calvin in my classroom: choice

"No one thrives in an environment of rules; people thrive in an environment of leadership." ~ Ray Ortlund, 25.July.2010

The first two weeks of school each year are spent establishing order in the classroom.  As the teacher, I show the students my expectations for how class should run and teach them the system of consequences that happens when they fall short of these expectations.

Experimenting with how I enforce this discipline has revealed a lot to me about how we're wired as humans - and how that affects our choices.  In my training, I was taught to establish a "ladder of consequences" that identified an increasingly bad outcome for each infraction a student committed.  As students make bad choices, they are informed of their choice, its consequence, and the next consequence if they continue in their actions.  When I used this system, I felt odd and out of character, like a cross between Will Smith kicking butt in some movie and an Old Testament minor prophet shoved into a 21st century Title I classroom, whose only job was to constantly belt out: "you have sinned, so now this is happening to you, and if you continue you will suffer more."  And how did this help my students?  I actually never saw this method correct behavior.  I was having the same problems in April that I had in September, because students simply acclimated to the outcome.  In fact, some students became worse-behaved simply to show that they could break the rules and undermine my authority.  Unfortunately for them, my authority didn't change; only the extent to which I had to exercise it over them did.  I found the whole experience eerily similar to living under religious rules, i.e. what is commonly called "the law" of the "Old Covenant" established by Moses in the Bible.

Halfway through last year, I decided to change the language of my system to that of choice.  Instead of facing consequences, my students faced a series of choices - the first one is theirs to make, second is mine, third is their parent's, and fourth is the administration's.  The change was immediate; my students (last year and so far this year) stopped unnecessarily pressing the system to the limit (i.e. administrative referral) because they had been given a choice.

But the weirdest part?  The first choice - a student's opportunity to correct - still never corrects the problem.  Students will still - 100% of the time - continue in their behavior.  Sure, they proved in the first system that they could break my rules, but under the second model, they couldn't uphold them!  Choice is an illusion; there is still only one outcome that actually occurs.

So why did the second model work?  How did students manage to change behavior?  In this second model, students come to realize that they have not been able to change behavior, and therefore accept my consequence as a helpful intervention.  The outcome is no different - they still have to move seats, or talk to me in the hallway, etc. - but they now perceive it as an opportunity I've created rather than a punishment.

I'm not saying that we were created without choice.  I don't know, I wasn't in on the design process.  I have observed, however, that regardless of what our state may be, we don't make the right choices.  We may be able to choose, but our will is not free to do so.  Piper describes this tension in terms of moral versus physical inability:

"This is a great stumbling block for many people  - to assert that we are responsible to do what we are morally unable to do ... It may help, however, to consider that the inability we speak of is not owing to a physical handicap, but to moral corruption.. Physical inability would remove accountability.  Moral inability does not."

~ John Piper, Desiring God, p. 65 (footnote)

I see a lot of myself in my students; I relate to God the way that they relate to me as their teacher.  Thankfully, God made the greatest intervention and provided such an amazing opportunity that it is literally irresistible once He reveals it - even to those (like me) that are "morally corrupt."  In the same way that my interventions make my students' continued rebellion seem foolish, His intervention makes my corruption seem unmentionably unimportant.