During a teacher-training workshop discussion, a few participants grappled with a prompt related to their own classroom practices: “Tell us about a classroom management issue which you would consider to have been one of the most challenging you have experienced, and how you overcame it.” As the participants shared their narratives, that of Paul, a 4th grade teacher, spoke loudly:
“When I was a student, our teachers used corporal punishment to get us to focus and comply. As a teacher myself, I had also been using this approach in my classroom management strategies. One day, some of my students failed to do their homework as expected. Consequently, I subjected them to severe corporal punishment consisting of ten wrist slaps per person. That being taken care of, I moved on with my regular classroom routine, believing that the incident was behind me. However, after the school day was over, I joined the kids in my neighborhood for a soccer match, something I often do for fun. In the middle of the game, one of the players, a preschooler, spontaneously came to me and opened up a conversation:
- Child: “Why do you always play with us?”
- Me: “It’s because I Iove children and I like to play with them.”
- Child: “But, how can you love someone and at the same time, physically beat them?”
My pride was disarmed by the last question and I could hardly mask my embarrassment in front of that innocent child. I became very aware that his question pertained to what happened in my classroom earlier that day. In fact, that child’s elder brother was one of the 4th graders I had disciplined (corporate punishment) that morning and apparently, he went home and told his siblings about the event. In shock, I found an excuse to leave before the end of the match. “How can you love someone and at the same time, physically beat them?” Throughout a restless sleep that night, I struggled with that question as it led me to rethink my classroom management strategies related to disciplining students. In class the next day, I did something I had never done before with my students: I sincerely apologized for my extreme corrective discipline and the doubt it might have raised in them about my true love for them.
Throughout our training modules, we teach the biblical truth that all human beings, hence every child and teacher, is an image bearer of God. In consequence, we ought to care for the image of God just as God does. In a Christian school and classroom, this must also be seen in the way teachers engage with their students through disciplinary strategies and actions. Attaining that is a long process that takes patience, perseverance and modeling. As shared above, at the outset, that teacher’s disciplinary practices were modeled after his own childhood experiences. Yet, God’s Word illuminated for him a better way. In other words, we can have hope that today’s students will have new and better stories to tell on, as long as we continue to empower their teachers through biblically integrated principles for quality educational practices.