True confessions ... (Dora, part 3)

I realize I haven't returned to the subject of my struggles with Dora in quite a while, and I think it is time. A lot has developed, as you might imagine.

First, thanks to those who commented. As was intuited, the information I've gathered from others who know her family has indicated that positive social behavior is not exactly modeled for her at home. I'll leave it at that. There was another comment about engaging in play with Dora as a means to foster a positive relationship with her, which rings true with a sentiment I have shared with my cooperating teacher and paraprofessional assistant: despite - or perhaps, because - of her misbehavior, it's as if we need to go overboard on praising the things she does well.

This is hard for me, because I don't like to praise so much as share my students' excitement, but my cooperating teacher pointed out that we're essentially making up for five years of not having much positive feedback or pride taken in what she does. Regardless of how you feel about the ethics of praise, children look to the adults around them to validate what they are doing and what they accomplish. It is part of their development as autonomous individuals - the consistent parameters for behavior that we set externally become the parameters they later internalize as their conscience. We have all noticed Dora look right at us before she is about to do something she knows she shouldn't, as if to ask for the "No" that she is not yet able to say to herself.

Likewise, she will, supposedly, learn positive behaviors based on our over-approval of her basic accomplishments, e.g. the letters she knows, laying still at Quiet Time, or playing with her friends nicely. What results is a lot of externalized thinking - that is, thinking out loud (my forte, if I must say so myself) - with her together: "Pretty soon, we're going to sit down together at the rug to learn together as a whole class. Let's see, what should we do to make sure we are good learners at the rug?" OR "If kids say or do mean things to their friends at recess, they don't get to have recess with their friends. They'll have to play by themselves, and that's pretty boring. If we want to be able to play with our friends, what are some ways we could play with them?"

What I have come to focus on the most, though, as far as my relationship with Dora goes, is the establishment of a few daily routines that serve the purpose of giving her the chance to succeed, therefore giving me the chance to reinforce with a positive response, but also of reminding us both that "we come to school to learn and play with our friends" and that are things we can do to show that we are "good learners" and "good friends". We've "practiced" good learning a number of times, usually at recess, which is my cooperating teacher's standard punishment, because it usually nips the problem right in the bud, understandably. Dora is another case, though, and I think it's important to set a positive tone: "Ok, Dora, we're at school now, let's practice being a good learner so we remember what to do later..."

For example, today we practiced sitting at the rug and going to a chair at the table if it looked like "you weren't ready to learn". Another day, I might just take the suggestion of a comment made on my last entry about Dora and color with her, reminding her by thinking out loud how great it is to color next to a friend, but still feel like my picture is mine because she's not drawing on it or drawing on me or saying anything mean about my picture.

The only hesitation I have with practicing being a good friend with her (as opposed to being a good learner), is that I am not her friend, I am her teacher. Even if she were my daughter, I would not treat her like a friend, because the nature of the relationship between someone her age and someone my age is not going to entail at all the characteristics of a healthy friendship. So I have to be careful: I have to show, as my cooperating teacher says, that "I am in charge"; at the same time, I will not be "in charge" until she actually respects what I say, which is a result of building a good rapport with her. Still working on that one.

I greatly appreciate the support of my cooperating teacher, the paraprofessional assistant, and the other Kindergarten teachers as I prepare for my "max time" starting in November. When I am leading whole group instruction, the paraprofessional will be assisting as usual and will know exactly what needs to happen if Dora "is not ready to learn" or even "is not going to be able to learn with the rest of the class". When I am by myself, such as Storytime, I will have a red ticket that another student will take to the neighboring classroom to give to the teacher, who will come right in and take Dora to their class to sit by herself.

This is the plan thus far, and I have one more week to make sure I'm comfortable using it. I'm not there yet, but I'm learning more and more to trust the jist of it: negative punishment, not negative attention, as in "It is not fun if I don't get to learn and be with my friends. I want to be able to do both, so I know I have to [fill in the blank] in order to do so."

I hope to be able to go back - in my mind, and in discussion with professors - to the theory more, just to reexamine for myself that the jist of what I am doing is the jist I am striving for above. Any comments along the way are greatly appreciated, and feel free to respond to each other! Social curriculum may first become curriculum in Kindergarten, but its lessons follow us well into adulthood ...