Lincoln High School -- A Case Study on Effective Classroom Management

I had planned to write about a friend's experiences in a very well managed classroom where students are motivated to learn because the teacher shows them respect, cares about them, and doesn't sweat the small stuff. That's really cool and probably took him much of his career to perfect--and it reflects something that a lot of teachers should try to implement. Rather than explaining some of the things he does to be an efficient teacher (most of his demonstrations end up on youtube, which allows students who don't show up for class to participate, for example), I want to talk about a broader concept that deals with effective classroom management at the core: taking the time to understand the problems students are facing outside of class.

Lincoln High School's star principal Jim Sporleder was fed up after three years at the alternative school in his district. Rather than dismissing his students as irreparable he decided to do some research to find a way to help them. What he found was an astonishing wealth of new research into the effects of toxic stress and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Children can be rated on a scale according to ten types of stress they may dealing with  (emotional/physical/sexual abuse, abuse of other family members, emotional/physical neglect, drug use/prison time/mental illness within the family, and missing parental figures are all part of the scale). Most individuals with high scores can expect to die 20 years earlier than their low scoring counterparts. An ACE score of 4 or greater is linked to increases in the likelihood of pulmonary lung disease (390%), hepatitis (240%), depression (460%), and suicide (1220%). At 6 points a person is 4600% more likely to become an IV drug user, and at 10 points most individuals are condemned to a life in prison or on the streets if they don't take their own life. If that wasn't bad enough, by the time these problems are identified irreversible damage in the form of stunted brain development has already happened.

Think about those numbers for a moment....

Read them again and imagine you're in a situation that can be rated on that scale. Do you need to read Shakespeare when your siblings need protecting from an abusive father? Is your time better spent doing homework or working to pay the bills because your mother is strung out on meth all day? How do you concentrate on an experiment when your step-father is molesting you every night? What if you had to deal with all of these things at the same time? And on top of that your teachers are mad at you for not finishing your work and dozing off in the middle of a lesson. And you just can't take it and everything you're feeling comes rushing out in a furious wave of emotion, anger, and sense of betrayal.

When situations like this happen, many teachers don't know what to do and often react in the wrong way and place all of the blame on the student without considering where he's coming from. Sporleder's approach to discipline was the result of a paradigm shift in the way he understood students, something that few educators are willing or able to do. His method requires a lot of patience and time, but the results are worthwhile. When students had behavior problems, asking them what was wrong and giving them a chance to talk about it produced greater results than blindly punishing everyone who acted out. Most students even realized they were taking out their frustrations on people that didn't deserve it and apologized.

The linked article tells the entire story, including details about the research and how Sporleder discovered a new way to handle would be disciplinary problems. Washington state appears to be ahead of the curve in this area and it only spells good things for the future of education.