids are at high risk for developing chronic diseases when they’re older, becoming violent or being a victim of violence, suffering from depression or committing suicide.
ACE Study co-founder Dr. Robert Anda says that the study exposed “a chronic public health disaster”. So if a teen’s bad behavior or isolation or lack of motivation is a normal response to complex trauma, then that behavior is also a health issue. That’s what pediatrician Alison Kirby says.
The Health Clinic at Lincoln High
Four years ago, says Sporleder, “we needed a doctor to provide physicals for our first boys basketball team. Dr. Alison Kirby, a local pediatrician, volunteered to do all the exams for free.
“When’s the last time you had a physical?” she blithely asked the first boy. Ten years ago, he answered, before he started first grade. Her eyebrows shot up. She asked another. Never, he said.
Dr. Alison Kirby
Kirby was appalled. She didn’t realize that there were children in Walla Walla who hadn’t seen a doctor in 10 years.
“In my regular clinic, I see with kids with insurance,” says Kirby. “The students at Lincoln are a different group of kids. They are invisible. It doesn’t really connect with most people in this community that these kids are the future of our small town. Once you do see it, it’s unethical to look away.”
In all communities, kids are the future – a costly future or a beneficial future. They grow up to live out their lives in healthy or unhealthy ways, in ways that contribute to the growth and health of their community or to the economic and emotional afflictions. And how they live their childhood determines their future. If a large number have high ACE scores, then the community ends up spending more money for cops, courts, prisons, welfare, social services, medical and mental health than for schools, playgrounds, community pools, and libraries. People working in education, prisons, child welfare agencies and juvenile justice have known this intuitively for a long time. Now the research proves it.
Kirby didn’t look away. She cajoled, rounded up, lobbied, wheedled, coaxed, prevailed upon, inveigled and persuaded the community to step up, fund and volunteer at a health clinic that’s right next to the school. Open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., five days a week, it’s the only school health center in eastern Washington.
Kirby expected 90 percent of the clinic work to be “treating asthma, infections, stitches.” It turns out that 90 percent of the work focuses on the kids’ mental health.
“What we were finding is that there are not enough psychologists and counselors to go around,” she says. Given the toxic stresses that the kids are dealing with, she says, it’s no surprise.
“If your brain isn’t healthy and you’re not doing well, your body physically isn’t going to do well, either,” says Katherine Boehm, clinic coordinator in the health center video. “If you are struggling with depression or anxiety, you’re going to have a much harder time concentrating in school and being able to complete your work.”
The staff at the health center uses the student ACE survey to develop programs and services that help the kids learn skills to build resilience, specifically to:
- create social connectedness
- provide concrete support in times of need
- teach social and emotional competence
Last year, 175 of the school’s 200 students made 1,500 visits to the clinic. Still, nearly 20 percent of the students “still don’t trust us,” says Kirby. “They’re so beat up emotionally that they have huge vulnerability issues. They’ll come in with a friend for 6 months to a year before they come on their own.”
Part of that reticence comes from their treatment at other clinics. They have homemade tattoos and shaved eyebrows. They might smell bad because they’re homeless and haven’t been able to take a shower for three days. “At a big clinic, if they’re judged on appearance or smell,” says Kirby, “they get treated badly and the kids won’t go back. We accept them for who they are. Their future is more important than their past.”
Some have lived in dysfunctional families for so long that they don’t know what healthy is, so they’re vulnerable to abusive relationships, says Kirby. One 15-year-old girl, desperate for interaction with a loving adult, went online and found a “foster-daddy”.
“She got a ride 50 miles to a bigger city, where he was,” says Kirby. “She had severe depression, was “cutting”. His solution was to beat her.” The clinic treated her festering wounds and talked with her about healthy relationships.
“Many of these kids don’t have a parent who says ‘I love you’ and means it,” says Kirby. “Instead it’s ‘I love you, so now go score some dope for me’.
Kirby and the staff want to provide the support for the students to heal and to develop enough self-confidence to live healthy lives. For some, that means living different lives than their families are living. Many education experts say that kids wouldn’t have problems if their parents would just get involved. But the parents of most of the students at Lincoln HIgh are themselves are struggling with the effects of their own childhood trauma, and many are passing the trauma on to their children.
As Kirby puts it: “Their family is in a plane that’s going to crash. We tell them: ‘You’re going to parachute out. You’re going to college.’ Their family is likely to say to them: ‘Hey you in the parachute — get back in this plane. We need you to go to work and support us.’ The people in the plane give lots of pushback: ‘What? You’re too good to be with our family now?’ Sometimes kids change back. Sometimes kids get healthy and say: ‘I don’t want to live like that anymore.’”
Lincoln High’s metamorphosis is just beginning
Natalie Turner says that of all the schools she and her co-workers at the Area Health Education Center work with, “Lincoln’s at the top of the list.”
One of the keys has been a staff that embraces two basic concepts: toxic stress prevents kids from learning, and moving from a punitive approach to a supportive, educational approach changes behavior. Gordon says it’s also the unconditional love that the teachers at Lincoln High show the kids on a regular basis.
Lincoln High School, Walla Walla, WA
“Watching Jim Sporleder’s paradigm shift over the last five years has been just awesome,” says Gordon. “I’ve seen that guy cry talking about our kids. Lincoln is just a collection of staff that unconditionally love these kids. The rest is just mental hoo-ha.”
The mental hoo-ha has allowed and encouraged that kind of overt love, caring and support that’s characteristic of Lincoln and that inspires many people to go into the teaching profession. Turner has worked with educators who just won’t budge from clinging to a system that clearly shows no progress in helping the “troublemakers” and “unmotivated” students.
“If the staff aren’t ready, there’s no point in going in and trying to move a system,” she says. “There have been a couple of schools where they’ve had a very resistant staff, and we’ve decided to leave and try again another time.”
Although it’s made significant changes, Lincoln’s not finished, says Sporleder. “Part of what we’ve done is the relationship piece,” he explains. “That’s the powerful piece – we’ve built strong relationships with our kids. Now I want to move forward to help kids understand how resilience trumps ACEs.
Since he’s found no guidelines for this part, he’s trying this approach: He’s put together a chart that hangs on a wall in his office. It shows ACEs and, on red cards, the qualities of resilience that can overcome those ACEs.
He’s asked some students to read the ten ACEs and tell him how many they have, says Sporleder. “I never ask them which ones. And then we start talking about resilience. I share with them qualities that I have seen them demonstrate that build that resilience.”
One student told him: “I get it — the more red cards you have the greater the chance it trumps your ACEs.” Sporleder emphasizes how important it is for them to connect with positive caring adults to help them to continue to build their character and to build their resilience.
The changes at Lincoln have not eliminated expulsions. And the school hasn’t done the analysis to know for certain if the changes have resulted in better grades and attendance.
Nevertheless, Lincoln’s results are showing the community that change is possible. If suspensions can be reduced by 85 percent among teens whom most of the community had given up on, if they can blossom into happy kids who suddenly see themselves as having a future, perhaps the same changes can occur in other settings.
“We intentionally focused on Lincoln as a pilot of sorts,” says Barila, “with the full support of the assistant superintendent, so we could learn what strategies work and how, so we could then ‘pass it on’ throughout the school district.”
The next chapter, she says, is to see if the rest of the schools in the district can accomplish similar results. That includes Walla Walla High School, with its 2,000 students and larger class sizes, as well as six elementary schools, two middle schools, a Catholic school system and a Seventh Day Adventist school.
There’s little doubt that many of the 6,000 other kids in Walla Walla’s school district have adverse childhood experiences, too. Perhaps they don’t have ACE scores as high as Lincoln students, but ACE scores are more common than not. According to Washington State’s 2009 ACE survey, 62 percent of the state’s population has at least one ACE, and 27 percent have an ACE score of 3 or more.
But Lincoln alone can’t make enough changes to help every child, says Barila. “That social-emotional competency has to be built in soooo much sooner than Lincoln,” she notes. The goal of the Children’s Resilience Initiative is to educate the entire community about adverse childhood experiences, the effect of toxic stress on kids’ brains, and to encourage all organizations, agencies, clinics and youth groups to build and increase resilience factors. That’s why she named the organization the Children’s Resilience Initiative and not the ACEs Education Initiative, she says.
Still, if other schools adopt this approach, it won’t be easy, says Sporleder. He knows that his peers discipline “like I used to discipline. I think our educational system reacts to the action. We need to respond to what is causing the action.
“This is such a paradigm shift, you have to believe in it to make change happen,” Sporleder says. “The administration has to show support. That’s what I’ve seen. You’ve just gotta believe in it. You’ve gotta know that it’s true.”
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I graduated from that school and all I can say is that school is more like a family than teachers n students I loved it there wish I could go back
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I think this is a a really important article, but could you please edit out one word? In the list of possible stressful/traumatic life scenarios, the (sexually abusive) step-father is described as “fat”. No other individual is given an unrelated descriptor like that and it seems counter to the overall message and tone of the article.
Yeah, that was completely unnecessary.
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A lot of great elements in this article and genuinely did not have a idea in relation to almost any of this
until now so thank you for the awareness
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Suspensions dropping by 85% is impressive but I believe that if you treat children with respect you can avoid a lot of problems.
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I only wish any one of my teachers would have asked me these things as a kid. I just wish we could even feign compassion for each other… I’m still hurting today & I know no one cares…
Shay I am sorry that you have been hurt and carry the wound to this day. However, there is always hope and I would encourage you to connect with a caring adult and share your feelings. I also would like to encourage you to acknowledge that you are worthy, you have value, and you have potential to become that special person you are meant to be. I believe in you and I believe if you connect with some caring adults that you trust, it can get you started on the journey to heal those hurts that you still feel. I know that you can do it. I have seen amazing things happen in the lives of students that take the risk and step out to embrace hope. It will bring you confidence and empowerment. Get with that caring adult friend that you trust and start to heal and begin the journey to discover just how special you really are. I’m in your corner chearing you on! Jim Sporleder
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This is valuable material and effective as well. This approach of kindness, compassion and empathy seeks to separate the person from the behavior. So many folks and children in our lives are hurting over loss or abuse and this teaching seems so much more humane. Take a look at the work and books on Love and Logic Parenting by authors JiM Fay and Dr. Foster Cline. They have approach that is humanistic without the neurological theory.
My name is Sonya Adamson i went to lincoln high and can say ive had my share of hard times but i can honestly say no other school was able to help me better then the staff at lincoln high i also had mr.sporleader as a principal in middle school he was a great help to me and my family when we had hard times im soo glad people are taking notice to how great he and his staff truly are!!
Dear Sonya,
So good to hear from you! It is students like you that make coming to work a blessing and a pleasure. You will always be remembered for the effort and work that you put forward to address the obstacles in your life. I am very proud of you, and I hope you are proud of yourself as well. You will always have a Lincoln family that loves and supports you. Thank you for the kind words about Lincoln, you were a very special young lady that demonstrated if you work hard enough and connect with positive adults, you can overcome the difficult times that you have had to experience. Keep growing and know that you have a special,place in our hearts at Lincoln. God Bless, Mr. Sporleder
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sounds too good to be true!
I am doing a research paper on this and I was wondering how much did it cost to implement this new approach. It is more feasible than other approaches, as well as easier to implement? What are some of the benefits? And can how easily can it be applied to other schools or other regions?
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Reblogged this on The Tigger Project and commented:
I was recently on a plane ride and sat next to a brother and sister duo in their late 40s, early 50s. From the time we sat down, they were boisterous, commenting on the flight attendants and cracking each other up. They ordered Bloody Marys and then a second. They continued to be extremely loud. It was very disruptive behavior and I found my annoyance levels rising. They eventually settled down and tuned into the in-flight movie which was THE DESCENDANTS. If you haven’t seen this movie starring George Clooney, be forewarned that it’s a downer. After the movie was over, I engaged a now-subdued sister in conversation. I found out that her mother and grandmother had recently passed away in the same month, and her father was not handling it well. She explained that she and her brother were travelling to visit him every two weeks because he was feeling so lonely and sad. As she talked I saw the tremendous pain they were feeling and my judgment shifted to compassion. I felt ashamed that I had judged them so quickly. They were using humor and alcohol to feel better and were hurting too much to care about their influence on others. It just goes to show that everybody is dealing with something. What this world needs is an increase in compassionate listening. In this article, Lincoln High School in Walla Walla proves that compassionate listening can dramatically affect the rate of school suspensions. Remember, everybody is dealing with something.
i love the story you shared from your plan trip. it’s good to remember that everyone is dealing with something. thank you for sharing this.
Thanks so much for this reminder of our shared humanity and the power of compassion. It’s invaluable.
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Why oh why is all the article and comments in gray text? I gave up trying to read it comfortably after a few pages of the article. Please, use black text so that there is higher contrast.
I graduated from an alternative school similar to Lincoln in 1998, and I will be forever grateful for the emotional support provided during the three years that I attended. Had it not been for the well-educated and supportive staff, I would not have earned my high school diploma – I could go as far to say that I might not be alive today. I wish that I had been able to attend a program such as this before my sophomore year in high school. I feel that if I had had the emotional support earlier in life, I might have been able to become a more successful adult (both in my social behaviors and educationally). It has been a long road to get to where I am today, but I am so happy to finally be at a point where I know that I can make something of my life. Even with all of the direction and support the staff gave me, it still took years for me to let go of the abusive cycle I was raised in. My hope is that this “new” approach to discipline will be implemented in schools throughout the country, most importantly at the elementary level in mainstream schools. I know that when interventions are made earlier in life, the chance of success later in life is much higher. My educational and career aspirations now are to work with at-risk youth and families. I volunteer at a therapeutic daycare for children who have been, or are at high risk of being, abused or neglected. It feels amazing to be a source of positivity for these children who need the emotional support they most likely are not getting at home. Thank you so much, Mr. Sporleder, for the work you are doing with these students, and thank you JEStevens for bringing this approach more attention!
Sarah, what a beatiful testimony of resilence. Thank you for reminding all of us that change can happen any time and for some it comes later. As a staff we have committed to never giving up hope for our students. We tell our kids that Lincoln will always be there family and they can always come back and access support and encouragement. You are such a powerful role model for the children you are working with. You have walked in their shoes, have experienced their adverse childhood memories, and now you provide the path to show them compassion, value, and hope. By your example, you can demonstrate the road to resilence and a more fulfilling life. God bless you Sarah, Jim Sporleder
Zaz, what a gift you have given your daughter. I was touched by your personal story of how you approached your daughter validating her feelings, listening, and affirming your live. Blessings to you and your family. Jim Sporleder
I am the parent of a child adopted out of trauma who has reactive attachment disorder. The first three years of our lives as a family were miserable and we just reacted to her outbursts and violence. So did her teachers. One day I was called to pick her up from school because she was out of control and was threatening to kill everyone. Btw, she was 6. Usually, that would make me angry, too. I prayed for peace before I went into the school. When they left me in the room with my daughter, I saw how stressed she was. I asked her to come sit on my lap. I hugged her tight and told her we were going to figure this out. She started to calm down. After that I learned about cortisol in the brain and how I could help lower it. I learned about artificial dyes, nitrates and nitrites and how they affect some kids (mine seems to get violent on yellow #5). We changed her diet. We calmed our whole family down. We talk more. She trusts us more. She says she hates the way she feels when she gets that angry. She wants to be in control more than anything and she’s just not when she’s angry. Her arm even hurts. She’s 7 now and still has some behavioral issues (some habits are hard to break), but they are nothing like the ones we dealt with for the previous three years. I finally have some hope. I would love to see all schools adopt the approach in this article. It works far better than the old way. I believe.
Thanks for your comment, Zaz. It’s so very fortunate that your daughter has you as a mother! Your story reminds me of a crisis nursery that began using ACE concepts — it had 3- and 4-year-old traumatized children playing soothing games, such as blowing bubbles in a big trough of soapy water. A little knowledge about the physiology of trauma goes a long way!
Reblogged this on To Talk of Many Things and commented:
The statistics say it all! Anyone in AISD ready to listen to this? Frankly, it’s what I’ve been saying for years and is how I try to approach upset kids AND upset parents.
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Reblogged this on Neural Synapse and commented:
I love the approach. I think the majority of cases these kids need someone to listen, a place to vent that doesn’t look at them as part of the problem or that puts guilt or blame on them for the issues in their lives. On the otherhand… there are kids that are beyond this approach. Based on the data presented here…it’s well worth the effort to try.
“…your fat step-dad’s sneaking into your bed in the middle of the night…”
Your fat stepdad? Why in the world did you find it necessary to link fatness with sexual abuse? Would it really be any better if your skinny stepdad was raping you in the night? People’s body shape/size should NEVER be used as shorthand to describe their character, or add repulsion to an already repulsive situation. There’s already enough stigma attached to being fat without these kind of associations. Sexual abuse is inherently disgusting. Fatness is not.
thank you, sarah, for succintly saying what i was thinking.
Sarah, When I read that paragraph, I got the feeling the offender descriptions were closely paraphrased from actual student comments. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…….
Thank you so much for writing about this! I run a theatre program for incarcerated women in central Texas, and so much of the work that we do is about healing from trauma and learning to play, be joyful, and to trust other people again. I have done some work with somatic experiencing, which approaches trauma in (what sounds like) similar ways, and I’m so excited that this school is taking trauma into account with their students. Thank you for providing links and resources in this article – I’m going to look at The Trauma Center’s site now.
If you’re interested, you can learn about my program at http://www.conspiretheatre.org. Although we don’t explicitly talk about trauma very much because I’m not a trained therapist or social worker, much of our focus is in finding ways to physically release stress and trauma from the body.
Thanks again!
You run an interesting program, Kat. Dr. Vincent Felitti, one of the co-founders of the ACE Study, has incorporated theater in the Positive Choice weight-loss program with the idea that it can help people who are obese to release trauma. Keep up the good work!
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This approach does work- wonderful article!
This is really just an amazing approach, and like one reader said, I’m hoping to incorporate more of this approach into my parenting style, too. Really refreshing! I so appreciate the honesty of the level of change that is required. It requires vulnerability on both sides, which is never easy. Kudos to all who try!
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Great article.
This article is relevant to why young people become terrorists, but looking at a terrorism connection would have to include a chronic sense of religious or national (not necessarily personal) humiliation.
Wen have all heard that power corrupts. But powerlessness also corrupts.
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I especially like the principal’s comment about the times when he acknowledges that he is “in the red”, and does not make any decision or continue to have a conversation until he has taken some deep breaths, a little time off and is back “in the green.” As parents and teachers, we should all do this. After all, this is the reason we give our kids time-outs.
Thank you so much for writing this article. I teach in South Korea, a country that has one of the highest teenage suicide rates in the world. When I read your article, my mind went directly to these children.
I’m a TESOL teacher trainer in an in-service training program for Korean English teachers. When I hear their stories, I feel great despair for them and their students. They describe their students as being angry and rude. Many are lashing out at their teachers verbally, and more and more, the students are turning towards physical violence against their teachers.
Many teachers blame this kind of student behavior on the fact that corporal punishment has been outlawed. This brings me great concern and worry. How can they see that these kids just need love and care?
I hope to share this article with my teachers. I know some teachers realize love and care are the way. Seeing that one school has realized this may give them the motivation and awareness they need to start small changes.
Thanks again,
Josette
http://www.tokenteach.wordpress.com
http://vimeo.com/37975761 – This is a video we made of our health center (that’s adjacent to our school) that helps paint a better picture of our mission and the impact we are having on these kids. In no way shape or form do we feel that this is a “revolutionary approach” to discipline, in fact it should be the norm. The number of suspension/expulsions per year are not the only reference for success we have looked into, and in fact, have a multitude of qualitative data from multiple sources that measure various ways in which we define success in our students. We absolutely hold our kids accountable (i.e. arrests, court action for truancy, detentions, ISS, etc.), we just make a point in looking at causation of behaviors and work to address the root causes of them. What we’ve seen is that in listening to what their stresses, barriers, anger issues, etc stem from, we’re better able to help that student in understanding why it is they behave the way they do, how to reduce that stress/anger, and how it can be handled in a better way down the road. As I said, this seems basic, however, it isn’t the norm for most schools. We are blessed with an amazing amount of community support and have been able to provide the counselors, doctors, and programs that these kids have been needing in order to find their true success. In the 5 1/2 years that I’ve been there, our graduating class has gone from 7 to over 50 this year. Jim is an amazing leader and anyone that has set foot in our building can see that it is a culture of caring and accountability.
Thank you. I’m linking to this on my blog. The students in my school need much motivation and constructive feedback as well. God bless you all!
May I respectfully address some of the concerns in regards to accountability, manipulation of the data to show success, and how we communicate with our students. Since I have taken on a new paradigm approach to discipline, I feel that we hold our student more accountable today than when I was issuing “out of school suspensions.” You either believe in the brain research on toxic stress or you have the choice to disagree. However, it is a proven fact that a student that is highly stressed, can not physiologically be able to problem solve or take in new knowledge. I have lived on both sides of the philosophy for discipline. I would argue that before I made the paradigm shift, that I disciplined with compassion and that the student was being held to an appropriate consequence for their actions. I was wrong! You can argue about the data whether you agree or disagree. Where did I see the evidence that what we were doing was the right thing for kids? When I first put my knew paradigm to work, I had students arguing with me that I was being unfair for giving them a full day of “In school suspension” instead of “Out of school suspension”. I even had students argue that they should be suspended instead of doing 30 minute after school detentions. Why? Because they hated to be in ISS for a whole day and they hated the idea of having to stay after school for 30 minutes when they could have free days off to do whatever they wanted to do. It wasn’t rocket science to begin to see that we were heading in the right direction. We as a Lincoln Staff began to look at the cause of the behavior rather than reacting to the infraction. This is when I became the student and the students became the teacher. A caring response to an agitated student begins the process of d-escalating the emotions and bringing them into an area in which by lowering their stress, they began to problem solve. They are much more responsible for taking ownership for their behavior, they begin to develop a stronger adult relationship, the student sees that they are valued and treated with dignity and respect. The conversation is first, the consequence is last. What did I begin to see happen in the office? Students started to share what was causing their stress and it normally has nothing to do with the teacher, it has to do with a major crisis that is going on in their lives. The paradigm shift demonstrates compassion, allows information to be shared that can lead to seeking additional support for the student. And it allows you to follow up with them to see how they are doing. One of the strongest outcomes that I have seen, is that the student takes initiative and goes back to the teacher and apologizes. It is critical that the teacher accepts the apology and demonstrates acceptance and forgiveness. In closing, let me share a short story with you that tells it all. I had a 9th grade student referred to us because he was turning the comprehensive high school (2,000 students) upside down. His aggressive gang activity was causing a huge disruption to their school. When he came to Lincoln I shorten his day, isolated his contact with other students and let him know that if he demonstrated that he could leave his colors on the curb and not cause any disruptions, I would put him into a full schedule. His teachers developed a positive caring relationship with him and I met with him weekly to let him know how much I appreciated his attitude and keeping the gang stuff out of school. This young man today is one of our leaders, participated on our speech team, performed in two plays, and just got his ID card for the University of Idaho. This didn’t happen over night, but the more we connected with him, the more he connected with us. This young man still lives in a gang house (his older brother is guardian) is under lots of pressure to do dirt, but he has learned strategies that have allowed him to stay out of the reach of the older gang members. Today, I would introduce you to a gentle lamb, kind to others, respectful, school leader, and 2012 high school graduate. This young man would tell you that he was held accountable, that there were consequences when he made a mistake, and most of all, he would tell you that Lincoln is his family. The Lincoln staff embraces him as one of our children. Thank you so much for all the wonderful support. I apologize to those of you that have emailed me that you still carry the wounds from your educational experiences. Lincoln should not be the school that goes viral, we should be the norm.
Respectfully, Jim Sporleder, Principal of Lincoln High School.
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We utilize a school adjustment counselor in our Planning Room at Concord-Carlisle HS (MA). This provides a therapeutic component for the students.
We started a similar program at Concord-Carlisle HS (MA). We utilize a school adjustment counselor in our Planning Room so the student gets a therpeutic component.
I am really glad to see this taking place in my back yard. I would really like to know how to get involved.
Hi, Kelly — You could contact the folks at Children’s Resilience Initiative in Walla Walla, WA, specifically Teri Barila.
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“in-school suspension, a quiet, comforting room where he can talk about anything with the attending teacher, catch up on his homework, or just sit and think about how maybe he could do things differently next time.”
Um… things must have changed since my day.
While there may have been actual successes in Lincoln High, this article reports it poorly. It gives us numbers of actual suspensions, before and after instituting policies that change “punishments” from suspension to something else, then implies that these numbers are indicative of success. Giving ISS instead of a suspension will automatically reduce suspension rates. Instead of these numbers, they should have provided the number of incidents that WOULD have resulted in a suspension before the policy change.
So giving less suspensions in school reduces the number of suspensions in school? Brilliant!
There is a message in this not only for other schools but for most of us parents as well. We need to take some time out of our busy schedules and listened to our children for a change.Thanks for sharing.
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It’s a great story… but if I didn’t work in education I wouldn’t have read past the first two paragraphs; they completely destroy any credibility that this might be something real and serious. So I’m glad I read the whole thing, sorry that it’s too badly introduced to be worth sharing.
If I had to add anything constructive to this, it would be “make this sound as credible as it is”. This comes from someone who has one ACE and a difficult childhood in general, and deals with students with a sympathetic eye and, always wondering what I can do to make them want to do something with their lives.
I think this is breakthrough stuff… I just don’t think this article is going to do anything for your project.
Keep up the good work!
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This seems like the right direction for all schools. My son has been suspended for things like cell phone use and laughing inappropriately. But, the statistics highlighted here are meaningless. Of course, if you stop suspending kids you will have fewer suspensions. What you want to see are fewer serious problems like physical fighting and weapons, as well as attendance. The anecdotes in this story are great, but other schools will not adopt without data.
This question has come up on other comments and I think it deserves a response. If you look at my response on May 4th I address the accountability piece and I provide an example of a serious gang member that was removed from our traditional high school and sent to Lincoln. I hope this will give you a deeper understanding as to what we are trying to accomplish. I appreciate your feedback
Reblogged this on Beyond the Blue Fog-Bank – Daniel O Casey and commented:
Somebody pointed me to this, it’s quite a long read, but if you’re interested in how to recover that last 5%, to get through to the stone-walled ones, maybe take a quick skim. I’ll do up a synopsis later on on this but I need to read it slowly first.. man there’s quite a lot of stuff in here.
My ACEs were not so much external experiences (e.g. abusive parents) as the fact that I had four different neurological conditions that, at that age, made it almost impossible to navigate teenage society while accumulating all the knowledge high-schoolers are expected to have before they graduate. The administrators at my high school did understand I had problems, and were as supportive as I suppose they could be, but it still would have been nice if they’d taken more time for one-on-one sessions like this instead of suspending me when my lagging emotional maturity led me to make a remark I shouldn’t have.
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You know… kids aren’t stupid. I used to be one.
I’ve noticed that most kids are fairly observant.
Treat them with respect and as equals, and you will prevent a lot of problems.
Of course, teachers/parents can’t be friends with their kids, but that doesn’t mean that kids don’t deserve some measure of respect and admiration.
Kudos to the principal who was willing to LISTEN, instead of taking the easy (but wrong) way out.
I would like to respectfully disagree on that statement. I am most definitely friends with my mother, and despite some rough periods where we didn’t communicate well during my teenage years, I have always felt that she was included among my friends. I have also had relationships with teachers that I would count under friendship; admittedly, it is much easier to build those kinds of friendships when you have the same teacher for longer than a single school year.
I appreciated this article. My mother was a victim of severe sexual abuse, violence, and neglect as a child. She has fought hard her entire life to provide a better family life than she knew. But now, she has autoimmune disease and COPD – based on the ACE data I wonder how much of that is tied to the early toxic stress she endured.
I know a typical local middle school had a paradigm shift when they reposted their rules as positive. Please walk in the hallways. Please use your inside voice. By encouraging the behavior they want to see, instead of punishig behavior they don’t want to see, school administrators saw an almost immediate response from the students.
Excellent!
What a wonderful article that shows one high school’s successes and gives specific strategies for replicating these successes. I am a middle school math teacher, and can attest that you you can’t teach hurting, stressed out kids. Kudos.
Thanks, Grateful Member. I’m sorry your comment took so long to show up. I thought I’d seen all in the inbox, but missed a bunch!
This reminds me of the Nurtured Heart Approach ( http://difficultchild.com/sp-bin/spirit?PAGE=37 ) – the same basic idea that every child is worthy of love, compassion, and understanding, and that by focusing on what the person is doing “wrong”, we’re compounding the problem. Thanks for this.
Reblogged this on snee made me do it and commented:
More trauma based fun.
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I love this study, both in its design and in its anecdotal evidence. My concern is not that a suspension diversion program could be successful in a public school, it is that where do we get the resources to properly fund and establish this kind of revolutionary change in our public school systems? We’re talking about schools who don’t even have money for gym class, art class, and haven’t seen new textbooks in twenty years. Where are these struggling districts going to come up with money for additional training for current teachers and additional salaries for staff in these newly created positions?
For Lincoln High School, all it took was a couple of days of training and a plan that the existing staff put together. No new staff positions. I’m doing a story about the Brockton School District in Massachusetts, and will get more info about the cost for this transition.
I’m looking forward to that article- I hope you’ll include a link to it, here, too.
it is nice to see someone make an effort to find out the problem behind it.This is a great step towards progress but they really need to try solving the problems before it gets this far and talking to parents when you see a problem before it escalates instead of just when they tell you to fuck off. I was far from good at hiding my struggles I missed entire weeks of school, fell asleep and cried through most classes and no one bothered to tell anyone.
I had teachers who exaggerated the slightest mistake and went running to administration and my parents about me but when my mental health was deteriorating and I was blacking out in anger regularly they never bothered. One day in class I started off in an argument eventually I blacked out in screaming, crying hysterical “breakdown” mode when I finally “came back” the entire room was empty and the teacher was simplifying it. The only acknowledgment about it after was a student who had left asking me later if I was alright the teacher never told my mom or anyone at all but the minute I slipped out anything vulgar my ass was out the door and my mom was on speed dial.
I’m sorry that you didn’t have teachers and an administration trained in a trauma-informed approach to education, or teachers who use a trauma-sensitive approach naturally. And, yes, I agree with you — it’s important that communities figure out ways to reach out to children and families that are having problems before it escalates.
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Well, that’s an intriguing story. Thanks for sharing.
I applaud your efforts and wish even one teacher had taken this approach with me when I was in high school.
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Fayette County should really look into this.
I think all of the findings in those studies regarding adverse effects of harsh school discipline have been known to be true for decades. Finland (and presumably other Nordic countries as well) has had basically a zero torelance for suspension (meaning practically no suspensions whatsoever) for decades. It’s just common sense that disruptively behaving children, when kicked out of school, will have more ample opportunities to behave disruptively. So please, make this kind of change in the whole school system.
It’s basic psychology. Punishing someone just for the sake of punishing them doesn’t change their thinking patterns. If their behaviour seems to get better, it’s because they learn how to do bad things more discreetly. Or they just fear punishment, which is not a good basis for developing into a responsible adult, as everybody who has any sense of anything should immediately understand.
Also, get rid of corporal punishment at schools. Basically all other Western countries have, some as early as 100 years ago. Widespread corporal punishment of children is the biggest human rights violation in the US.
is there really any corporal punishment in schools today? Not that I’ve heard of in the last 15 years. Every parent I know would sue the school, public or private.
If you believe there isn’t still corporal punishment in US schools you need to read the news more often or research further. Last I looked only 16 states outlawed corporal punishment in US schools and some states, like Texas, mete out more than their share to students.
Steven: just because it isn’t illegal doesn’t mean it happens regularly, or even at all. I went to public schools in Arizona, where corporal punishment is legal. I only know that because I just looked it up – I was never punished in that way and neither was anyone I know. My mother and I both work at schools in Arizona (one public, one private) and if someone were to treat a child that way in either of our schools they would be immediately fired. I’m not saying it never happens – I can’t possibly know that it NEVER happens ANYWHERE… but it hasn’t happened to me or anyone I know. Just because it’s technically legal doesn’t mean it’s happening.
You’re questioning if physical punishment is still used? Please take a look at this human rights petition. It’s astounding.
https://www.change.org/petitions/judge-rotenberg-educational-center-please-stop-painful-electric-shocks-on-your-students
Sounds like a fantastic program. I struggled my entire life (66) with anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and health issues (diabetes, cardiac) which I believe were exacerbated by a father and first grade teacher who were both physically and emotionally abusive.
I’m sorry that you had to endure an abusive father and teacher when you were a child, Jeri. No child deserves that.
I’m desperate to know what to do with a kid who sees any act of kindness as a weakness to exploit, or justification for his bad behavior. What do you do when doing anything but punish the kid just increases his sense of entitlement? How do you get through?
What do you do when listening to him just encourages him to take everything out on you? What do you do when the kid is huge and gets physically violent? What do you do when the kid treats his family like slaves, and heaps abuse on them, and the more kindness and consideration his family gives him, the more he demands of them?
Hi Ev,
I feel your frustration and my heart goes out to you. Being kind does not mean that there is not structure or consequences for inappropriate behavior. Compassion is telling the person that you love them so much that you are willing to make difficult decisions on their behalf. I could provide better feedback if I knew the boy you are talking about is a student or your son. Either way there has to be defined boundaries and accountability for his actions. I could be more specific if I knew which one you are dealing with. It would be a huge misunderstanding if one took what we are doing at Lincoln and felt that all we do is simply treat them with kindness. To ignore addressing the behavior would be disrespectful to the student. My goal is to get at the root of the problem and find out what is behind the anger. I always give the student a timeout if they are escalated, their brain is in no place to problem solve or work through a problem.
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I have spent the last 30 of my 34 years in teaching at the same inner-city high school. I have always listened when a student wanted to talk and I have let many students “adopt” me as a mentor. However, due to a lack of discipline at my school, I am now the one who feels bullied. The constant foul language barrages my senses at every turn. The number of students who do homework is such that I have all work done in class and even that is often left on the student’s desk and not handed in. I ignore MP3 players because it is not worth getting into arguments over them. Some students just leave the earbuds in their ears because they are more comfortable that way. Yesterday I was verbally assaulted by one student and pushed by another. When they came back today I not only let them into class but helped them with their work (on leaving the class today they did apologize). Did I teach them that mistakes can be forgiven or did I set them up to do the same thing to someone that might pull a gun next time? I don’t know.
While I have always tried to use a loving teaching method, when one has up to 150 students every day it becomes problematic. If this method was used from preschool and up, the students might be more capable of handling high school where the numbers are much larger.
What really disturbs me about this article is what disturbs me about our society. Once again, it is up to the educational system and only the educational system to correct the lives of our young. No mention is made about what can be done with the parents who have caused this mess, with the prevalence of teenage pregnancies where young mothers don’t know how to raise their children, with the absence of fathers and with the myriad other problems that are left to the schools to fix.
I love my students but there is only one of me to go around. We need to correct the underlying problems because this solution can only go so far.
I know this isn’t the popular opinion, but I disagree with so much of this article’s findings. I am a teacher. Few things demoralize and frustrate myself and my colleagues like finding out a student who publicly cussed us out has received nothing but a talking-to. This has been tried, and it has sent them back with a smug look on their face and the license to do it again. It tells their peers that their teachers are punching bags who aren’t even respected and supported by their own administrators.
I believe in empathy as a lifestyle, and I practice it regularly with my students. I am all for being there to help them let out what’s bottled up and seek support, advice, or just a patient ear. But to make that the default policy of a school is an abdication of our responsibility to teach kids the lesson of respect, courtesy, and civility. Perhaps the student who blew up at a teacher does have some emotional baggage, high ACE’s. Their peers, however, won’t see that; they will see that if you unload a creative volley of obscenity at a teacher, the consequence is merely self-imposed guilt, or at “worst,” they are rewarded with a day of vacation in ISS.
Remember, we are talking about the generation who cannot understand why it is inappropriate to post death threats facebook, to digitally steal any form of entertainment they desire, who feel so entitled that taking away their cell phone after repeated flagrant abuses is perceived as a violation of imagined civil liberties. As a previous poster said, of course this policy has lead to fewer suspensions – the policy is not to suspend students. If we enacted a policy not to deduct points for wrong answers, imagine how high their grades would be!
Certainly, in some cases schools go too far – errors in judgment do happen, and should be fought against when they do. The increase in suspensions, however, is not because schools are loose cannons of suspension; ask any teacher you know, and they can tell you that the behavior worsens year by year. To respond to that by lowering expectations and enabling misbehavior only opens the floodgates for it to worsen.
Research shows that complex trauma in a child’s life causes the brain to develop differently. One of the main results of this is an inability to self regulate emotion. If a student’w behavior is outside of his/her control, we are not going to punish a new way of behaving into them. Unlike the scenario of the child touching a hot stove and not touching it again, these are brains that will continue to react the way they have been programmed and they are programmed this way to help them survive successfully in what ever environment they are receiving the trauma in. Unfortunately these survival techniques don’t work in the classroom. The other point I want to make is that no where does it say that students aren’t being held accountable. What is different is the way the conversation looks before and after they receive their consequence. Its true that blowing up at a teacher would have previously gotten them a couple of days of suspension, now it gets them a couple of days IN school supervention spent with someone who helps them make up missing work while continuing to build a relationship with them. Its not about ceasing to give consequences, its about how you go about the process.
JP, the article states that there still needs to be consequences for some bad behavior, but it is trying to teach teachers and administrators to look deeper into the root cause of the issue that brought on the behavior, not just be reactionary in assuming that a student is just being malicious. The reactionary disciplining of children creates an “Us vs Them” environment that is clearly hostile from both sides. There is no respect between the teachers and the students. Your own words are indicative of this, “smug looks on their faces.” This shows that both you and the student have formed bad blood between you and now you both want to see each other fail. That is what this technique is trying to eliminate.
As a teacher of 30+ years, I have to disagree. I do not need to see a student who has been disrespectful to me get punished, nor would I feel slighted if (s)he received some compassionate coaching or debriefing and a chance to rethink the behavior in question and try to make it right. People learn compassion,empathy, mercy, decency, and self-control by being on the receiving end of these qualities. I have not seen punishment, just though it may seem, to be effective in teaching students skills, strategies or attitudes that help them develop the divine spark within them and grow into the people that they were born to be or that the world needs.
Lillian,
Please refer to my May 4 post. I address the misunderstanding on how we hold students accountable. Our approach with compassion holds students more accountable than we ever had. Only now we see changes in behavior and stronger student/staff relationships. It is a powerful model.
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I was really enjoying this article until I reached the sentence, “Or your fat step-dad’s sneaking into your bed in the middle of the night”. Um, why does the step-dad have to be described as fat? Because fat=bad? Because it is fat people who commit sexual assault? No other physical description was given of the people involved in the examples complex trauma.
This story partially has to do with bullying and stress, right? Kids and adults who are bullied and degraded and made fun of because of their weight is a serious problem in our society.
How sad that it an otherwise excellent article, this cruel and hurtful statement was included.
Great point Wendy. Given the voice and tone of the rest of the article it does seem inconsistent and seems to take away some of the validity.
Actually fat does not equal bad. Obesity is an indicator of someone who’s experienced trauma or adverse childhood experiences.
Or someone who has polycystic ovarian syndrome, or any number of other metabolic failures. Obviously a man won’t have PCOS, but there’s a number of other conditions that can cause obesity.
@ Wendy – yes that caught my attention too.
@ JEStevens – Fat does not equal bad; nor does it always indicate trauma; and nor was it relevant in the context.
The fact is mainstream audiences are socialised to believe that fat is something to be got rid of and fat people are “lesser”.
See e.g. “Anti-Fat Prejudice Reduction: A Review of Published Studies”, http://content.karger.com/produktedb/produkte.asp?typ=pdf&file=000277067
Therefore I believe the default reading of your original sentence will be that a fat stepdad getting into your bed is worse than a thin stepdad getting into your bed, because of the child’s disgust at his fat. If that wasn’t what you meant to imply, it was careless writing.
I suspect the reason more people haven’t picked you up on it is that most people are so _used_ to hearing “fat” equated with “disgusting/unpleasant/aversive” that it doesn’t make them go “Wait, why is that supposed to be relevant here?”
Loved the article as a whole though.
No, fat does not equal bad; nor does it always indicate trauma (even if you count repeated dieting as a trauma); nor is it relevant here.
Mainstream culture consistently signals that fat is undesirable. Prejudice against fat people is common (I would cite a reference for that, but my earlier comment with a link doesn’t seem to have got through).
So for people who buy into that, the implication of your sentence is that having a fat stepdad sneaking into your bed is more traumatic than having a thin stepdad sneaking into your bed, because of the child’s disgust for the stepdad’s fat. When spelt out, this is clearly nonsensical, but it’s congruent with a culture which pathologises fat people, so a lot of people are used to seeing “fat” in similar contexts and won’t even notice it.
If that _isn’t_ what you meant to imply, i.m.o. it was careless writing.
Enjoyed the rest of the article though.
Thankyou. The use of ‘fat’ as a derogative descriptor in this incredibly and undeniably negative context was an unpleasant sour note in an inspiring and hopeful story.
Sad state of affair when you used to get disciplined at school and loved at home. Now you get crap at home and loved at school.
It is amazing to see the effects and benefits of DBT in a variety of settings!
So by not suspending them to home, home suspensions dropped.
But where are the before/after numbers on In-School Suspensions?
If you just replace one with the other, the reduction in one isn’t really as impressive. Makes for a better headline, though.
this really is a great story-its sad the things that children go thru, i was a teacher on the preschool level,and the children that i had at the age of 5 was scary and depressing sometimes, i would like to point out and play devils advocate here and state that the article said they only had about 50 students in the whole school- class size makes a difference- my daughter is currently in a “school” like this, not for bad behavior,but for a low gpa-i have been fighting with 2 school systems to get her into a alternative school to get her into lower classrooms-they waited until 3 months before graduation to do this, now we hope that she will grad in 3 weeks, i have learned that the government, and even some of the school board members really dont care about our children, the same as some parents and family members dont. we have to remember as a society, parents,politicians,and parents, that these are the kids that are going to be,in a better term “wiping our butts” when we get old. i made sure to sit with my kids, ask them how their night was, what did they do when they went home, what they had for dinner that night, and at the beginning of the year, they were quiet and reserved, then i was hearing stories about mom and dad fighting, mom slept all night, all i had was cereal for dinner, and it gave me the stepping stones to talk to the parents, and show them how to get the help they needed.
If it hasn’t already, this article deserves to go viral.
I can only imagine what would happen if every school in the country suddenly switched to this compassionate approach.
Thank you for taking the time to make us all aware.
The plane crashing analogy was interesting but I wonder if we cannot try to provide “parachutes” for ALL of the family members, not just the students? As dysfunctional as a family might be, it is often the only one the kids have known and they can be understandingly reluctant to leave them behind. If instead they see their loved ones being offered assistance as well maybe it would be easier for them? Not to mention better for the family and society as a whole as well.
Well, yes, but that’s rather beyond the scope of what a school principal can do. If you’re talking about providing parachutes to all, you’re talking Occupy Wall Street, maybe the Nordic Model, that sort of thing; at the very least, substantial reforms at the state and national levels.
Principal Dumbledore may be in a position to advise government, but he’s fictional, and even he was limited by circumstance. All everyone else can do is the best job possible in the limited scope of the available options.
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How accurate is the ACE score? My score is probably a 6, but I’m sure those kids (averaging 4.5 did you say?) have experienced far more trauma than I have. My parents were neglectful and abusive, but not meth-addict neglectful, or cigarette-burn abusive.
Glad to see articles like this. Kids are important. Hope more people see this. Hope it reaches the necessary people that will make a difference like Wala Wala high school.
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I applaud Mr. Sporleder and I am glad for all those young people, but for the record, this notion has been around for ages. I even said this is the way things should be in this informal essay, which was written in 2010. Well, anyway, at least now I’ll have more sources to support the notion when I infuse it into “Baseline Your Life.” They didn’t just write a post about it, this is a veritable multimedia documentary.
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This is fantastic! I only wish someone had taken this approach with me when I was a kid…I might not have dropped out of high school in the end.
This feels right to me, as a teacher who has had a number of high-ACE students. However, I do have to point out what I think is a major flaw in the reasoning in the article: Of course Lincoln’s suspensions and expulsions have dropped, given the adopting of a disciplinary system which avoids punitive discipline! Comparing the rates before and after the switch is in no way indicative of the success of the program. If it were, the program should simply consist of eliminating suspension and expulsion — that would look even better, while solving nothing.
My criticism exactly, Bruce.
I love that this is being used, but it’s not a new idea. Sounds just like the “Love & Logic” approach…. http://www.loveandlogic.com/educators.html
I love this article. I get the feeling the principal may have a Counseling background or has some training in Counseling. I hope administrators read this and see the need for School Counselors and infusing coursework in basic Counseling skills in Teacher Education programs.
As a teacher at Lincoln I can tell you that Jim will laugh out loud when he reads your reply. He has had no previous experience in mental health at all. A conference with Dr John Medina opened his eyes to the idea that a stressed brain can’t learn, that combined with an innate, unconditional love of kids, and it wasn’t much of a shift to go from where he was to where he is.
people, including students, naturally want to learn and improve. Even though most students today dislike schooling and are more interesting in being a “tough guy” than a “good guy,” all of that is simply an outward expression of frustration because of a lack of inspiration. I’ve taught high school, junior high, and college students; this article is spot-on!
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Thanks for the article. This sort of thinking was my instinct when I began teaching. These days, I work in a school for the gifted, and rarely have to “discipline”. That’s not because no one has to in my building – plenty of teachers regularly make use of disciplinary codes. But I have found that pulling students aside and letting them talk is more effective. I have also found that a meaningful reminder of what it means to be a good human being and being conspicuously (but genuinely) trusting is an incredibly effective way to get mature behavior from teens.
It’s great to see that neuroscience is catching up to the notion that love and trust are really important in human development.
I just have to contradict you on one point, because it’s an important flaw. You write:
“Third. These suspensions don’t work for schools. Get rid of the “bad” students, and the “good” students can learn, get high scores, live good lives. That’s the myth. The reality? It’s just the opposite. Says the NEPC report: “…research on the frequent use of school suspension has indicated that, after race and poverty are controlled for, higher rates of out-of-school suspension correlate with lower achievement scores.”
Correlation is not causality. Schools with worse behavior and outcomes also have more suspensions. This isn’t a surprise. But this does *not* mean that suspensions cause the problems. High ACE scores among the population create both of these problems.
I alluded to the fact that I didn’t always teach in a school for the gifted. There are students who really do monopolize attention and prevent other students needs from being addressed. When a difficult student is removed from the room in one of these difficult classrooms, the teacher is suddenly freed to help other students. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that the outcome for the other classroom students is better when loud, belligerent, chip-on-the-shoulder, physically-threatening Johnny is put back into a mainstream classroom. Better for Johnny, sure. But not for the other mainstreamers.
Hi Deb,
Thank you for your feedback. I’ve noticed when I tell my students that I need to come out of the red. It is the same with me as it is with them, It normally doesn’t have any thing to do with their behavior and I tell them that. Therefore they are in a much better place to problem solve their specific issue when we re-engage. Under the old paradym, I would be much more reactive to the behavior rather than getting to cause of the problem before coming up with an appropriate consequence.
Great article, and much what these educators say resonates with my own experinence. But this sent up my big red “false dichotomy” flag, and it’s a tragic one:
“…these “throw-away” kids get shunted off a possible track to college and onto the dead-end spur of juvenile hall and prison”.
What is up with that? Is the assumption that our society has no middle ground between those two tracks not terrifying to pretty much any kid? Kids from all backgrounds, and in all kinds of schools, perceive and worry about this nearly universal assumption. Is this not a likely source of toxic stress, an ACE all by itself? I’d wager it’s one of the biggies accross the board.
I’d like to see the statistics comparing 2009-2010 “before new approach” schools with hypothetical contemporary schools whose shop classes hadn’t been turned into computer labs.
I’m not saying there aren’t lots of kids with high ACEs as those scores are currently defined. But I am saying we need to look at our dead-end economic structure as a source of long term trouble. For many suspendable kids, their main fault is that they haven’t learned the art of denial so well as their elders.
Hi, Jason: My bad — I should’ve included a middle track. Learning a trade, or going to a school that isn’t a college is obviously a very viable way to go. Thanks for the reminder!
Thank you for bringing this to our attention Jason. I have a bright 16 year-old son who may decide not to go to university. He’s got two years of high school left and is already stressing about what he’s going to do with the rest of his life. While I think it’s intelligent to be forward thinking and I whole-heatedly support higher education, it may not be the path everyone should take and for that, kids shouldn’t feel as if their failures.
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I hope more schools follow in this footstep.
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I have spent 20 years working in substance abuse treatment, with the parents and caretakers of these children who are the so-called “trouble-makers” in the schools. At least 75% of these parents themselves have aknowledged trauma, abuse and/ or neglect in their childhood. Knowing this, I was unable to buy into the belief that they were “not motivated enough” when they struggled to recover. I could not accept that the latest “evidence based” cognitive behavioral technique, was the solution to their chaotic and painful lives. What has worked for us is empathy and an acceptance that the “problem” behaviors we encounterd were survival strategies that had been developed to cope with the painful chaos of the early years and later on to survive the dangerous and unpredictable world of illegal drugs. Neither did that the philosophy of acknowledging ” the exact nature of our wrongs” turn out to be the magic path to recovery. In a setting that targets people who have “failed” multiple substance abuse treatment attempts, we have had remarkable success. Eighty percent of the people in treatment consistently test negative for drugs of abuse on their most recent screen and more than fifty percent are working or in school and enjoying consistently good outcomes in other areas of their lives. People struggling with substance abuse don’t generate compassion; punishment and incarceration are more popular solutions but we have to remember that many of them are parents. If we don’t make the shift in how we treat and view the adults in this picture, we will continue to pass on the chaos and pain to the children of the future many of whom will not be lucky enough to encounter teachers and administrators like Jim Sporleder.
Very interesting, Mairead. What’s the name of the substance abuse treatment center where you work?
If I could offer a bit of extra insight here:
I am recovering from a period of my life in which I was suffering from blood sugar issues, especially reactive hypoglycemia, and also in which I was suffering from malnutrition (and the two are related), both causing me to suffer from mental health issues. Changing my diet improved my mental health and got my blood sugar under control. I still struggle with depression, but it’s not the monster it once was and I suspect a lot of it is situational now. As I improve my situation, I think the depression will also improve.
Two of the craziest people I have ever dealt with in my entire life were my mother and my ex-mother-in-law. Both of them have uncontrolled or poorly controlled type 2 diabetes. Any medical professional who has ever dealt with an uncontrolled or poorly-controlled diabetic will tell you that this population has a propensity for doing and thinking and believing crazy things.
So while it’s probable that subjecting children to emotional trauma or physical trauma could in itself increase their risk of diabetes and heart disease (and the two are closely related, perhaps even two sides of the same chronic-disease coin) due to poorly understood connections between the brain and the rest of the body, I can’t help wondering if a lot of this family violence is occurring in the first place because these parents have deranged metabolisms and are at least pre-diabetic if not in fact full-blown type 2.
The tragedy is that the health care professionals who are supposed to be helping us either prevent or effectively treat type 2 are falling down on the job and suggesting precisely the sort of dietary habits that cause or exacerbate the disease in the first place. Until we get a handle on this we’re not going to be able to reach the adults, and the kids will continue to suffer.
And speaking of adults, that’s the other point I wanted to make. This article fills me with hope and makes me despair all at the same time. Guess what? You don’t stop being a person when you become a parent. And I understand that a lot of “problem” adults refuse help. But at the end of the day this sort of program strikes me as yet another way to tear families apart, “harvesting” the kids for the good of society or the state or whatever, with little regard to the importance of maintaining familial relationships wherever possible. It effectively abandons the adults to destroy themselves with little thought to the long-term costs for them as well as their children and any future grandchildren.
My kids are probably never going to know their maternal grandmother because my mom is so messed up and no one is helping her. I cannot maintain a healthy relationship with Mom to be able to reach out to her to offer real help. And she lives in south Louisiana where they just don’t have the funds to even begin to fix everybody, and is at the mercy of a medical system that honestly believes sick people are suffering from a pharmaceutical-drug deficiency when what many of them actually need is a healthier diet and healthier social interactions with sane people.
Think of all the potential we are wasting, throwing older people away for the sake of cultivating younger ones: the average person who has a teenaged child still has another good thirty to forty years’ worth of contribution left in them, if their life is not cut short. And the sad part is that if you asked most of these kids, they’d *rather* you helped their parents as well as them. If it were up to them, most of them *would* have that healthy relationship with their parents.
Something’s gotta give.
I don’t think they’re abandoning the parents or “harvesting” the teenagers – I think that by offering the coping mechanisms to the “kids” they are (indirectly) helping them to develop healthier relationships with their families. Also, as important as family is, if you can’t take care of yourself you can’t take care of others. They can’t help their families effectively if they’re stuck in stress mode all the time.
I went and looked at the study site a bit. It looks like my ACE score is 8. I suppose that explains a lot. I still live in fear and terror too many days PTSD is no joke. I went to 25 schools before I dropped out when I was 16. I earned a diploma through an alternative program and went to college. I went to grad school and became a high school teacher.
Reading things like this make me feel better. Like I am not just crazy and bad. Seriously bad things happened to me for a very long time. When I was a teacher I worked best with gang members and other “marginal” kids. I got them to feel safe enough to learn. The first solid week of every year was a massive all student argument about what the class rules should be. Then they had to define the word respect so they could find out how differently people use it. I taught high school English, mostly to juniors but I had everyone at one point or another.
One of my favorite students of all time burst into class one day looking for a fist fight. He blew up at everyone. I pulled him outside and started crying before I could even finish asking him what happened. I knew it must be bad to get him so riled up. His cousin was shot by a rival gang and he was told he had to get revenge or he was out of the gang. I talked him out of committing murder. I feel like I have had a life with purpose.
I stopped teaching when I had kids because I can’t handle the stress load. It is too hard to control fight or flight all day every day and then have to come home and be nice to my kids. I can’t. It is too hard for me. I’m trying to consciously teach myself coping skills I want my children to have. I haven’t cut in over a year. I finally was able to emotionally handle getting rid of my scalpel.
Long story short this was heart wrenching and awful to read. It is hard to understand just how bad my life was. But I feel more compassion for myself. I really should be dead, not living happily in the suburbs. Thank you.
Thanks so much for your comment, Krissy. You’ve had an amazing journey, and I’m very glad that you’re taking care of yourself. People who have experienced a lot of childhood trauma have to limit the stresses in their lives. There’s a good book — Scared Sick: The Role of Childhood Trauma in Adult Disease by Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith Wiley — that explains this well. Feeling compassion and having patience with yourself is a very good thing.
What a wonderful article! A friend of mine at work and I realized that we are both successful due to resilience. We both came from difficult backgrounds and both had resistance to our dreams and did what we wanted to do anyway. I have 2 fabulous children now who do not have any of the scars I have. They were so amazed when they went to church camp and found out just how hard other kids had it. So, now they are very. very good, loving, and kind to me. We all believe that love is the key. No matter what. I am now auntie to many teenagers because I love them and accept them as they are. Stinky, hungry, shy, happy, sad, quiet, loud, whatever it is… I love them. I am so happy that all my “kids” have turned out so well and are good parents now. I think it is wonderful, what you are doing, and I hope it spreads like a virus! I spend my time convincing young people that if I can do it, they can too, and that no one can stop them if they want to make themselves into new selves that are successful, healthy, and happy. Your article makes me feel so good. There must be a lot of us out there. Each doing our own thing to help young people. It’s a tough world out there and they need all the help they can get. I loved that your article discussed the problems not being racial, cultural or socio-economical in terms of causes. Everyone always thinks that the problems are with minorities. Well, I know for a fact that they aren’t. My kids are Eurasian and went to camp with other Asian kids. Yes, the perfect minority, right? Wrong! They were just like the kids in San Diego. ACE happens in every neighborhood, rich or poor. It’s just hidden better in some neighborhoods. Thank you for sharing all of this!
Thanks for your comment, Yoko, and your kind words. This article seems to be going viral — more than 20,000 page views today alone.
This article rocks my heart. Apply the science here to students with learning challenges like dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, etc and you get a profile of major stressed out children continually being told they are “slow, stupid, and lazy…” along with “listen better, try harder, work longer”. Children with learning challenges DO listen, try, and work harder–they are using 5-10x more energy than the non-challenged student to just attempt to comprehend. I’m sending this article to every administrator / counselor at Bainbridge High School.
Many people believe as you do, Patricia, that ADD, ADHD, defiance disorder and other issues are actually trauma-related. I’ll be looking into that issue soon.
Well, they don’t need to be trauma-related for the same mechanism to apply… If they’re sources of stress through a completely different mechanism than ACEs, they’re still stress and still contribute to the total stress loading… Many of the same techniques should be helpful.
Absolutely, sabick. Trauma, in this case, refers to anything that causes toxic stress. It doesn’t have to be the 10 ACEs that were studied. The researchers recognize that there are more types of trauma than those 10; it’s just that they studied those.
No worries. I was more reacting to the expression “trauma-related”, which seemed to suggest that they are caused by trauma… as far as I know that’s “not proven” at best, “pernicious myth” at worst…
If it was intended to mean that they are trauma-like, then that was just a misreading on my part.
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I loved this article! I started doing something similar with the kids I work with each day (as a noon-duty instructional aide) and noticed that the usual “trouble makers” we’re getting into trouble less and less once they were able to release some of their hurt/anger/fear and were given instruction on how to best react to a tense situation. I only wish more teachers had the emotional strength to do the same. Kids need love. Plain and simple.
Thanks, Hillary. And your post about this was fascinating. I hope people read it, too.
Thank you all for your wonderful comments and insights. I would like to mention a resource that has been life changing to me as a teacher (at age 60). It’s helped me take better care of myself, and be much, much better for my students. Look up Brandon Bays who founded The Journey. Also, I’ve learned so much from wonderful teachers I’ve found through the website Sounds True. This is a great time of life for spiritual growth and development towards peace, justice, and compassion.
I have a saying: “Children are not ‘children,’ they are people.” Anyone who is reactionary has no place being an educator. What mass-education can do to recognize students as human beings is limited, but the lack of it is not an excuse, it is a tragedy and dishonest.
I have waited a very long time for something like this to be said by those “in charge” of my and my community’s future, ie, “in power.” Kindness is not a weakness; it is the strength that teaches us how to be human, not animals. I wish any school staff had cared half this much. My situation was one where “she’s not disrupting the class, so her problems are second tier.” Even if I went for help and wasn’t turned away, the “care” was inadequate because the staff was made of incompetent “people.”
Sadly, I am now past a point in my life where I can, in our society, look for a teacher who can teach me the emotional and social success you are trying for your students. As such, it would be nice to see what these “red cards” are, via an article like this, so that I, and other readers, could work to improve myself on my own time. That would be another valuable piece of the system/research, that could be given to the general public too.
Hi, T: Thanks for your comment. You can find the list of red resilience cards at the Children’s Resilience Initiative site — http://resiliencetrumpsaces.org/
Dear T ~
“Children are not ‘children,’ they are people.”
- So true, and so easily over-looked! Thank you for the reminder.
BTW ~ We’re never *really* too anything to find a teacher ~ if you’re willing to look to bloggers, there are many genuinely good people who haven’t bought into the “build my list / sell my stuff at any cost” hype, and so ‘walk their talk’ in their articles as well as their products or services.
I guess I put too many links in the first iteration of this comment, so I’ll be more discrete this time: 3 of the folks who’ve really helped me start to ‘grow up’ (at past 50!) are Mark Silver (Heart of Business), Bridget Pilloud (Intuitive Bridge) and Shanna Mann (Change Catalyst), whose re-Tweet brought me here in the first place. I’ve poked around in their Archives, and followed commenters to *their* sites, and found much love and wisdom, and many useful new tools.
{{{Hugs}}} for Little T whose very-real-problems were dismissed because they weren’t out-loud.
Thank you so much for writing this article. It’s a shot in the arm for me, supporting everything I believe about compassion and helping children. I grew up with many bullies and other problem children, and one thing I realized was that each and every one of these children who hurt me and others, or who just acted out, grew up in difficult homes. I find it valuable that I’m able to look back and understand where they were coming from (as well as to understand my own past behavior), and this has certainly changed the way I view children who act out, whether it’s to hurt others or to just misbehave.
I’m very sad to see the demonizing of children for doing the “wrong” thing, and I’m going to use this article as evidence; as a reason to change our mindsets regarding young people. Compassion works. Coercion and shaming doesn’t.
We cannot address these problems effectively through the media or as a society. They’re highly individualized, and we must approach one child at a time and give them the help they personally need. Obviously the best we can do as a society is even the playing field and make it easier for people to help others, as is going on in Lincoln High School. Not any easy thing to do, to be sure, but I don’t see how we can expect our problems to be resolved in any other way.
Thanks for your comment, JR.
this is amazing!! others are teaching this message of love too – check out the video’s on this page http://www.powerofchoice.org/schools.html
Thank you for the article. I was one of those types of teachers for six years with junior high students. Unfortunately, the school board thought I was too soft and not “disciplining” the students enough, and therefore they were not learning. Indeed, for not just teachers, but parents also, change is difficult. Many parents and board members have since seen the positivity of this method, and apologized, but they only saw the damage the previous method did when my “soft” method was removed and students reverted to the old ways.
In my college education classes, we learned about scaffolding: building on what people already know in order to introduce new material. If a child comes from a home where they are constantly either physically or emotionally traumatized, then they have nothing to build on, regardless of their grade level.
While I am no longer a teacher (see above for why), I would highly recommend for teachers to get into the midset of caring for each student as an individual. If the student needs to start over in order to build their educational scaffolding for their life, the teacher can be a highly influential instrument of change, positive or negative.
As a final note, I continue to be contacted by my former students telling me I was a major positive impact on their lives, and they learned to love learning because of me. Regardless of where I go with my life, I always have these positive accolades, greater than any amount of money, that stay with me.
Thanks for your comment, TT. I’m so glad that some kids were exposed to your caring ways, and obviously benefitted. And I’m sorry that the school did not see how this helps students.
At 57 years-old I still remember a teacher I had that was like you. I went back to visit him for many years after my 6th grade class with him. Mr. Edwards was a positive roll model. He didn’t let me give up and he listened to me. He never asked real personal questions but somehow he sensed I needed a friend.
When I was going through a very contentious divorce with his abusive dad, my son had two male teachers that were amazing with him in middle school. My son needed healthy, male role models and both of these men were fabulous. Now my son is going to a high school the size of a small city and like all schools, struggles with budget cuts. Because the kids are physically big and often times have ‘in your face attitudes’, the teachers seem to respond/react to what they see and forget that these kids are still growing and learning.
It’s not easy being a teacher in our culture today. I greatly
admire and appreciate all that teachers give to their students and I express my gratitude to my sons high school teachers as often as I can.
Thankyou so much for this article. I am a former high school teacher who is just starting my medical residency in reproductive health care. So much of what you are talking about has a role in health care education with “unmotivated” patients as well. I always think back to my education classes, talking about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: if a [child/patient] is in fear and isn’t having their basic needs met, how can they be expected to learn, let alone “take control” over their lives? So many of our marginalized communities use disproportionately larger amounts of health care resources (I’m in Canada) and have poorer health outcomes because of the same multi-generational familial traumas that you describe in your article. Many physicians are often frustrated by this disconnect and would do well to approach their patient’s inability to “take ownership” over their health in the same way: asking about the patient’s physical, psychological and traumatic barriers.
Thanks for you comment, equisetaceae. That’s very interesting about you’re applying this to “unmotivated” patients. It makes all the sense in the world.
This is fantastic – the paradigm shift is certainly difficult but this story is a true testament as to why it is so very necessary for parents, educators and health providers to go further, challenge the old and get on board. Positive discipline, empathy, real understanding, taking the time to cool down, getting the community involved, as this article shows is the way to go! thank you so much for sharing this amazing story!
Thanks for your comment!
Thank you for this article, and for the research. I cannot thank you, the researchers, and the staff at Lincoln high enough for what you are doing. I grew up in a household of four children. I am the second oldest. When I was 10 my father became very controlling, verbally and emotionally abusive, and actually hit my mom once. The cops were called but my father came back the next night. Then my sister and I became victims of incest, my sister more than myself. Shortly after that my older brother went to jail for a lot of things. By the time I was 17 my mother had ended up in the hospital with toxic shock and depression. I was left to get my two little siblings through high school. My little brother ran away, came back, and struggled through high school. I graduated and went to the local community college. I met with my brother and sister’s teachers a lot trying to get them through high school. My brother had anger issues, threatened a few times, etc. My sister was depressed, suffering from PTSD. One teacher told me he loved my brother and would not give up. He worked with him. He talked to him. He was allowed to have my brother sent to his classroom when his anger got the better of him. He never gave up. My sister had a similar teacher, who acted as a counselor. They BOTH graduated high school! And that teacher acknowledged my brother at their graduation ceremony as a student who fought a good fight and never gave up. My brother was ecstatic! My older brother got counseling at the youth facility. Ten years later, we are free from the evils, even my mom! All 4 of us kids are happy. Two college graduates, one trade school graduate, and one heavy equipment graduate. My older brother has never had another run in with the law. We have families of our own. What could have been four drug addicts, angry adults have been replaced with successful contributors to society. Why? Because our mom kept fighting. And because, like the teachers at Lincoln high, we had teachers who cared! Thank you.
JJ – Thanks for telling your story. It’s all too common. I’m so glad that you and your family fought hard to get through, and that you had teachers who helped.
Your story hits home JJ . . . thank you for sharing it with us and for never giving up on yourself and your sibs. A book written by you, your sibs and your mom would be great . . .
It sounds to me like you aren’t giving yourself enough credit.
I’m sure you played a HUGE role in helping your siblings get through what must have been a tough time.
You should pat YOURSELF on the back too. Good job, the world needs more people like you.
you my friend are amazing and your storry is an insparation
thank you so much for putting it out there
telling people about what youve been through and where you are now gives them hope for what they might one day achive
it also shows how when teachers stop and help a student it can change their whole life around how a teacher efects more that just a students grades
thanks once again for posting this you are amazing
more caring adult.
Hopefully, this is the future of progressive education. When you care to consider the total human being rather than rating the IQ you’ll get a happier, healthier,
This approach is very similar to the approach in Love and Logic. In fact I was expecting to see it mentioned in the article.
Remain calm.
Make enforceable statements.
Show empathy to the child. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
Enforce the consequence to their behavior.
Show the child you care.
loveandlogic.org
My only question is – you never mentioned school counselors or any mention that the clinic has counselors available. Granted, medical doctors are schooled in some mental health topics, but what about follow-through? coping skills? group therapy? family therapy? Are there long-term goals that are being met or are these just short-term to get them through high school?
I’m just curious as I am getting my masters in School Counseling and find this all very interesting. And something akin to a “Duh” moment that I wish more schools would understand! Children need our help.
The Health Clinic has counselors, and does group therapy. The clinic anticipated that 90 percent of its work would be medical; actually 90 percent relates to mental health. The school and the clinic focus on building resilience in the students.
Hi Margaret,
The overwhelming need for mental health services has caused the Health Center to have to expand there space in order to meet the need. The Health Center has trained MSW’s to work with the students. Their loyalty is commendable, the day at Lincoln does not come close to what they can earn in their private practice. To address your question about long and short term goals, we find ourselves in crisis management, we have group counseling and individual counseling as well. Our students average 4.5 ACE’s and come with significant adverse life experiences. We need to provide these same services in earlier interventions at our elementary schools. Thank you for your questions. Jim Sporleder
Excuse me, but…Health Center to have to expand THEIR (or ITS) space…)
I’m so happy to see this article, and your methods, still getting so much attention!
I wonder if the fact that so much of your intervention is short-term but in ‘crisis-mode’ may mean that it also provides more long-lasting help for the students, because they aren’t so reflexively coming from “You can’t tell me what to do” – and take in a better understanding of the new concepts?
So interesting
It is too easy to say the schools are failing when the students are coming from home environments that are either failing or have completely failed. This is a shining example of using critical thinking by the school to solve a problem common to schools throughout the world.
Hi Tonya, Paine had caring teachers as you shared so well. The difference today is that we have the support of our community and Lincoln has become a school of choice. I apologize for the system that labelled Paine as the bad school and dumping ground for the district. You and the students deserve so much more. With the many ACE’s that our students have to deal with each day, I think that they are champions for making it to school each day. With our Health Center, we are able to wrap a lot of services around our kids. I will continue to advocate for our students and make sure that they feel valued and the each one be treated with dignity and respect. My students continue to teach and blesse each day. Thank you for you perspective and keep up the good fight. Jim Sporleder
Wow, I could not agree with you more. LIke many teachers, I teach in a school where I am far too familiar with children who suffer from toxic stress. I look forward to the day when our school district/community can provide children with the mental health resources that are so desperately needed.
This idea is not new. In 1856 there was a book called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. In it, a girl named Topsy who never had parents (she just “growed”) behaves very badly. She gets plenty of beatings and whippings but they do nothing to change her behavior. But then there is a boy who really cares about her and he is able to get her to change.
Good point, Joan. It seems as if we have to keep relearning this lesson.
The idea isn’t new, true, but the empirical evidence? I think that is new. Really hope that folks continue paying attention to what really works, rather than just what makes them feel like they’re doing something.
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What a breath of fresh air! I hope the rest of the countrys schools are taking notes!
It’s great to know that there are teachers and administrators out there that really care about the kids!
my feeling (being married to a teacher) is most of them really do care, After all… they certainly do not get in this profession for the vast amount of money.
i went to lincoln when it was known as paine alternitive high school even thn i felt the teachers actually gave a damn about us and our education. niether my parents wanted me and my mother was severly abusive…so i was on my own at the age of 14. i went back to school and worked with a permit to just be able to pay rent and bills… and even then several girls were having babys and the school still did all it could to help them and there families to better themselves.. i now have children going into high school one who is developmentally delayed and has had several issues this year in 8th grade with ISS and suspensions… in the end id like for her to be able to get the education she deserves from a teacher who actually likes her job.. several teachers dont even welcome a parent in the class room (i have 6 kids ive been thru it several times and found disturbing) lincoln has set up all support services to there students growing families and extended families.. yeah as kids we might of been “bad” but there still children and still deserve a chance to have a better life then what they have been delt with….lincoln gives them that oppertunity….
Thanks for your comment, Tonya. You’ve had more challenges in your life than you deserved. People with your experience know how the system should work. I’m glad you’re involved.
Bless you, Tonya. So sorry that you endured what you did. This school approach sounds a lot like the parenting book Beyond Consequences. Have you heard of it? I have kids with intense behavioral issues, and the book/ videos teach the same thing as this school is doing. It sounds like you are already doing that kind of thing at home, sounds like you are an awesome Mom. If you like what Lincoln is doing, though, you may enjoy the book (or the videos)…. my husband and I really enjoyed it, and had the same type of response when we’ve applied it with our kids as this school is having. (I am NOT saying that it sounds like you need parenting help… it sounds like you’re doing great… just saying that it’s a great book that taught me how to handle issues like this school is, and I’ve seen great results). God bless you!!!
Great article!
One thing is confusing, though. Your headline reflects an 85% drop in expulsions, but your data only shows a 40% drop. Then in another place, it reads that suspensions dropped 85%. I suspect that is probably what the title should read.
Peggy — Thanks so much for the catch!!! Can’t believe I didn’t see that! t completely meant to write “suspensions”, not “expulsions” in the headline. That’s why I need a copy editor!!!
I’ve made the change.
I think that there is a place for undiagnosed, repetitive concussion issues as well, being a kind of ACE. It can become a kind of post-tramatic stress syndrome to have mental and emotional issues due to brain injury. This has been the case with my son, which was exacerbated by a series of injuries myself when he was very young — which were, in effect, making me physically unavailable. It is heartbreaking to experience and difficult to help others understand. I am encouraged to see this, and hope the day comes when it becomes standard.
Thanks, Peggy. Anything that’s severe and chronic trauma is an ACE, according to the neurobiologists, because it results in toxic stress.
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Beautiful article. I wish these methods were available to me when I was in high school. Fortunately, I still turned out okay!
Check this out!
Diane
Great article! Kindness is such a great healer!
Thanks, Deborah!
This is great! We discipline in a very similar way at the Boys and Girls Club where I work. It’s great to see that there is some research/support for what we do and that others are having success with the same approach.
I know that I would hate to be judged immediately and harshly if I had the same issues going on in my life. It is only fair that we extend the same grace and listening ear to kids who are acting out. There is nothing worse than not being unheard.
I have found that once you establish that you are there for them and care, kids don’t want to let you down. They end up displaying more positive behavior because they like and agree with the authority figures.
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for your kind words! Is your approach at the Boys and Girls Club universal, or unique to your club?
Each individual club tends to design their own discipline policy/process according to our members and resources, but I am sure we are not entirely unique. The discipline process of each club is based on the same values/goals and mission, so I would be surprised if a club was not strength’s based in it’s behavior management policies.
Thanks!
Thank you for sharing your story! It’s about time others start realizing this truth. I believe this is the beginning of what will support a global change in the right direction in education. I have been treating kids like this for years. I always felt like the out of the box passionate leader!
Where do you teach, Martha? And has your approach influenced others?
Yes, yes and yes!
Amazing! And hopeful…