No Hay Malcriados

On our first day in El Bichito- I was in for a surprise! The kids were less than well-behaved. In fact, they were quite naughty. Fighting in line. Blaming others. Lying left and right without feeling bad about it.

A co-worker came to me a few days later and asked me to identify which kids were perpetually malcriados. Naughty. Ill-behaved.

Eh..... that's kinda a hard question. I don't want to single out and say that one kid is always naughty.....

So I just didn't give him any names.

During the next week we had a huge change of system. We had explicit rules. And we kept track, told kids when we wrote them down for behavior and reminded them the next day when they came. And holy kamoley! All the kids followed through. After fighting the system for about 3 days, they realized we meant business and so all 62 kids decided to quietly read and be good. The exact same kids that were bouncing off the walls and kicking soccer balls in the room and using books to hit each other on the head, were now reading. Not only reading, but actually enjoying reading.

See? I told you. None of the kids were actually perpetually, inherently, malcriado.

Time to go on a teacher rant. The problem with a lot of kids' behavior is their expectations, how high their expectations are, and whether or not the person in charge of them follows through on those expectations by delivering consequences consistently. Kids are good. They are way more fresh from heaven than the rest of us. Less corrupted. More pure. Kids keep the world good and hopeful. Kids love pleasing adults, and if adults have expectations that can be clearly met, praised, and they can let the kids know that, kids will do anything for praise.

My favorite example of this is Wilder. The first day Wilder was THE BIGGEST TATTLE-TALE you ever did meet. Everything around him was chaos, and as soon as I would walk up to the situation, he blamed everyone else around him. Oh my goodness. Always cutting in line. It seemed much more important to him to blame someone else and get them in trouble than to be left alone by the teacher. If he was going to be given a stink eye, he was gonna make sure someone else got in way bigger trouble. Yikes.

I seriously considered labeling Wilder in my head as malcriado. I never wanted to do that to any kid, but I mean, what at all was well-behaved about Wilder? But, I thought, is it fair to label anyone like that in my head?

The problem with labels in your head, is that they change the way you treat that child. I didn't want to treat Wilder differently and with less trust and respect just because he was always bad. But.... was that fair? No.... I don't think so.....

So I didn't. I decided to give him a few more days and keep treating him like he was inherently good, even though it really didn't seem like it.

And what do you know??? But after 3 days, not only did he read well, but when he had the chance to go play soccer, his favorite thing to do, he wanted to stay behind and help another kid with his homework. WHAT?!?! "Wilder, what are you doing?" "I'm just helping him with his homework." ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? That is AWESOME!!! You? I thought you were the naughty kid. But that's not naughty at all. That's golden. So... you must not be naughty by nature. Maybe by situation, or by the time of day, but.. not inherently. Inherently, you are good. Just needed expectations, and a chance.

He has never been a problem again. I think he may have attention deficit disorder, or something, because paying attention is so much harder than other kids. but he tries. And he's good. He takes care of his little brother. He follows through on all his expectations.

My favorite part is after he finishes, when he'll ask me, "I did good, right? I read good? I knew the answer for English? I played soccer well?"

And here, ladies and gentlemen, we see clearly the reason why he was such a problem in the first place- blaming other kids. He wants to please people, and do a good job.

There are no naughty children.

No hay malcriados.