Latest / The Thriving School Podcast with Jenni Awesome / The Power of Failure: Why Getting It Wrong Helps Us Grow
Transcript
- Jenni Awesome: I want you to picture a kid. You probably know this kid. If you're a teacher, you've taught them. If you're a principal, they've probably spent some time in your office. If you're a parent, maybe you've gotten the phone call about them. If you're none of those, this could be you. They're disruptive. They won't stay in their seats. They argue. They swear. They walk out. They refuse to work. Maybe they're constantly late. Maybe they're absent more than they're present. Maybe they've been suspended. Maybe they've accumulated an entire list of consequences. And eventually, somewhere along the way, somebody says, that kid has a behaviour problem. But I want to ask something different today. What if the behavior isn't the problem? What if the behavior is the message? What if that child has been communicating something to us over and over again, and we've been so busy trying to stop the behavior that we haven't figured out what they're trying to say? Well, welcome to a better tomorrow is possible. I'm Jenni Awesome. And today we're talking about something I've spent years living inside. Student behavior, school discipline, classroom management, chronic absenteeism, school avoidance, disengagement, consequences, restorative practices, relationships, and belonging. And I get to make an argument today. We don't just have a behavior problem. We have a belonging problem. And if we keep treating behavior without understanding belonging, we're going to keep treating symptoms while wondering why the underlying problems don't disappear. I want to make something really clear. Because whenever we start talking about relationship-centered discipline, belonging, restorative practices, or trauma-informed education, somebody hears, so kids just get to do whatever they want. No, absolutely not. Belonging doesn't mean an absence of boundaries. Relationships don't mean an absence of consequences. Compassion does not equate or mean permissiveness. And understanding behavior doesn't mean excusing harmful behavior. If a student hurts somebody, we address it. If behavior is unsafe, adults intervene. If somebody causes harm, There should be accountability and repair. But here's the distinction. Punishment asks, how do we make a child or an adult pay for what happened? Whereas accountability asks, how do we help this child take responsibility for what happened and move forward differently? Those are not the same thing. And that's where my philosophy of relationship-centered discipline comes from. High expectations, strong relationships, clear, communicated boundaries, meaningful accountability, and dignity, all at the same time. Because I don't believe we should have to choose between loving kids and holding them accountable. Actually, I believe that loving them requires accountability. And before we dig into this, I want to hear what's happening in your school. If you're a teacher, principal, counselor, paraeducator, behavioral therapist, coach, anyone working with young people, send me a message. You can find me @msjenniferawesome. That's MS Jennifer Awesome. Tell me, what's the student behavior, what's the student behavior challenge you're seeing right now that nobody seems to know how to solve? Because I want the show to respond to what's actually happening in schools, in our communities. and in our society. And if you want these conversations, resources, and future opportunities delivered directly to you, join the community. You can reach out to awesomeconsulting.org/subscribe. Okay, let's talk about some behaviors. One of the most important shifts I've made during my career in education is incredibly simple. Behavior is information. Behavior tells us something. It rarely tells us exactly what. And we shouldn't pretend we can diagnose someone's internal experience from the outside. But behavior gives us information that something is happening. Think about adults. If you're exhausted, does your behavior change? Of course. If you're grieving, Stressed, embarrassed, overwhelmed, feeling rejected, feeling incompetent, feeling like nobody is listening, or you might just be angry. Of course, our behavior changes. But somehow when children behave differently, adults can jump immediately into character. Character critic immediately to character critic criticisms. Lazy, disrespectful, defiant, attention seeking, unmotivated, difficult. And here's the problem. Once we've labeled the person, we stop investigating the behavior. If I've already decided Johnny is disrespectful, then every interaction with Johnny gets filtered through that belief. Johnny sighs. Disrespectful. Johnny puts his head down. Defiant. Johnny asks, why? Argumentative. Johnny doesn't turn something in. Lazy. But what if we became curious? Why is Johnny putting his head down? Does he understand the work? Did something happen before class? Is he embarrassed because everybody else seems to understand something he doesn't? Is there a conflict happening? Is he exhausted? Is this work meaningful to him? Does he believe that he can succeed? Does he trust me? I don't know. And that's exactly the point. Curiosity comes before conclusion. So here's the image I want you to remember. Think about an iceberg. Yes, an iceberg. Above the water is what we can see. That's behavior. The refusal, disruption, swearing, fighting, skipping classes, sleeping, walking out, phone use, arguing, avoidance. But underneath the water, that's everything we may not immediately see. A learning struggle. Peer conflict, family stress, fear, embarrassment, boredom, a need for autonomy, a broken relationship, lack of sleep, feeling unsuccessful, feeling invisible, feeling like school has nothing to do with the life you're trying to build. And sometimes a teenager is simply making a bad choice. That's allowed to be true too. Not every behavior requires a profound psychological explanation. Kids are human. Humans sometimes make poor decisions. But curiosity helps us determine the difference. And this matters because the intervention should actually match the problem. If a student refuses to read aloud because they're terrified their classmates will discover they're struggling with reading, what happens if we respond only with a consequence for refusal? We haven't solved anything. We may have made the original problem worse. And then tomorrow the behavior happens again. And adults say, see, nothing works with this kid. But maybe we never address what was actually happening. So there's a question that has become increasingly important to me while working in school administration. Instead of starting with what did you do? I've become much more interested in what happened. I listened to the difference. Listen to the difference. What did you do? Already has prosecution energy. What happened opens a story, and stories give us information. Then who was affected? What were you thinking at that moment? What do you think needs to happen now? How can we repair this? And what needs to be different next time? Now we're teaching. That's what bothers me about some approaches to discipline. School is supposedly a place for learning. If a student gets a math problem wrong, we teach. A student doesn't understand a science concept, we teach. A student struggles with writing, we teach. But a student makes a behavioral mistake. Suddenly, sometimes our primary intervention becomes go away. Think about that. What skill do the consequence teach? Sometimes removal is necessary. Absolutely. There are safety situations, and there are times a classroom needs space. There are times a student needs space, but removal itself isn't necessarily instruction. So if we remove somebody, the next question should become, what are the teaching before they return? Now that matters. If you're listening right now and thinking my staff needs to talk about this, send them this episode. Not because everyone needs to agree with me, use it as a conversation starter. Ask your team, what do we believe discipline is supposed to accomplish? Seriously. Ask and write everyone's answers down. Is it compliance? Safety? Punishment? Accountability? Skill development? Repair, prevention, learning. Because if a staff doesn't agree on the purpose of discipline, it's incredibly difficult to create a consistent discipline system. And if your team has that conversation, I want to know what happens. You can message me @msjenniferawesome You can contact me at awesomeconsulting.org/subscribe. Now we get into belonging. Because belonging isn't just everybody is welcome written above the school entrance. Belonging is an experience. It's the It's the accumulation of hundreds of tiny interactions. Does somebody know my name? Does anybody notice when I'm absent? Does my teacher believe I'm capable? Do adults only interact with me when I'm in trouble? Can I make a mistake without becoming the mistake? Does anyone know what I'm good at? Does anyone care what I'm interested in? Do I have something meaningful to contribute here? And here's one of the bigger questions. Would anybody notice if I disappeared? And that's belonging. And think about the behavior of somebody who believes these are my people versus nobody here wants me anyway. Completely different. That is why relationships are not an extra. They're not something we do after academics. Relationships create conditions in which academics can. Happen. And I want to be careful here. A strong relationship does not magically eliminate challenging behavior. Teachers can have wonderful relationships with students who still make difficult choices. But relationships give us something incredibly important: influence. When correction comes from someone I believe respects me, I hear it differently. When accountability comes from someone I know hasn't given up on me, I receive it differently. And that's human. Adults work the same way. Now here's the pushback I want to address. Because I can hear a teacher somewhere saying, Jenni, this sounds wonderful. I have 32 students. Six are constantly interrupting, two are refusing to work, someone threw something across the room yesterday. I have curriculum pacing, testing, emails, IEPs, meetings, parent phone calls, and I'm supposed to investigate the iceberg underneath every behavior? No. You can't. And I think it's deeply unfair when systems put impossible conditions on teachers and then tell them, just build better relationships. That's not enough. We have to talk about the conditions adults are working under as well. Belonging isn't just for kids. Teachers need to belong. Paraeducators need to belong. Principals need to belong. Staff members need psychological safety. They need manageable systems. They need consistency. They need support. They need leadership. They need actual resources. Because a burned-out adult nervous system interacting with an overwhelmed child's nervous system can create a pretty difficult classroom. And that doesn't mean that either person is bad. It means that the environment matters. So when we're looking at school culture, I want us to stop asking only how do we change the students? Ask, what conditions are we creating for everyone in this building? Let's talk about another behavior. Not coming. chronic absenteeism and school avoidance are major concerns for schools. And again, accountability matters. Attendance matters. Children need access to education. But I want us to ask, why aren't they coming to school? Not as an excuse, as information. Because the answer matters. A student who's absent because transportation is unreliable needs something different from a student avoiding a bullying situation. A student who's academically overwhelmed needs something different from a student who has concluded school feels irrelevant. A student experiencing family instability needs something different from someone staying home because the consequences for absence don't feel meaningful. A student whose Parents had a bad experience at school need something different too. Different causes require different responses. So before we build an intervention around how do we force attendance, I want us asking what would make the student want to return? And that's a very different design challenge. What if school became somewhere students didn't want to miss? What would have to change? That's a future of education question worth asking. This connects directly to fail forward. Because children are going to make mistakes. And that's not a flaw in childhood. That's childhood. Actually, that's humanity. So what if discipline became one of the places where we intentionally taught fail forward? Remember. F face what happened. What happened? Own it. A. Analyze without blame. What contributed to this? What choices did you make? I identify the learning. What did you learn? Who was affected? What would you do differently? L, launch the next attempt. What's the plan when the situation happens again? That's discipline as learning. And then comes a critical part. Let them try again. Don't make a child permanently live inside the identity of their worst moment. If they repaired it, if they learned, if they're ready to try again. Give them the opportunity. That's fail forward. And I want stories about this. Teachers, principals, parents. Tell me about the kid who surprised you. The kid everybody had written off. The student whose behavior changed after somebody finally figured out what was underneath it. Or tell me about the intervention you thought was brilliant, that absolutely bombed. And what you learned. Find me @msjenniferawesome and join the email community at awesomeconsulting.org/subscribe. I'm going to start using some of the questions and stories coming from this community to shape our future episodes. So, five questions to take into your school tomorrow. Let's make this practical. Tomorrow, when a behavior happens, try these five questions. You don't necessarily have to ask the students all five. Some of the questions are for you. What happened? Start with curiosity. What might this behavior be communicating? Don't assume that you know. Investigate. Who was affected? Behavior happens in community. Help students understand their impact of their choices. What needs to be repaired or learned? Accountability has to go somewhere. How do we help the students successfully re-enter the community? That last one is huge because discipline shouldn't end with exclusion. The goal should ultimately be successful reintegration. How do you come back? How do you repair? How do you try again? How do you know? I made a mistake, but I still belong here, and that's powerful. Alright, here's your better tomorrow challenge for this episode. Choose one person whose behavior has been frustrating you. It could be a student. It could be someone you work with. It could even be somebody in your family. And for one week, replace what's wrong with them with what am I not understanding yet? That's it. You don't have to excuse anything, you don't need to fix them. Just get curious. Observe what changes. Maybe nothing changes in them, but something might change in you. And that might change what becomes possible between you. Alright, let's finish where we started. Picture that kid again. The disruptive one. The difficult one. The one who walks out. The one who refuses. The one whose name everybody in the office knows. The one who's accumulated labels. Now imagine somebody looking at the child and saying, I don't think you're the problem. Something isn't working, and we're going to figure it out together. Imagine what that communicates. It doesn't say you can do whatever you want. It says your behavior matter. Your behavior matters. Your choices matter. The people you affect matter. And you matter too. And that's accountability with dignity. That's relationship centered discipline. That's belonging. And that's the kind of world I want our children to grow up inside. Not one without expectations, not one without consequences, a world where mistakes don't automatically become identities. A world where failure becomes information. A world where accountability leads towards repair. A world where children can learn I can mess up. I get to own it. I get to repair it. I get to learn, I get to fail forward, and I still belong. If this episode made you think of one educator, principal, coach, or parent, send it to them. And don't just send the link, ask them, what would change if we treated behavior as information? Have the conversation, and then come tell me what happens. Find me @msjenniferawesome. And if you're ready to become part of this growing community of people asking what else could be possible, you can join me at awesomeconsulting.org/subscribe. next time we're going directly into one of the ideas underneath everything we're building. Fail forward. Why are we so afraid of getting things wrong? What is our fear of failure costing us? And what could we build if failure stopped meaning I'm not good enough? And started meaning I just learned something. Well, I'm Jenni Awesome. This is A Better Tomorrow is possible from Awesome Consulting and Educational Services. People, possibility, progress. And remember, a better tomorrow isn't something we wait for, it's something we build. Let's build it together.