Reflection: Classroom Kindness Guidance Lesson Series

Before reading this post, please see Classroom Kindness Guidance Series on the Culminating Projects tab for clarity and further understanding.

Originally, when my site supervisor and I began to discuss my first semester culminating project ideas, I did not plan on doing this project. A classroom guidance series on kindness for third graders?! They should know better, right? WRONG. Ms. T’s third grade class had different plans. Within one week all resource teachers, administration, multiple parents, and Ms. Tsosie complained about how awful her students were to one another.

Having visited her classroom multiple times, I knew it wasn’t an issue of classroom management. She certainly was trying. In fact, I saw her use guidance activities a host of times to try to settle down the terrible social scene brewing in her room. Unfortunately her attempts did not work and she asked my site supervisor, Ms. Lewis, whether it would be possible to conduct an entire classroom guidance series on kindness. My site supervisor felt this would be the perfect opportunity to write individualized classroom guidance lessons. She was right, of course, but it certainly was a journey.

Sneetches & Empathy

When I began brainstorming ideas, I knew that I wanted to teach the students more about empathy. My thought process was that the students did not understand what it was like to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. I had originally created this lesson for a fifth grade class that had behavioral issues, and while it worked for them, I felt it would be better received by a younger grade. I was correct. The class absolutely loved the Sneetches video and loved talking about empathy as it relates to the story.

Link to Sneetches Video (12:10): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdLPe7XjdKc&t=593s

However, when I got to the application portion of the lesson, the class definitely started to struggle. The exit ticket for the Sneetches lesson required students to write their name on a star. Once that has been done, I collected the stars and passed them back out to other students. At that time, students were required to write at least one thing that makes that student a star. I wanted students to show what they had learned about empathy by saying something nice about a classmate that is not of their choosing. Initially, I heard a lot of “Can we switch?” or “I don’t like that person. Can I have someone else?” I took those opportunities to explain that this was exactly why I was in their classroom to begin with. Eventually, they were able to settle down and they even seemed to enjoy it. Especially when the students began to read the positive things their classmates had said about them.

Initially, there was a small decrease in the calls to Ms. T’s room, and the parents even seemed to complain less. I was ignorantly optimistic that I was really making a difference…from one guidance lesson. Boy, was I mistaken.

Bucket Filling & Kindness

Next, when you want a student to stop displaying a negative behavior, you must show them a replacement behavior. My hopes were that the book and lesson plan centered on the darling book, “Have You Filled a Bucket Today?” would work wonders for this class. My thought process told me that if I did not want them to be mean to one another, I would actually show them how to be kind to one another. When the idea of the book first came up with Ms. T, she was honest in stating that she had already read the book to her class. She said each year she chooses a book to set the tone for the entire academic year. She personally felt that would not derail my lesson at all, and thought all the students could use a review of the story and its ideas. When I did the lesson with the class, it started off very well. The students enjoyed the book, and coming up with examples of bucket dipping and bucket filling. I even elected to create a poster with their examples to keep up in their classroom to remind them daily.

It was all going very well, until the exit ticket. During this lesson, I wanted to prove the students’ ability to actually be nice to one another. The only way to do that, was creating a bucket filling card where each student would be given the card of another student. At that time, the student would write one positive bucket filling statement about their classmate. I passed out the cards, and as I described the activity, there were quite a few moans and groans.

All cards were passed out, and all students should have received a card once they were returned to their owner. Right? Unfortunately, that was not the case here. One student, an admittedly unpopular student, was not ever given his bucket-filling statement from a classmate. Someone in the class used this guidance activity as a way to actually exclude another student. I was dumbfounded and honestly, I was angry. It was in that moment I realized I was going to have to completely change the direction my lessons were taking. The last two scheduled lessons in Ms. T’s class were a clear indicator that many of the students understood what kindness was, and how to actually be kind. However, it would seem that there was a small minority (possibly as little as 1-3 students) of the class, were making it rather unbearable for everyone.

I’m pretty sure situations like this are a guidance counselor’s classroom guidance nightmare. I actually pinched myself for a moment to make sure I wasn’t asleep. Unfortunately I wasn’t and unfortunately, I was going to have to address this situation to the class. I did, stating that I was disappointed in their use for my activity and that I hoped they understood that this was precisely why they were the only class in the school required to do an entire series on classroom kindness. I left the classroom and went back to the guidance office to work on the poster.

Within one hour we got an emergency call over the radio system that two students were having a physical altercation. I’d give you three guesses, but I’m sure you’d only need one. We were called back to Ms. T’s class and there I saw it. Two students literally choking one another out. My site supervisor ran in their direction shouting, “No, no! Bucket fillers DO NOT choke one another!” Honestly, this day was one of the roughest I endured in my internship. I felt like an utter failure. Here I was, two lessons in on a three lesson guidance series on kindness and I was getting calls from the same room where students were strangling one another. My site supervisor noticed how much it was bothering me. Before I left, she said something really important to me, that I had never considered before. She said, “While it would be great if we could change all the bad students, we can’t. Sometimes, it’s more important to give bystanders and victims the encouragement they need to come forward.” It was in that moment, that I came up with my next lesson idea: harmful bystanders and helpful upstanders.

Harmful Bystander v. Helpful Upstanders

Ms. Lewis was right. Maybe I wasn’t going to be able to end Tier 3 behaviors with Tier 2 interventions like specialized classroom-specific guidance lessons. Before this lesson, we began working with two students from Ms. T’s class on an individual basis. We felt directly addressing the issue with these students on an individual basis, while simultaneously, teaching the rest of the class that they can stand up for themselves was going to be our most effective option. I was lucky in that I found a really great video produced by the NED Show that focuses on what bullying means, and the definitions of harmful bystanders and helpful upstanders. The short video even gave students four upstanding options when they see a bully. I thought it was the perfect resource to strengthen my lesson.

Link to Helpful Upstanders and Harmful Bystanders Video (4:00): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeqQCyQOCPg

When I began to plan how I was going to deliver the information. I knew I did not want to do something I’d done before. In the first lesson I had students discuss empathy in relation to the Sneetches video, and then write star statements about their classmates. In the second lesson, I had students complete a worksheet that required them to think about kindness and what it looks like. This same lesson was the infamous exit ticket fiasco of October. I knew that whatever take away we did this time, was not going to be a worksheet, or a compliment to their neighbor. I decided to consider Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, and decided to do something more creative for those students who prefer more visual-spatial based activities.

In this lesson, I had students create a flip page reminder for what it looks like to be a helpful upstander, and a harmful bystander. I was admittedly very excited about doing this project with the students.

Unfortunately, it did not go as smoothly as planned. Following directions was a key issue Ms. T was having in her classroom, and it seemed that this behavior definitely bled into classroom guidance time. Some students cut their paper straight thru even when instructed not to. Some students folded their paper in half hot dog style, even though I said hamburger style. Even though there were only 25 students and I brought 40 pieces of paper with me- I ran out. Many students made mistakes multiple times that required them to start over. I was so excited to tackle another type of intelligence paradigm that I forgot the cardinal rule of classroom guidance: KNOW YOUR CLASS. I should have known better than creating a direction-heavy activity when this class struggled with that in the first place.

Surprisingly enough, the data from the last lesson shows quite clearly that the students were able to meet the school counseling and academic objectives of the lesson. 95% could correctly define bullying. 86% could correctly define upstander. With the lowest average, 71% of the class was able to accurately define bystander. I noticed the students who were not able to define the last two terms correctly tended to switch them. When evaluated, I also noticed that the students I knew to struggle at reading comprehension, were the same students who were not able to correctly define bystander and upstander. This leads me to believe that the terms may have been too similar in nature for the students who struggle with reading. That is definitely something I would keep in mind for the future when working with certain struggling learners.

What’s Happening Now?

I noticed almost immediately that for some kids these lessons landed really well! Especially those students who were performing on grade-level. When I visited Ms. T’s room after lesson two to drop off the Have You Filled a Bucket Today poster, many students rushed up to me to tell me more about how they caught someone bucketfilling, or bucket dipping. There were even conversations between students about learning to use your lid and what that may actually look like.

After the initial poor behavior triggered by the guidance series, I noticed some major changes in student behavior. First, I noticed that after the last lesson I stopped hearing the incorrect use of bullying from Ms. T’s class. Fortunately, bullying has gained national attention but it has almost become a buzzword to encompass anytime a student isn’t nice to another. As a school counselor this can be very frustrating. Only after spending hours of research or investigation on a situation, only to find that both students were mean to one another and it only happened on one occasion- is not bullying. I think it is very important to note that Ms. T’s class certainly seems to understand the correct definition of bullying and it has led to less behavior reports from students, teachers, and parents alike.

As of today, we have not had any disciplinary issues with the students of Ms. T’s class since the week of the last lesson. Each day is not perfect, but there seems to be a lot less reportable offenses and complaints from the teacher, students, and parents. I look forward to watching them grow socially as they learn how to be kinder to one another.

References

Seuss, Dr. (1973). Dr. seuss on the loose. Retrieved from <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdLPe7XjdKc&t=586s >

The Ned Show (2017). You can be an upstander. Retrieved from <http://www.thenedshow.com/upstander.html>