I wasn’t a bad kid when I was young but I was a hyperactive little snot, and I had a couple of fights in elementary school. Back then that kind of thing only got me a stern talking to in the principal’s office, even though today shenanigans like that would easily earn me a few days of suspension. It’s fair to say that growing up in the 70s worked in my favor more than once.
One of my two fights happened on the school bus. I usually shared a seat on the way home with one of my best friends, and for whatever reason we both decided one day -- pretty adamantly in fact -- that we both wanted to sit on the aisle. He was in the seat first and wouldn’t slide over when I got on (which, in my defense, was standard school bus etiquette and still is today) and instead turned sideways to direct me in toward the window. I wasn’t having any of this, and started leaning on him to nudge him over. He leaned back and soon the leaning became pushing, which then became angry pushing, which soon became me pinning him to the seat and him clawing at my face until the bus driver pulled us off of each other and hauled us out to the sidewalk, where our teacher was on bus duty. She expressed her grave disappointment and ominously promised that phone calls home would be made that evening. Our regret was so instantly palpable that we’d repaired our friendship and agreed on a seating arrangement before getting back on the bus, much to the surprise of all the other kids who’d witnessed us going after each other.
As promised, our teacher called our parents that night, and mine were none too happy. Whenever I got in trouble, I knew one of two things was going to happen: If I did something stupid, my dad was going to yell. If I did something historically stupid, my dad was going to sit me down in my bedroom and we were going to have A Long Talk. A call from my teacher merited A Long Talk.
I really didn’t mind the Long Talks so much. They weren’t always pleasant since they usually happened after I screwed up, but they weren’t a punishment themselves. Punishments would typically follow Long Talks and they were almost always deserved, but by the time we reached that point he and I had discussed the problem thoroughly, so I had a new perspective on what I had done wrong and was more prepared to handle similar situations differently.
One Long Talk that stuck with me came after that school bus fight. My dad was shocked and angry it had happened, because the other kid was one of my best friends: We played together at recess daily, we’d shared tents on Cub Scout camping trips, we played soccer together in the summers, and we’d been to each others' birthday parties. When I tried to explain how our back-and-forth pushing had escalated into a full-blown smackdown, I couldn’t.
“What if you had a big heavy chain at the bottom of a hill, and you needed to get it to the top?” my dad asked. “Would you push it?” No, I answered. That wouldn’t make any sense. “No, it wouldn’t,” he said. “If you want to get that chain up the hill, you have to pull it.”
Two things crossed my mind as he said this: (1) Why is my dad talking about chains? And then it hit me: (2) This isn’t really about chains or about me pushing another kid. This is a life lesson. When I finally connected those dots, it was perfectly clear what he was saying: You can’t force people to do what you want. You have to convince them to agree with you. If you want to lead, you have to give people a reason to follow.
Any skill I have now as a teacher when it comes to helping students process their behavior issues, I can attribute to when my father recognized he needed to invest the time in straightening me out. Whatever reason I’ve ever given people to see me as any kind of a leader didn’t come from some miraculous staff development experience, or some generic educational leadership book, or any particularly resonating professional examples, or any number of redundant inspirational platitudes. For me, it’s always come back to finding the best way to get that chain up to the top of the hill.
So thanks for that, Dad. And Happy Father’s Day.
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