Spock Power

This is what Sean has named Love and Logic. Ladies and gents, I am really exercising my Spock Power these days. I Love and Logicked one of my students yesterday/today: he didn't stay to talk to me about a minor incident yesterday, so I left a note on his desk that said, "I need to talk to you about something pretty serious. We can talk at recess. Don't worry about it til then." It absolutely had the intended effect. So, so sweet.

Then today, I had another student give me the opportunity to Love and Logic her (yes, it's a verb. Deal with it.) I say opportunity, and I mean it. So fun! The Teaching with Love and Logic book says that you might start looking forward to opportunities to give kids choices, delay consequences, make them solve their own problems, etc, but I have to admit I was doubtful. But guess what? It is so, so fun once you start to get the hang of it.

Today a girl in my class was talking and laughing during independent work time, and I asked her to move to the time out area (I call it the Cool Down Area). She threw a fit, talked back, and refused to move, so I told her it was too bad she was choosing to make this worse, but I assured her we could talk about it at recess. She never did move to the Cool Down Area, but she was completely silent the rest of the time, and kept trying to show me how much work she was doing whenever I walked near her desk. I just ignored her. At recess I had her come to the room (which I think surprised her for some reason), and she told me that she hated this school. I had her write a behavior reflection, and then I asked her to read it to me. (the reading it aloud bit is a pro tip from lovely coach Kate: thanks Kate!) This proved to be challenging for her since she was still in avoidance mode. I told her if she wasn't ready to talk about it, there was still some more time left in recess, and she could sit at her desk til she was ready. So I just worked at my desk and didn't really care when she was ready: genuinely. In the past I've pretended to have stuff to do while I secretly am waiting for a kid to come talk to me. It's so freeing to really just not care when they're ready! A couple minutes later she was ready, but we didn't finish discussing the problem because we ran out of time, so I told her that unfortunately we'd have to continue our conversation after school, or maybe during recess tomorrow. I can't wait!

As a side-note, part of the entertainment of Love and Logic is when kids get suspicious of the system. They're so used to being dressed down. She really didn't know what to do with me. At one point she told me, "This is kind of weird." And the awesome thing is, we had a productive conversation once she decided she was ready.

Yay for Spock Power!