Should We Expect Kids With Difficult Home Lives To Choose Well?
How do you teach students to make better choices when they have really challenging home lives? That’s an important question that Stephanie Feagin and I attempt to tackle in this episode.
Difficult Home Lives
[2:00] The message of The Choose Well Program to make better choices to live a better life sounds nice. Maybe it even sounds too simple or too good to be true. What about students who have difficult home lives? How do we tell students to choose well when their lives are chaotic or uncertain?
Do kids that come from difficult home lives still have a responsibility to make better choices? We think the answer to this question is yes. Absolutely!
Get Those Kids On Your Team
[2:35] When I [Mister Brown] visit schools, I can usually figure out pretty early on who the students are that come from difficult situations. They are usually the ones that act out more than other students. I like to win these students over to my team. What that means is I try to engage these students in the visit somehow before they even have an opportunity to act out.
For an educator, it can be a similar process. Helping students who have difficult home lives means connecting with them differently than other students. It means having grace and compassion for them, as well as encouraging them in their circumstances.
The Puzzle Pieces of Life
[4:10] I [Mister Brown] tell students that their lives are like a puzzle. I use an illustration in my assemblies that shows the outside edges of a puzzle all put together and no pieces filling the inside of the puzzle. The idea is that we don’t get to choose the outside pieces of the puzzle. The edge pieces are set. Our life circumstances like where we were born, what we look like, who’s in our family are all things we don’t get to choose.
However, I tell students that they do get to choose all of the pieces of the puzzle that go on the inside. This means they have the power to choose how they will respond in any given situation. I believe this is true no matter how difficult the situation may be. We all have the power to choose how we will respond.
I like the puzzle pieces illustration because it gives me a chance to be honest with kids and acknowledge that life is hard. Kids need to hear this. Life is going to be hard, but they can still take ownership of their choices. I think that gives kids a sense of empowerment because they can control some things in their lives.
Getting Parents On Board
[8:40] One of the challenges for kids who have difficult home lives, is they usually have families that aren’t supporting their education. Kids aren’t motivated to invest in their own education when their families aren’t invested either. This can make educating these kids very difficult.
One way to reach both the kids and families is to connect. Starting with a relationship with the kids and their families can open doors to better education.
We as educators must remember that we don’t teach curriculum, we teach people. Our students are people and their families are people too. We can work towards better engagement of families when we treat them as people and as our equals, not someone who doesn’t know as much as we do when it comes to education.
Relating to families of students may be difficult and may not always work. But we can try to find something to communicate to families or connect with them about. Listening to families and getting to know who they are can help with connection.
Family Engagement Events
[17:00] Often family or parent engagement only happens during parent-teacher conferences, or when kids have been sent to the principal for misbehavior, or there’s a sporting event. The opportunities to engage with families is usually centered around the students and their activities, both positive and negative.
Schools wanting to improve their school culture need to make an effort to involve families in other ways. Family events that include educators, students, and families are great ways to get families involved with their kids education. Family events are great because they don’t just revolve around the kids’ grades or behavior. These events create an opportunity for the whole school community to come together.
It’s Not Easy Being Me
[23:00] The kids with difficult home lives still love their families and, for the most part, the families love their kids too. They are making bad choices, but they are still people and parents. It’s not easy for these kids, and it’s not easy for the families either.
Connecting with kids and their families and showing empathy and compassion can go a long way towards helping kids with their education. It won’t always be easy and it many not always work, but we can work incrementally towards creating more positive school cultures and helping all students make better choices to live better lives.
