Free To Be You and Me (and Pee?)

A big part of my job is doing observations of kids in their learning environments. I find it shocking that there are psychologists who don’t visit the kid’s school when they are testing for learning disabilities, or any disability for that matter. To me, it seems like common sense that if you want to see how someone learns you go to where they learn all day. It would be like someone whose never seen you at work evaluating your job performance at your doctor’s office. There’s no context and you act differently. Recently, I had a school refuse to let me observe a child in their classroom when the referral is about the child’s attention problems in the classroom and classroom performance. Okay…I’ll just guess how he's doing in the classroom? *sigh*

However, another school allowed me to observe a little gal this week and I learned so much. Almost TOO much.

For all of you non-California, non-Bay Area peeps, there are some areas (coughcouchBerkeleycoughcough) and schools that really believe in letting children be free. Some of their schools are set up to be overly child-centered (read: permissive). I’m all about letting kids play and learn without super rigid regulations, but there are some rules needed. Kids need boundaries.

So you can imagine my surprise when I was observing a private school Kindergarten class playing on the schoolyard, and a little girl drops her pants and pees in the garden by the play structure. I was not even sent there to observe that girl, but clearly one’s eye gets drawn to a child squatting at recess. I turn to the director standing next to me, in horror, and she simply says with a neutral expression, “Oh, she’s peeing.” Doesn’t say a word to the girl, then, in the next breath, tells me how much the children love to “get messy here and just play in the dirt.” Right. With the urine. Neat. And with that, the little girl pulls up her pants and gets back on the swings and the director tells me it’s time for snack.

Well alrighty then. You just can’t get this kind of information when you see a kid in your nice little therapy office. Hm. I wonder why this other little gal I was observing at this same school has difficulties following rules at home...I mean, her parents must have some crazy rule that she has to pee in the toilet or something. Sheesh.

Finding the Proper Motivation

My dissertation was on adolescent motivation for school, and it has been read and enjoyed by ones of people. I was told when I graduated from UC Berkeley that every time someone downloaded my dissertation, I would get $1 in royalties. I have, to date, received $1.*

Because I am feeling generous today, I will give you the results for free, in one sentence. I will spare you the 118 beautiful pages of pure data and analysis that has riveted one reader to date.* Guess what?

Adolescents with positive relationships with their parents have better grades regardless if they are Mexican-American or White.**

Someone please, ALERT THE MEDIA about this.

I’m allowed to put the “dis” in my dissertation, because enough time has passed that I won’t take it personally that it could have been published in the Journal of Duh. But what I will say is that the results do influence my beliefs about my students. Sometimes, we think of adolescents as more influenced by their peers, but I’m here to tell you that even your most snarly disgruntled moody teen still wants his or her parents’ approval. I do this activity with adolescents where I give them a survey of things that might motivate them to do well in school. I swear, the number one “reward” or "motivator" they pick, no matter what age they are, is a positive call home to parents.

I know! So cheap! So easy! Why don’t we educators do this more often? It makes the kid feel good, and if you can manage to block the school’s number (so the parent picks up), and you can manage not to get hung up on when you say, “This is so-and-so from your son’s school…” (because they think their kid did something bad), it really works. Go on, give it a whirl this week.

And if you need more ideas for what makes a kid tick, try my fancy, non-researched-based, but helpful, Adolescent Motivation Survey with a kid and see how it goes.

Student: ____________________ Date: _________
Different students like different things. As your teacher/counselor, I hope to get to know you individually. This survey will help me understand what you like and don’t like about school, so I can work with you/your teachers to make school more enjoyable for you. There are no right or wrong answers, just complete the sentences with your ideas

1. In my free time, I like to….
2. If I had $5, I would buy…
3. The thing I like most about school is…
4. The thing I do not like about school is…
5. When my teachers pay attention to me…
6. When my classmates pay attention to me…
7. When I am frustrated, I like when teachers…
8. My favorite subject is…
9. My least favorite subject is…
10. I wish my teachers knew that…
11. After I finish my work, I like to…
12. When my teachers call my parents…
13. When I don’t want to do something in class, I…
14. You can tell when something is too hard for me because…
15. The behavior I am working on as a part of my IEP is…
16. The rewards I would like to earn are…

You might just be surprised at what you find. Last time I gave this, the kid had a Behavior Plan where the reward for doing his work was “praise from teacher” and he wrote “When my teachers pay attention to me….I hate it because my friends think I’m a teacher’s pet.” Not so rewarding. I guess it’s like giving black licorice as an incentive for increasing class participation.*** It could work for some people, some might find it absolutely vile and repugnant and not know why someone would think that nasty stuff would be consumable or desirable and thus would never raise their hand to participate. I think you know which category I’m in. Bleh.

*Thanks, Dad.
**My dissertation committee argued for a long time what to call the White kids. White? Euro-American? Caucasian? I didn't care. Call my people "Pigment Challenged" for all I care, just sign off on the thing so I can graduate already.
***NFTSP does not endorse candy motivators. Except when they really work.