Control

One of the first things I learned when I started my teaching career: "Don't come at kids from a position of power."

I didn't get it at first. Wasn't I supposed to be in a "position of power" to these kids? Wasn't that how I was supposed to get their respect, get them to mellow out, get them to start learning?

Then I thought harder about it. Actually, when I hear the term "Position of Power," the first thing that it triggers in my mind is the 50 Cent song, "Position of Power." It's on his second album, The Massacre, the liner notes of which feature a different photo for each song. For the song "Position of Power," 50 Cent is standing up, hanging out of the sunroof of a Porsche Boxster, wearing a wife beater, a white doo rag and a black stocking cap, wielding a sawed-off pump-action shotgun. Oh, also, there are palm trees in the background, even though all the lyrics are about how he "runs New York." Odd.

Anyway, whenever people at my first teaching job used to talk to me about "coming at kids from a Position of Power," I pictured myself as 50 Cent, who most of the boys in my class thought was a straight up boss. I didn't see the problem. I wanted them to look up to me, the same way I looked up to 50 when I was their age. That was how they would learn Latin. Why didn't anyone else get that?

Eventually, I went back and found that picture of 50 Cent in the Porsche, and that picture looked very different to me when viewing it from an adult's perspective. What kind of man wants everyone to see him with his shirt off, brandishing an illegally modified firearm while driving an expensive car through what looks like an upscale Miami or Southern California neighborhood? Was that how I looked to my students? Was I 50 Cent in the Boxster with the shotgun? (This is starting to sound like a bad variant of Clue.) If so, to half my kids, I looked scary, and to the other half, I looked ridiculous, but to all of them, I just looked like I was in it for myself, not for them. 50 Cent doesn't care about other people's success. Somewhere, his heart turned cold...

It was one of many productive conversations I had with fellow educators about "coming at kids from a position of power." Along the way, here are some specific things I learned never to do:

1) Don't remind people of your superiority by saying things like "I'm the teacher," "Because I said so," "Hate to say I told you so, but...I told you so," "Whose fault is that?" and "Not my problem." When a kid hears any of those things, they assume you don't care about them. All of those expressions are meant to reinforce the kid's subservience to you rather than reinforcing your belief in the kid's success.

2) Don't "escalate situations." If a kid all the way in the back of the classroom punches another kid, do you scream across the room at him? No, you walk to the back of the room, continuing instruction as you do, and then you whisper to that kid, "Please leave." If they push back, just calmly say, "You clearly aren't able to be in my classroom. So, for your safety and everyone else's, go tell [school administrator] what you just did, and they'll help you prepare yourself to rejoin class." Then go right back into instruction. Don't miss a beat. If you yell across the room, the kid will yell back, and the other kids will join in. If you stop instruction, kids will take advantage of the downtime. Your job is to diffuse the situation, not to punish impulsively.

3) Don't ignore anything. Addressing disruptive behavior doesn't magically stop it, but tuning it out doesn't, either. Just because you've tuned it out doesn't mean the other students have. Often times, doing nothing is a passive way of "escalating the situation." The kid sees that they can get away with a certain level of disruptive behavior, so they go farther, wondering how far they can go before you snap. If a kid is acting that way, they want something, and it's your job to find out what. In fact, at the school where I currently work, the first thing any kid sent out of a classroom is asked is "What did you want?" The kid almost always answers, "Nothing." The administrator replies, "What did you do?" The kid answers. The administrator replies, "You did that because you wanted something. What did you want?"

50 Cent doesn't care what you want. 50 Cent only cares about what 50 Cent wants. 50 Cent likes to escalate situations. That's why he mugged Ja Rule, humiliated Rick Ross's ex-girlfriend by showing a questionable video of her on his website, bumrushed the VMAs stage in 2005 trying to fight Fat Joe on live television, had Eminem fire DJ Green Lantern in the middle of a national tour, had Styles P's contract with Interscope Records nullified, and got into lyrical mixtape feuds with countless other rappers. What kind of man does these things? Clearly, a man who's insecure about his own "Position of Power."

I'll repeat what I said in an earlier post: as a teacher, your job is to be the authority figure without declaring your authority, to get respect without demanding respect, and to control the learning environment without appearing like you're trying to control people. You are an authority figure, you deserve respect, and the learning environment can't function without you monitoring it…but if you lord that authority over kids, they will respect you less, and you will ultimately lose control of the learning process.

"Coming at a kid from a position of power" is something that a person in an actual "Position of Power" would never do. If you have to remind someone you're in charge, you're obviously not in charge. Cute Porsche, though. It matches your shotgun!