Student behavior gets a bad wrap. Often focused on compliance and management, attempts at helping students to learn prosocial behaviors can be frought. Many of our typical "behavior expectations" are white-dominant culture norms and don't honor student agency and voice. At the same time, interacting with one another in a shared space and active learning self-management strategies are essential. Today we will consider how we can support positive student behavior with an equity lens.
What is a Behavior Expectation?
There are three types of behavior expectations:
- Rules or Expectations: These are decided upon by people of authority. They could be your written "school rules" but they can also be district policies, laws that govern the school, fire code, etc.
- Norms or Agreements: These are decided upon by the group as a whole. These could be group norms you set at the beginning of a small group or classroom agreements for how we will treat one another.
- Unspoken Rules or Social Norms: These are rules supported and reinforced by a group of people, usually implicitly. The group of people could be a friendship group, club, culture, school building, etc.
The Equity Lens
When we consider the behavior expectations experienced by our students, the first step is to take a look at the rules in place and ask ourselves:
In our school, what values do we elevate in our norms, rules, and unwritten rules?
Do we elevate white cultural norms in our expectations? Can students be a part of your learning community and be themselves? For example, if a student has to cut their hair to participate in a sporting event or is shushed if they speak a language other than English, does that elevate their culture or expect them to conform to white cultural norms? I recommend that you read this article on How School Leaders Reinforce Supremacy Through Discipline and Behavior Expectations for an extensive look. The article also includes 10 Questions for Ensuring Equity in School Discipline.
Proactive Support with Intention
After we've checked ourselves to make sure that the rules we are reinforcing are appropriate, we can work to support students in learning the expectations, routines & procedures. But wait, I thought expectations, rules, and procedures were bad? They don't allow students to be their authentic selves? Remember that we do need expectations, rules, and procedures to share a space and have a positive learning community. If you've ever tried to get 25 kindergarteners from point A to point B without losing anyone, you quickly realize why we walk in a single file line. When 600 high schoolers share a cafeteria, there will need to be rules about how to get your lunch quickly enough to have time to eat and what is expected for cleaning up your space.
Delivery of explicit instruction for expecations, routines, and procedures allows students and staff to be clear about what is expected. It's important to also include feedback from a diverse representation of students (and their families) on behavior expectations and their implementation. I once had the honor of speaking with a few high school girls who talked about how dress codes were unfairly enforced at their school. They told me that a skinnier, white girl was rarely dress-coded for the same torn jeans that worn by students of color who had been dress-coded.
Delivery of explicit instruction for expecations, routines, and procedures allows students and staff to be clear about what is expected. It's important to also include feedback from a diverse representation of students (and their families) on behavior expectations and their implementation. I once had the honor of speaking with a few high school girls who talked about how dress codes were unfairly enforced at their school. They told me that a skinnier, white girl was rarely dress-coded for the same torn jeans that worn by students of color who had been dress-coded.
Responding to Negative Behavior
Nobody's perfect, students will mess up. When that happens, we can view their behavior with a deficit lens and use punishment to fix their behavior. In reality, the situation is more complicated than that. The student may need an (appropriate) consequence but they also may need to learn a new skill. The other possibility is one we don't talk about, the one where the adult has an unconscious (or conscious) bias that is impacting their view of the behavior in the first place.
Zaretta Hammond, author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, uses a Mindful Reflection Protocol to help educators in "a process of deep reflection that interrupts historically deficit views and response to students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds." Read more in the full protocol but the steps include:
Zaretta Hammond, author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, uses a Mindful Reflection Protocol to help educators in "a process of deep reflection that interrupts historically deficit views and response to students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds." Read more in the full protocol but the steps include:
- Describe the behavior or interaction
- Reflect on (your own) feelings
- Explain your interpretation of the student's behavior
- Consider alternative explanations (check assumptions)
- Identify one small change to reframe and respond differently
- Continuously revisit
Please share with me how you use an equity lens with behavior in your building. Do you have any effective strategies?
