Watching The Wire (isn’t everybody?- except I’m up to Season 3 yar!) last week, I was electrified (wire- get it?) to hear this piece of advice from a world-wise social worker to an ex con, would-be boxing coach. This guy was trying to work with some kids, who used to be drug seller lookouts, but who had become unemployed because…well you’ll have to watch it.. the point is.. they weren’t the easiest kids to teach stuff to. The social worker dude had this small gem to offer, ‘Never let them fail. It messes with their heads.’
It’s been messing with my head ever since.

When I started as a teacher I thought a good part of my job was showing students just where they hadn’t met the mark. Thirty years later, that doesn’t feature quite so much. Encouraging them to get there, showing them the bar, coaching them to aim high, cheering while they make a run up… that’s more my style. And no, I am not a phys ed teacher… hehehe .. that’s a quiet chuckle I am having to myself since PE was the only class I ever absconded from. Sorry Miss P.

Anyway, it put me in mind of small social experiment I conducted in a Year 8 class once. Teachers, do NOT try this at school; I’m telling you about it here so you can learn from my mistakes! I can at least plead innocence. Well, maybe naivety. Well, ok blind ignorance.
For the purposes of helping the learners understand discrimination I decided to try a short version of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes program. That’s the one where a group is divided on the basis of eye colour and treated in two distinct ways according to that.(Link below) I divided my group by hair type, straight and curly as they came in the door. They didn’t know what the basis was but it meant they weren’t sitting in their usual spots.
Then I went on with the class, all the time praising one side of the room, and comparing them favourably with the students sitting on the other who didn’t seem able to ‘keep up’ or ‘understand as quickly’ or ‘keep on task’.
Gentle reader you can probably guess the result, and it is one that has haunted me ever since. Within twenty minutes, students who normally sat through the lesson in a kind of surly resignation were offering suggestions, sitting up, taking notice, bright eyed with interest.
On the other side of the room, top students accustomed to coming within the glow of teacher’s eye slumped in their seats, resentful and bewildered.
IN TWENTY MINUTES!!!

That’s where I stopped. And, in a sense, that’s where I started. My reasoning told me that if praising students, and by the way this wasn’t manufactured praise, (there is always something positive to find, it can be hard work to look but it is always there to find) worked like this, I should do more of it.
I set myself a goal, to give one piece of positive feedback to one student each day. (Note to self: Always set achievable goals).
Shock number two. This was really hard to do. Hard for me. It turned out I was the blaming, critical, fault-finding pain-in-the-neck kind of person I’d always disliked. That was hard to know. But not impossible to change.
The eventual payoff from turning this around was immense. Not just to students and my relationship with them, but to my sense of satisfaction with the job I was doing. And every teacher needs more of that!
Kids will fail. Kids will make mistakes. We all do. What they need from us, I reckon, is a way of finding the learning in the error and a direction for the next try.
Give it a go.
Mess with their heads by showing them what success looks like.
Tell me what happens.

Oh, and watch The Wire.
http://www.hbo.com/thewire/

Blue Eyes Brown Eyes
http://www.janeelliott.com/

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