Summary Document: 4 page PDF Leadership & Care

Clarifying Responsibilities in Our Minds

We begin addressing troubling behavior by making it clear who has responsibility for dealing with mistakes. For example, some parents and teachers can be very strict and assume full responsibility for dealing with any violation; others can be very open to children working things out by themselves. As long as those conditions are clear and adhered to consistently — so they become shared expectations, a norm for conduct — children can be fine. The problem comes when the expectations are not clear or are inconsistent.

I see mushiness about responsibility all the time in classrooms with problems. The video below shows a group of student teachers in my laboratory preschool who have not decided about responsibility. Here’s when responsibility is mushy.

Yes, this clean-up time was chaotic, but that was how the laboratory worked. My role as the instructor in this early childhood education program was to set up the school, videotape what happens, an enable the participants to work together to co-construct an understanding of what was going on, reflect upon it, and plan for future correction. That is how this group of educators came to understand the need to Clarify Responsibilities: they saw it, they corrected it, and got their money’s worth in learning.

You Decide

The video below has names for the 9 problems that come up at clean-up time.
For each, you can decide who has responsibility.

The codes are A, B, C.

A — ADULT — The adult has responsibility to put a stop to this behavior for essential reasons.

B — CHILD — The adult does not intercede immediately, because it is the responsibility of the children to work together to solve this problem; the adult could stay near to lightly assist if necessary.

C — IGNORE — The adult lets it slide without calling attention to it.

• takes paper tube
• strikes with tube
• grabs red telephone
• sword play
• running in circles
• wrestling
• sitting on cabinet
• pokes finger in eye
• tummy bumping

You may write the numbers 1-9 on a paper and decide A, B, or C when watching the video clip.

Clarifying_Responsibilities

I invite you to share your judgments with others to see if you agree upon these responsibility distinctions. There is no right answer here.  What is essential is that the leadership team agree, so the children can understand the expectations.

Discoveries

The students discovered after watching that video how all of them responded to a range of behaviors in similar ways, despite the realization that the locus of responsibility varied in each case. Not all the behaviors were the same, so they faced the problem of differentiating which were the adult responsibility and which were the children’s responsibility.

If we agree that we wish to create open spaces for growth and possibility, it is essential to share power with the children; only then can they learn to act in equally caring and empathic ways. That is not accomplished by being coercive of children nor obedience by children. Our leadership of a caring community of children starts with common agreement about responsibility among educators at school (and common agreement between parents at home), so children can take on developing ways of caring for each other, themselves, and the community.

For me, #8. pokes finger in eye is the only instance that seems to me to require adult action, so I rate it as an A. Since I take responsibility for safety, I take it on and put a stop to it. The rest are B or C. Again, I don’t wish to imply one ‘right’ answer here. Whatever is agreed upon by adults becomes the current base for action. Agreement is the key, and that agreement can evolve over time.

What I would do next, of course, depends upon the situation and my relationship with the child who made the mistake. I do know that poking a finger in someone’s eye is non-negotiable and that I must take action. As you might have noticed in the video, the poking child in the stripes pulls again and again on that oops finger. I would bet he recognized the mistake, too. I would approach him with firm authority while supporting the possibility of his current regret in mind. On the Assertive page we examine ways to take action. I can be flexible in what I choose to do depending on the circumstances and relationships involved, but I take some kind of direction action to convey my concern and assertive responsibility for ensuring the health and safety of everyone.

I Don’t Like it When…
It’s Not OK to…

I hear a lot of that. Neither statement clarifies anything. I think people continue use these pat statements because they have heard others or have been advised to respond this way. Neither is an authentic, truthful, or straight-forward communication.

So you don’t like something a person does. So what? They have absolutely no responsibility over how you feel or don’t feel. Other people don’t control your emotions.

It’s not OK to… OK with whom? Who is making a determination here? Where is this vague source of approval? Is there a list somewhere of what is OK and what is not OK? What exactly does OK mean?

We can talk straight when we set up a structure for responsibility in a way that provides opportunity for discussion about alternatives. Structure is the operative word. We approach structure through two kinds of rules.

NON-NEGOTIABLE RULES
We show that we are the manager who is firmly taking responsibility. We act with authority to block prohibited, dangerous or excluded actions.

Non-negotiable rules are usually stated as prohibitions, like these:

• No hurting or endangering anyone.
• No destruction (usually non-disposable materials and equipment).
• No put downs (critical or degrading remarks about others).
• No out of bounds (specified limited areas).

AGREEMENTS
Agreements usually start with stating the goal or ideal we would wish to see—the possibility out there in the future (months/years ahead) we might desire for all of us to achieve. A leader has to formulate this, baed upon their life experience and amiable desires.

We state the goal before we open a dialogue about how to find the path toward that end. The means and decisions along the way are opportunities for us to live together for mutual benefit in a way that we find works best for us.

The challenge right now is to achieve some kind of agreement about a course of action that all parties can accept. We make a decision once we hear all points of view. Sometimes introverts need to be asked for their thoughts.

Once we have everything on the table, we can formulate what we can agree upon. We try to arrive at concurrence, not voting or raising hands where a majority ‘wins’ and a minority ‘abides.’ The result is simply consent, with the provision that our agreement today is always modifiable; we can make it better as we have better ideas. The leader, of course, is a member of the community and must consent, too. We learn from experience.

Goals have phrasings like these:

• We use words to solve problems.
• We care for others’ work, body, and space.
• We open to all the right to be included.

The bulleted examples above are well-established phrasings that work pretty well for many conflicts. Each clearly states what what we want for everyone here.

‘We‘ is a good place to start a statement of any agreement.

The discussion of options is an agenda item, the topic we are focussing upon now. “I’d like to hear what you think we can do about that.”

‘I’‘ is a good place to state the truth.

Responsibility Baskets First

When a rule is non-negotiable, the adult has it in their basket, so the adult assertively takes on the responsibility for enforcement. The adults can prohibit a child from running around with food in their mouth, for example.

When it’s in the children’s responsibility basket, they help each other evolve a way to address these issues. Mistakes are essential. Mistakes are opportunities for cooperative corrections. Mistakes have to occur in order for the children to learn how to manage them. As you saw in the video of the laboratory school course, mistakes are ultimately what schools are for.

Often the children have not been included in making these decisions, nor have most adults, but inclusion in decisions is the basic function of democracy. Opening a dialogue is clearly an essential topic in education, too easily quashed throughout history