Troublemakers
Carla Shalaby
Carla Shalaby
All Y'all Social Justice Conference
In June 2019, Bria Wright and I had the opportunity to present at the All Y'all conference. Our presentation centered on the work our staff did with Troublemakers by Carla Shalaby during the 2018-2019 school year. We used Shalaby's work to change beliefs and rewrite policies and procedures on how we respond when trouble is being made at Hortons Creek.
During our All Y'all presentation, we asked participants to sort the beliefs listed into "productive" and "unproductive" columns. Then teachers reflected on the question below.
Do behavior policies reflect productive or unproductive beliefs about student behavior?
After reading Troublemakers and participating in #CleartheAir Twitter chats hosted by Val Brown @ValeriaBrownEdu, we knew we wanted to engage our entire staff in a book study of this work. Staff who had read the book signed up to facilitate sessions on each vignette. Some sessions turned into Twitter Chats due to time constraints and weather cancellations. The Twitter Chats turned out to be the most powerful dialogues.
As an assistant principal, I struggled with my role in the school. Excluding students from their school community did not feel good. Suspensions did not "fix" students. It did not restore broken relationships. It did not heal the community. It did not solve any problems the troublemaking created. I did not know how to "do it different" until reading Troublemakers.
I am dedicated to creating a culture at our school that sees students as making trouble rather than through the traditional lense of troublemakers. I believe "schools engender trouble by using systems of reward and punishment to create a certain kind of person - "a good student" - a person suited for the culture of schooling" (Carla Shalaby). In the 2017-2018 school year Hortons Creek chose to be a part of the positivity project, rather than a PBIS school, for this reason. In the 2018-2019 school year, we are dedicated to finding ways to restore communities when trouble is made that do not involve excluding the students who are making trouble. It is proving to be a difficult journey with more questions than answers but I am so proud to be a part of a staff that is dedicated to doing school differently for the sake of our smallest humans.
See below for some of the ideas we are working on.
HCES Philosophy on Building and Repairing Connections
A Work in Progress
Hortons Creek will respond differently when trouble is made in our school.
Ideas are taken from Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School by Carla Shalaby
Beliefs on Building Connections
Beliefs on Troublemaking
Classroom Culture: How might a classroom that values all children be set up/look
What might a teacher do when trouble is made?
We are beginning to develop beliefs statements that we will post throughout our school building in order to share and spread this mindset throughout our Hortons Creek community. See below.
HAWK Beliefs Posters
We believe all children are complex and beautiful human beings.
Relationships Matter. All people want to have positive relationships. We must support one another in developing and maintaining connections.
Positive relationships are the cornerstone of health, happiness, and resilience…and jobs of the future.
We will use our character strengths and recognize the strengths in others to develop and maintain connections.
When people care about the relationships they have with others, they work to keep those relationships healthy and to repair any damage to them.
We believe in relationships over rules and restoration and restitution over punishment.
We believe the regular integration of circles into our classrooms will build strong classroom communities that all members will work to maintain.
What are we doing differently when trouble is made?