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Classes in session. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Unlearn 16. Class is in session today. You just get me, you get me a little bit late at school, sitting in my office, but I think I wanted to talk about. Well, I know I want to talk about something relatively important and something that a lot of teachers struggle with and administrators, because I happen to be both at this particular moment, is how do I create, how do I develop, how do I regulate? How do the correct consequence for either bad behavior or lacking in effort or whatever, whatever the issue tends to be, because I think a lot of the times teachers will overcorrect or under correct and it's very hard to find that middle ground. And it's also interesting and, and nobody really wants to hear this, but not everything works for every kid. And I'm going to come back to that in a second because, you know, consequence for one kid can be corrective, but, but the same consequence for another kid can just have them dig in and make matters worse. Figuring out the kid's really important. So first and foremost, I want to talk about this. The first thing I say to all teachers, sort of as a template, is you need to establish three things right away and you need to stick to them. Number one, you need to have. As my light source goes out, you need to have clear expectations. Okay? So you need to have clear expectation. You need to be able to show those students what you expect and why you expect it in your course or in your school. Clear as clearly as you possibly can delineate it. Understanding that everybody's going to interpret things differently, apply things differently. So you're going to have to iron some stuff out, but you have to have clear expectations. Number two, you have to have clear consequence. Crystal clear. If you don't finish, A, B and C, here are the consequences. If you can't finish, here are the consequences. If you have chosen to negate all responsibility, here are the consequences. Here are the consequences. If you decide that bad behavior or skipping classes or acting a fool is your, you know, reason for living, here are the consequences. And then here's the really, really uncomfortable part. You gotta follow through. You have to, have to, have to, have to follow through with your consequences. And, and the quicker and more consistently you can follow through with consequence, the quicker behavior, unwanted behavior is gonna change. And, and that's whether the public board does it or not. I think is an incredibly important aspect of education. I think understanding, you know, the causes of World War II or the, you know, the political and economic impacts of the Cold War or Quadratic formula. These are all important elements. But if you can't learn reasonable skills and reasonable ways that you can achieve a level of accountability and personal responsibility, the rest of them are useless anyway. I truly believe that. And I truly believe that as the public system did away with late marks, let's say did away with grading that level of personal accountability, time management and personal responsibility, we did students in injustice and, and, and now we're going to be doing the whole workforce and injustice because it's absolute ridiculous that those things aren't measured in a significant way. I don't think they should be the only things measured. And let me be clear, there's always ex, you know, exceptions to the rule, extenuating circumstance. I'm not advocating that. I sit here as a teacher and say your assignment was due yesterday at 9am And I don't care if so and so was sick or I don't care that you're, you know, you had to take an emergency trip. Of course those are rational conversations to be had. But there's a big difference between rational conversation and excuses and a parent's job and a teacher's job collectively, because by the way, it needs to be collective or you're never going to get it done, is to figure out how many excuses are they giving and why are they giving them and how do we rectify the problem. And then it's a matter of on the same team. I promise you the best way you're ever going to get to a student is be on the same team as their parent and to be on the student's team too. Because students, and a lot of people in general will fib, will, you know, avoid, will flat out lie to avoid themselves getting into trouble, losing marks or facing any sort of repercussions. Um, and you can allow it and you can make space for that or you can hold the line firm. But holding the line firm is exhausting. So let's assume we have clear expectations. Now the key is what are the consequences for a breach of those expectations? That's the, that's the magic consequence as it relates to the breached expectation. So for number one, let's just run through a couple and we'll get an idea. They didn't understand the work, so they didn't get the work done. Cool. That's okay. Sometimes it's hard. Did you work hard in class? Because that's going to be issue number one. If you're not taking personal responsibility accountability to work in class and you're leaving to go to the bathroom Just because you're bored or you're trying to avoid work or you're trying to talk to your friends and you're doing all of that, that's problem number one. There's a consequence for that that doesn't include me sitting beside you and helping you do the work because you did understand it, you just didn't bother doing it. Or were you avoiding the work because you didn't understand it? Those are two different questions and two different consequences. Either way, let me be clear. You have to get the work done. You have to get the work done. If the problem is you didn't understand it or you wanted to negate it and avoid it, it doesn't matter. The consequence still has to be the same. It's just you might need different help in order to get that job done, right? If you have a kid that's ridiculously late all the time, well, time needs to have a value, right? So they're constantly late with them, with them coming to class or constantly late with assignments. Well, time doesn't have a value to them. Okay, so let you. I'll let you know my consequence. If a student can't get an assignment in on time, especially when I make it super clear on day one what my assignments are, when they're due, what the expectations are, they can submit them early, I've given them all options and it's still not submitted on time, well then their consequence will be late marks. And when the late marks don't bother the kid and they just leave it, then the consequence is another assignment. More work. Well, you're going to have to do more work because you've decided you're not going to take this work seriously. So I'm going to have to train you. I'm going to have to teach you the lessons. Lesson of how to value that. Or else we're going to sit here together and I'm going to have to be in this space while you do what you need to do. Do you want to try to avoid it? You're going to be here longer. Do you want to try to negate it? If you want to try to lie and get your way around it, it's going to go from one class after school to ten classes after school. But we're, we're all going to sit here and do it. As uncomfortable as it punishment as it is for me, we're all going to sit here and do it together. If kids are acting a fool, the consequence should pertain to what they've done, right? Detention as just to sit around and stare at the wall and I'm just going to waste your time, to me, has never been useful whatsoever. Suspension not usually been useful whatsoever. There's certain expectations that that has been useful. What's useful is a lesson learned. And if I can't teach them a lesson of how to be a productive, respectable, good person in this school, if their parents and I cannot get together and figure out what kind of consequences and what kind of, you know, issues that those kids are going to have to overcome and how they're going to overcome them, if I'm not doing that, I'm not doing my job either. School is about learning. If you don't want to learn, I'm going to create an environment in which you are then going to have, you are going to have to jump a higher bar. If you can't learn, I'm going to break that bar down for you and we're going to do it in pieces together. But you're not going to get to avoid to do the work. That's it. Right, because there's really two types of kids. Well, there's a lot, but in this sense, talking about consequence, the type of kind of kid who just doesn't want it for the most part, just doesn't want to do it, doesn't think they have to do it, thinks they can get around it, they don't really care about their marks. And then there's the kind of kid who can't do it, who doesn't understand it, who maybe is afraid to ask, who maybe is embarrassed to talk about it, who maybe doesn't have support networks at home in order to help facilitate. Those are two different students with two different needed consequence. But both students, I, I promise you, both students need educating just differently. And in a lot of schools they don't. That's not a thing. All right? That's not our job. Our job isn't to teach them time management. Our job isn't to teach them, you know, responsibility. Are you okay? Of course that's their job. Of course that's our job. If I'm not doing that job, I don't know why I'd be teaching. But again, you need to make the consequence and the action fit each other. If a kid is harassing another student, well, guess what? Now we need to go into some deep education and research about what it is to bully, why you bully, what kinds of things are lacking in yourself, what kind of damage that can do to a person. Those conversations need to be have had and need to be had in a long format way. And they need to do the research to then come to it. Kids don't, for the most part, kids aren't bad people. Kids aren't looking to be bad. I don't think. I really don't think so. And I've been doing it for a long time, so I think I've seen my fair share. I would say for the most part, kids do silly things. Kids lie to get out of trouble. Kids avoid when they feel insecure, and kids joke when they feel like that's the only currency they have with their friends. All of those things. That's the time in high school to figure that out. Because we think the teens don't carry their insecurities. Of course they do. Guys, look around at adults. Go ahead. Think about the adults at your workplace right now. Think about the adults that lie, that manipulate. Think about the adults that aren't competent. Think about the adults that try to put, put a show on for certain people. Think about the adults who take credit for other people's work. It's all the same thing. There are adults who have never been held accountable at any other stage because the educational system has failed. Their obviously community or family environment has failed to teach them the necessary things that need to be taught. And guess what happens then? Our society fails. You want to make education cheaper and easier and faster? Watch what happens. Because you might not pay for it today because you're saving all those tax dollars, but boy, are you going to pay for it eventually. Consequence is incredibly important, but you need follow through, which means you need time, which you mean needs. You need resources. You need teachers that are empowered to be able to put in place those consequences and have significant follow through coming from the teacher, the administration, and their parents across the board. You have that united front. And those kids, those students are going to grow up and they're going to understand the lessons. They are going to respect the lessons, they are going to implore the lessons. They are going to become better members of society for having learned it. Now, it does get complicated. And it gets complicated because different people respond to different things. And I've said this to you before, I try really hard as a teacher who's been around the block a couple times to never throw down, to never get into a conflict with a student in front of their peers. Because I'm going to tell you right now, nine times out of 10, that is the hill they will die on. They'll burn themselves to a cinder. It doesn't matter. They will not lose face in Front of their friends. That is the point of adolescence. The point of adolescence is they cease to care about me. They cease to care about their parents in a social way. Why? Well, they're trying to individuate. They're supposed to good. You can individuate. You can be your own person, but you got to be a good person. You got to be a responsible person. You got to pay your bills, you got to do your job. You got to be responsible for yourself. Because if you're not, you're not getting a paycheck and we have lost that. Also understand, I am not part party to the, the 1990, you know, 1980 or 90 punishments of clean the bathrooms, of, of do push ups, of do a wall sit of right out lines. What, what a lazy, lazy consequence. It doesn't need to be punitive, it needs to be corrective. Nobody's slapping the dog on the nose anymore because eventually that dog bites. Apply the same logic. And different kids are going to respond to different things. Some kids will respond to a really lengthy discussion with their parents and with, you know, really. Some kids won't. They'll shut down. Some kids will respond to doing extra work. Some kids will respond. And I think this is a great one. If a school can do it, volunteer work. I personally think that the school should control and, and have connection to what volunteer hours. In Ontario, kids have to do 40 hours in their high school career. And I think we should be able to control what 40 hour. What they do and where they do it because I think there's too much where it's like, oh, I worked at my dad's accounting firm for a month. Stop it. Stop it. The point of volunteer hours, in my opinion, is to give them empathy and perspective. That's the point. Empathy, perspective, connection to the community. Not connection to your aunt's, you know, clothing store. That's not what I'm talking about here. And I think kids, I know, I know students would respond to it, appreciate it. And, and the problem, I think with the public board a lot of the time too is they're kind of, they're always trying to come up with these objective rules, these objective. You do A, B, C, this happens. And first of all, there's delusions of objectivity. Objectivity don't exist because every consequence, if I'm only applying one consequence to a whole line of kids, but that consequence affects those kids in different ways. It is no longer this objective test. It is actually qu. Quite subjective because it's impacting those kids in subjective ways. And the more we tried to deny that happens, the more we pretend like kids are cogs in the wheel. And applying the same format and the same box to each kid, expecting that they all respond and react in the same way, the worse and worse and worse our system becomes. This illusion of objectivity is ridiculous. We need to chuck that out the window altogether. We need to stop pretending like anything is objective, like anything can be purposefully objective. We need to do things across the board differently. But make no mistake, there needs to be clear expectation, clear consequence, clear follow through. The consequence must relate to the problem at hand with that student. And if the consequence isn't changing the student's behavior, mentality, or ability, you need to change the consequence because it's not working. You don't just do it more. You figure out a new road to get a change of that behavior and of that reality. And if you're not doing that as administrators, as educators, either you're being limited from doing that, maybe by a board, maybe by a school system, or you're just being damn lazy because that's the system. That's what we need to focus on. They need to read, you know, of Mice and Men. They need to be able to write an essay. They need to be able to do all of those things. But if in this system, we are not making them understand, become aware of, and become accountable and responsible for their own personal decisions, either for good or bad, we are failing those students and then failing the future. And I am not into it. So thanks for hanging out with me. I'm going to come up with more ideas and more expectation and consequence and follow through so we can discuss it. Please list it all in the comments. I would love to start different educational podcasts based on different particular examples. The more specific we can get, I think, the more interesting everything becomes. And to understand that I'm not it's not a one model fits all mentality. If that worked, I'd just be creating little tiny automatons that can work on assembly lines. That's not what we're creating anymore. We never should have been creating that, and we sure can't be creating that today. We should be focused on creating and growing analytical critical thinkers who are built with transferable skills and an attention to detail and their personal responsibility that everybody shares so they can move forward in society and build it rather than get in the way of its progress. And on that note, I will see you next time. Same bat time, same bat channel. It's almost like I used a funny tone of voice right, then. Right? I should probably just say I'm Batman. That's not low enough. Dismissed.