Photo by Sivani Bandaru
The limits of control
“Matteo and Rose, can I talk with you before you head out to recess?”
Rose fixed her gaze on her pencil pouch, inserting her flair pens one by one. She carried some scratch paper to the recycle bin, then returned to straighten her books. Her ponytail wagged back and forth as she moved. Likely, she was preprocessing our conversation and thinking through her strategy.
Matteo stayed where he was. He set his books down, shoved his hands in his pockets, and looked at me with a squinty half-smile.
Just five days into the school year, I was already attached to these kids. They were boundary-pushers, to be sure, but I liked them anyway.
Maybe their grit was the thing I especially enjoyed.
I wasn’t planning to keep them long, but I did want their full attention. “Can we sit down for a minute? I’ve noticed some struggles between you two. Is there anything that would be helpful for me to know?”
Rose’s leg, resting on the opposite knee, swung back and forth slightly. She was looking at the wall, and her arms were crossed. I saw her cheeks redden between blotches of makeup. Hearing my question, she took a breath and exhaled. “Why did you have to put us together?”
Matteo raised his eyebrows, opened one corner of his mouth, and drew in some air. He closed his eyes for a second and reopened them. “Nothing against girls, but stuff just doesn't go good when I have to sit by ‘em.”
Rose took her eyes off the wall and leaned forward on her chair, looking at me in the face. She put her hands together. “Can you pleeeease separate us? Please? I promise we will do way better.”
I don’t recall exactly why I made them stay together. Maybe I liked the symmetry of everyone sitting in pairs. Boy-girl combinations had worked in earlier years. With enough guidance and encouragement, surely they would begin to see the good in each other.
Or maybe I simply wanted to prove that I was in charge.
“I’m not going to separate you because I’d like you to respect each other. We change seats every three weeks. Before long, another guy and girl will have their turn in this spot. I know that you can both show kindness, so that’s what I expect.
“I am willing to make a compromise, though.” I held my hands approximately 12 inches apart from each other and said, “You can keep this much space between your desks when we aren’t doing group activities. I’ll mark the limit with floor tape. Please don’t move your desks outside those marks. Now you can go out for recess.”
My tape kept the desks in place, but that was it. Matteo and Rose found a workaround; now the two sat beside their desks, on opposite sides. They continued ignoring each other during group activities, and they exchanged side glances with friends whenever the other spoke up in class.
Sensing I had reached a stalemate with Rose and Matteo, I shifted my energy to the morning meeting, where girls and guys were greeting each other with as much warmth as toads.
“Let’s review,” I said. “What are the welcoming protocols again?”
Blank stares and silence.
I pointed to my poster and spelled out the guidelines: “Make eye contact. Smile and say the person’s name. Speak up so your neighbor can hear you.”
We practiced, but the progress was nothing to celebrate. Cross-gender eye contact lasted only a millisecond or two. And each “Good morning,” still barely more than a whisper, now ended with a painful sigh.
Feeling defeated, I scrapped the morning circle and led our homeroom meetings with students at their desks.
One day, when an argument broke out between the boys and girls during an afternoon brain break, I pulled a classic controlling-teacher move: “All right. That’s it. Since you can’t handle having fun together, we’re just going to do desk activities during our brain breaks.”
No one complained. But, had I scored a victory?
Instead of healing, the symptoms only became more inflamed, like an adolescent pimple irritated by constant picking.
Matters came to a head during my morning recess duty one day. “Mr. Bandstra!” Rose and her friend Harper complained, “Those boys yelled at us and called us chopped and annoying.”
“Guys, can you tell me what’s going on?”
“Why are you getting us in trouble? We were just trying to play tag on the fort, and those girls kept throwing rocks at us.”
“Aargh!
“Okay, we’re going to sort this out later. Girls, I need you to hang out in that section of the playground until recess is over. No contact with the boys!
“Boys, you stay on the fort. No talking to the girls. No looking at the girls.”
As someone who studies classroom culture, I wonder why I sometimes focus so hard on managing symptoms… and forget all about the germs that feed them.
Tired and feeling stuck, I spoke with a colleague over lunch. “The girls and boys in my class have been at it with each other since Day One. This morning, there was a big brawl on the playground that I need to sort out somehow. What do you think I should do?”
Wisely, the teacher didn’t prescribe a strategy. Instead, she simply made a couple of observations.
Her comments didn't solve the problem. But they did challenge a few assumptions I had been making all year.
And for the first time, I began to wonder whether I was treating symptoms rather than causes.
Names and identifying details have been changed to protect student privacy.
This essay is the second in a five-part exploration of boys-versus-girls group dynamics.
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If you're interested in the ideas behind this essay, explore Solutions That Heal: Responding to Infectious Behavior in Learning Spaces.
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