Student Behavior Is A Message, Not A Problem

Picture the student who disrupts your classroom. The one who talks back, refuses to sit still, and has a reputation that travels the hallways before they ever walk through your door.

What was the first word that came to mind?

In this episode, Edward breaks down why that word matters — and why the lens educators see students through often has more to do with history, bias, and expectation than anything a kid has actually done in front of them. He walks through the suspension cycle, what the research says about where it leads, and why changing the question from "what's wrong with this student?" to "what is this behavior trying to tell me?" changes everything downstream.

You don't have bad students. You have students making bad decisions. One is a verdict. The other is a moment. And moments can change.

This is part one. Tune in next week for the tools.

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Transcript

Welcome And Presence Check

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What if the word that should come to mind is not problem but message? A student's behavior is a message in search of a listener, and the question is whether we as educators are willing to hear it. Education needs people who are truly present, not just in the building. I'm Ember DeShazer. And welcome to Home Room Attendance. Your seat is safe. Welcome back to Homeroom Attendance. I am your host, Edward DeShazer, and today I'm asking, are you present or are you absent? Before we begin, I would always ask that you subscribe, like, leave a review if you're listening on podcasts. If you're on YouTube, smash the thumbs up button. Helps me in a it gets it gets me in front of more dynamic educators uh like yourself. So just always like to jump in and ask for that off the bat.

Problem Or Message

SPEAKER_00 1:05

And I want to start something today that I want you to sit with for a second. I want you to picture a student, the one who is constantly disrupting your classroom, the one that refuses to sit still, talks back to any adult in the building. I'm sure you're listening, you're like, I know exactly who you are talking about. Now here's my question. When you pictured that kid, what was the first word that came to mind? It was difficult, defiant, disrespectful, problem. Was it a boy? Was it a girl? Was it an older student? Was it a younger student? I've been in enough rooms with enough educators to know that words can show up fast, and I understand why. That student has probably cost you your patience. It has probably cost you a lesson plan that you took a lot of time to get prepared. That student has probably cost you your piece on a Tuesday afternoon. But here's what I want to challenge today. What if the word that should come to mind is not problem but message? A student's behavior is a message in search of a listener, and the question is whether we as educators are willing to hear it.

Unconscious Bias And The Lens

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Before we can really understand what a student is communicating, we have to understand something about ourselves first. We have to understand the lens that we are looking through when we're looking at our students. I just got back from uh doing a presentation, doing some workshops in Nashville for educators, and it's so critical that we before we really examine our students, that we examine the lens that we are looking through as educators. Our brains are processing 11 million bits of information every single second. But during that time, our brains can only handle about 40 bits of those information. So, what does it do with the rest? It filters it, it sorts it, it makes quick decisions based on patterns that it has already learned, based on past experiences, past assumptions, and associations that don't necessarily that we don't necessarily choose and may not even be aware of sometimes. This is our unconscious bias, and it operates in every single one of us, in every classroom, in every building, every single day. I want to be very clear. People tense up when they hear that phrase, like, oh, here we go, we're about to get woke today, because we have come to feel like the word unconscious bias is an accusation. And it's not, it is biology. Our brains were designed to do this. The problem isn't that that filter exists, the problem is that we don't know when it's running and we let it make dish decisions about children without ever examining it. Every single person is judgmental, every single person has bias. That is what makes you a human being. And here's what it could look like in a school. Two kids talk during a lesson, one gets a warning, the other one gets sent to the office. Same behavior, different responses. And if you ask that educator in the moment why, they probably can't always give you a clean answer. They'd probably say that one felt more serious than the other, but they couldn't tell you exactly why. That's the gap between the behavior and the response, and that is where that lens lives. I was the student that I could do the same thing as my peer next to me, and I would get sent to the office, or my peer would not. For us to understand the behaviors our students are communicating, we first must understand the lens that we are seeing them through. Now, let's take that lens conversation just a little bit deeper because the lens isn't just about race, it's not just about background, and although those things matter, the lens is

Reputation And The Suspension Cycle

SPEAKER_00 6:00

also about history, your history with a specific kid. Sometimes it's about other teachers' history because, as we know, educators share their history and their experiences with other educators. This kid did this, this kid did that in my class. So when these kids walk in, we have these expectations and that reputation uh travels. Once a student gets that reputation you're building, it travels with them. It's a label that sits on them, it lives in the hallways, it talks in the teacher's lounge. And more often than not, that when that student walks through your door, that relationship has already been loaded into your brain. You're already expecting something. And kids who have been through, especially kids who have been through a lot, are extraordinarily good at feeling what adults expect from them. They feel it before you even say a word. So Marcus walks in already knowing you know that you've heard something about him. He responds to what he feels, not to what you've said. Jennifer walks into your classroom already knowing that her sixth grade teacher last year shared with you the challenges that she had, and they're responding to what she feels, not to what you've said in that moment. And as educators, we interpret this response as confirmation of everything we were warned about about a kid. And now we're caught in this loop that started before the first day of school. This is the suspension cycle, and I share this with educators. It's one of the most well-documented and least addressed patterns in American schools. And it goes like this. It does not matter where you start on this, it's like a little, you got to picture a little circle. Does not matter where you start in this circle. Student acts out. An educator responds often from frustration rather than strategy. We also are usually responding versus or reacting versus responding. The student then gets removed, suspended typically, sent somewhere else, sent home. Because that student is removed, they fall further behind in class. The disconnection with that student grows further. They come back to school, they act out again. The response escalates, and we rinse and repeat that for an entire year. For some students, we rinse and repeat that their entire lives. John Hopkins University has researched that says 49% of students who entered high school with three suspensions on the record ultimately dropped out. It's nearly half. Let me be very clear. We are not suspending our way to better outcomes. We are suspending our way to a pipeline that ends somewhere none of us intended. And here's what I know from my time in leadership. We went from 757 days of suspension in 2017 to 101 in 2021. Not because we lowered our standards, not because we're letting behavior slide, not because kids don't get consequences. They don't just come down, get some candy, and head back to class, but we lowered it because we changed how we understood behavior in the first place. Your students have a higher chance of success when they are in your building, not outside of it. Suspension removes the student from the problem, but it does not solve the problem. And in some cases, for a lot of kids, suspension becomes a problem. So what do

The Question That Changes Everything

SPEAKER_00 9:52

we do about it? Because someone's like, Great, you're telling us what we already know. What do we do? We have to start by changing the question. Many of us were trained to ask, what's wrong with our students? That question leads to labels, it leads to referrals, and it leads to conversations about a student's deficit. The better question for us to ask as educators is what is this student's behavior trying to tell me? That question leads to curiosity, it leads to relationships, it leads to actually solving the thing underneath the behavior instead of just managing the behavior on the surface. The question I would ask an educator to reflect on, if you had to pick, you can only pick one or the other, it's not a combination of both. Between a kid getting a consequence or the behavior changing, which one are you picking? And let me be honest, if an educator is like, well, I just want a kid to have a consequence, you shouldn't be teaching. You should want the behavior to change more than you should want a consequence. Now, let me be very clear. Sometimes a consequence can help change that behavior. And I do think life is filled with consequences. Consequences are critical to make to train people and students to make better decisions. But if that consequence is never changing the behavior, why are we still giving that consequence?

Final Challenge And Part Two

SPEAKER_00 11:20

But what I want to leave you with, because this is going to be a two-part episode, I wanted to get into a little bit of it. What I want to leave you with, and something to reflect on, and we'll go deeper in this next week. So make sure you tune back in. You don't have bad students. You have students who are making bad decisions. And there's a meaningful difference between these two things. One is a verdict, the other is a moment. And moments and people can change. The students who were the hardest to reach in your building this year, the ones that you poured the most energy to, the ones that frustrated you the most, the ones that exhausted you the most, the ones that made you question yourself on a Wednesday afternoon in September, October, November, whenever, those kids are communicating something. They have been communicating something the whole time. The question I will leave you with today is: are you willing to listen to what they're actually saying? Are you listening to that behavior? Are you just reacting to it? A student's behavior is communicating, and oftentimes those communications go unheard by educators in classrooms, educators in hallways, educators in schools. And it's our job as educators to reframe what that behavior looks like. We need to separate the doer from the deed. And we need to understand that student behaviors are communicating an unmet need to us as educators. Next week's episode, I'm going to give you some tools to help you answer that question. And again, if you haven't, please subscribe. Please share this with an educator. I love to do this work. I've met so many phenomenal educators in my time in Nashville. If you are one of the people, this is your first time listening in, I met you while we were in Nashville. Thank you so much for coming up to me for connecting. I don't take this work for granted. It's always an honor to do this work. I love this work. And I know that teachers are life changers. And my job is to help give teachers the better tools that they need and mindset they need to be the life changers that their kids need to become functioning adults in society. You've been present for homeroom attendance. Class is dismissed.