"The teacher should be more mean."

"The teacher should be more mean."

That was an anonymous response I got when I posed this prompt to my students: "This class would be better if..."  In another period I saw a similar response, though more specific: "The teacher should be stricter with certain students."

My reactions to this - intellectual and emotional - are complicated.  It hits me emotionally because it shows that there are students in the class who are very sensitive to how the classroom community is developing and they're looking to me to shift it in certain directions.  These responses demonstrate that some students think I could be doing better, but also trust me enough to say it (albeit anonymously).  Intellectually, it makes me think a lot about power dynamics in the classroom and the system we are in that requires teachers to be mean to establish some sort of order.

What are they trying to say by this?  Certainly they don't want a teacher that yells, that bullies, that is unfair.  It's pretty obvious that what they want is structure, and that is something that I'm trying to figure out as a first year teacher.  What is a structured classroom that allows room for creativity, differentiation, individuality?

We have a this behavior corrective response system at our school that we call the "levels of global warming."  Imagine a student is doing something pretty minor and common, such as having their cell phone out or talking over you while you're trying to give directions or teach a lesson.  According to the levels of global warming I take the following steps, with each step indicating the students has not discontinued their off task or disruptive behavior:  Physical proximity > Verbal Reminder > Verbal Warning > Discussion with Teacher > Send to Reset/Buddy Room > Referral > Send to Office > Call Home > Meeting with Parent and Teacher.  Or something like that.

The thing about this system is that it kind of traps you, as a teacher. And it makes students choose to either assert their autonomy or bend to the wishes of this person that might very well be a complete stranger to them.  As a teacher, if you make one bad judgment somewhere along that line, it's hard to jump off it.  Obviously, as a teacher you can bail on this system at any point, but if you do so you risk appearing indecisive and inconsistent.  That's not respected by anyone really.

It make me think a lot about the meta-structure of how we educate youth.  Why are we all going into a system that requires "meanness" and explicit expressions of power to establish a community that gets people learning?  And why are we so focused on coercive power rather than spiritual or collective power?  When students see a "nice" adult and decide they can disregard that person, what does it say about how they view adults in general?  These are questions that make me feel pretty low, but I also keep pushing to explore.