I want to talk to you about the balance between justice and compassion. There is an old Hebrew passage that says this, “Do justice and love mercy”. I find in teaching, especially in behavior management, there is always this tension between upholding the rules and the regulations and having compassion and being merciful towards students who break those rules. Very often what you will find with teachers is, that we tend to gravitate towards one or the other.
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You will get some personality types that are very insistent on the letter of the law. They are very insistent that the rules are followed and if there are any infractions of those rules they become very angry or very determined to enforce those rules and to enforce a consequence for breaking them. On the other hand, you have some teachers that are very compassionate. They just love kids and people. No matter what rules are broken they just want to help the kids, support them, love them and nurture them. They find it very difficult to enforce their expectations and find it very difficult to administer consequences.
This debate rages even within our society. We have a lot of back and forth between rules and regulations versus compassion for people. So I have got two little definitions here which I think are going to help for the sake of this conversation.
What is Justice ?
The way I see justice is, respect for boundaries. Justice is having an understanding that we live in a community, a society with other people, not just by ourselves. In order for that community to function, we need boundaries. In order for those boundaries to work, everybody needs to respect those boundaries and willingly cooperate with them. That’s justice, ensuring that the boundaries are respected.
What is Compassion ?
Compassion is respect for people and having an understanding of their experience. What we need to also understand is that human beings have a myriad of life experiences that cause them to behave in various ways. Your ability to interact with rules and regulations depends on your upbringing, the family you’ve come from and the experiences you’ve had in life.
These experiences and backgrounds can have a significant impact on your ability to handle and deal with rules and regulations. So we have to understand that it is not one or the other, it is not black or white. You can not just say, “You must follow the rules otherwise there are consequences”, because that does not take into account the humanity of the people that we are dealing with or your own humanity.
On the flip side of that, we cannot just say “Oh feel sorry for them, give them a second chance, let them get away with it.” That doesn’t train children to live in the real world. In the society that we live in, there are always consequences and there are always things that they will have to bump up against and so learn to respect the law. So as teachers, we have a responsibility to do both, balance justice and compassion.
Here is a little process that I try to follow when I am dealing with students in the context of balancing justice and compassion.
Clearly State your Expectations.
I think it is really important that you clearly state your expectations. Every class needs to know and every school needs to have very clear boundaries about behaviour. If you do not state your expectations and boundaries clearly you will find that kids will just make up their own expectations. So it is very clear that you start off with clear boundaries and clear expectations but you also have the understanding that there are going to be some people that will step over those boundaries.
There are going to be some children that don’t know how to keep the expectations and then you have to respond to them. So what I do is, when students step over the boundary, my first and initial response is not necessarily to go straight to the consequence but to go to questioning the student to try to understand what is happening.
I am talking about more serious infractions in the classroom. If it is just talking, I will correct the talking or I will respond to what is happening in the moment. But when we are talking about serious violations that would incur a serious consequence, what we have to do first of all, is, ask them what’s going on. Ask them if there is some reason for the misconduct, have a conversation with them, help them try to understand where they are coming from.
What has caused them to react the way that they’ve reacted ? That’s the compassion side of things but you also have to have a conversation while you’re having compassion. You have to have a conversation that explicitly talks about the expectations, so you say, “Ok I understand that you are going through something or I understand that you have seen this a particular way but I also need you to see that there are rules for a reason. This is why we have rules”. Then you have to have a conversation that focuses on balancing the tension between understanding where they are coming from but also helping them to understand that it is important to respect the boundaries that are placed on them.
When you have had that conversation, that is when you can move forward and you can actually start to say, “Ok, what happens from here now?” One of a couple of things may happen. If it is a very serious infraction, you may find that you have to administer a consequence. So you may understand where they are coming from but still have to administer the consequence but you also want to help them and support them. So they know that although there is a consequence, because the infraction was serious, you are still with them, you are still on their side and you’re looking to support them.
The conversation centres around how we can respect the rule while still supporting the person. The alternative to that is- if it is a less serious behaviour issue, like a first time infraction,- you may have a conversation that looks like this, “Ok, this is the expectation, this is what happens if you break that expectation. I understand where you are coming from and am going to give you a chance to fix this, by amending your behaviour.” When you give them a chance, you have to still clearly state what happens if they fail to comply. You can say “I am going to give you a chance but you need to remember these are the expectations, this will be the consequence, if it happens again. I am going to hold you accountable but I will also support you by helping you adhere to the rules.”
So that’s when you put in a support mechanism to help that child comply with the rules, while still holding them accountable for their behaviour. If it is repetitive behaviour, you may find that you get to the point where they have to have a consequence but then you support them on the back end. It is never black and white. Behaviour management is tricky, It is more of an art than a science. When dealing with problematic behaviour, you have always got to keep in mind that you always need to keep that tension between respect for the rules and respect and understanding for the misbehaving person.
If we do not maintain a healthy tension between justice and compassion and keep them in view when dealing with misconduct, we lose our humanity as teachers and we diminish the quality of our interaction with the students that we teach.
I hope that was really helpful for you. This is something that you have to practice, something that really has to come from inside. You have to really ask yourself what you value, which side of the coin you tend to go towards. If you tend to be more about justice you need to teach yourself to be more compassionate, if you tend to be more compassionate, you need to teach yourself to be more diligent with explaining the rules and expectations and give appropriate consequences for infractions. Either way you have got to learn a balance because without balance everybody goes out of kilter and it becomes more problematic in the long run.
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