Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The voice of the American Consortium for Equity in Education at ace-ed.org | Host Larry Jacobs facilitates rich discussions with innovative educators, thought leaders, authors and the leaders within the education industry to promote equity, access and opportunity for every student in every school.
In 1919, people living in Anoka, Minnesota
woke up one morning after Halloween to
find cows wandering around the town.
Some had apparently gotten into the
school and the sheriff's office too.
Outhouses had been tipped over.
Windows had been covered in soap.
Property damaged.
Apparently, Halloween had become
a pretty miserable experience
for some of the adults living
there, and Anoka wasn't alone.
In the early 20th century, Halloween
pranks were a serious problem in
a number of American communities.
We're not just talking about
ringing doorbells and running away.
There were reports of broken windows
and damaged property and vandalism.
So what do you do about that?
Well, in Anoka, they came
up with an interesting idea.
Instead of simply trying to stop
the kids from causing trouble, they
decided to organize Halloween for them.
In 1920, local businesses, teachers,
parents, and students got together
and put on a community celebration.
There was a parade, food, candy,
bonfire, and plenty for kids to do,
and the celebration became a tradition.
In fact, Anoka eventually became known
as the Halloween capital of the world.
I had never heard that story before, and
what's interesting to me was the solution.
They had a problem with kids behaving
badly, and their response was to create
an entirely different experience for them.
But I wanted to know whether this
was something unique to Anoka.
Turns out it wasn't.
I found a publication from Minneapolis
in 1937 called The Halloween Fun
Book, and it wasn't just a collection
of costume ideas and party games.
It was a part of a larger effort
to deal with Halloween vandalism.
There were actual figures documenting
how much damage was being done alongside
guidance for organizing celebration.
And then I found something even better.
Another publication from 1937
had instructions for creating
something called a trail of terror.
Now, this was elaborate.
It suggested hanging fur strips of raw
liver where people could brush against
them, damp sponges, hair nets, strange
noises coming from dark corners, and there
was even somebody dressed as a dog whose
job it was to jump out and bark at people.
But here's what makes this interesting.
These communities weren't simply telling
children what not to do on Halloween.
They were creating experiences
that children might actually wanna
participate in, and it wasn't
limited to parties or haunted houses.
I found another example in Denver,
where schools organized a program
called Fun Without Vandalism.
The idea was to involve students,
teachers, and local businesses
in creating Halloween activities.
And according to a historical account
of the program, one year there were
just forty-six police calls associated
with Halloween trouble, compared with
more than five hundred in earlier years.
That's an enormous difference.
Those numbers don't prove the
program caused the decline.
There could have been other
factors, but they do give us a
reason to look more closely at
what these communities were doing.
And something occurred to me as
I was going through all this.
We tend to think about unwanted
behavior as something we need to
correct in the person who's doing it,
and sometimes we absolutely do, but
the people in these Halloween stories
were trying something different.
They were changing the situation around
the kids, and I wanted to understand
that a little better, especially as it
relates to school, so I called Jen Perry.
Jen is an educational and behavioral
systems consultant and co-founder of
the Educational Consulting Group, and
I asked her something pretty simple.
When a child keeps behaving in a
way adults don't want, where do we
usually start looking for a solution?
Any time we're faced with challenging
behavior from children, right,
there's something that gets
triggered in our own emotions.
And that could be good or bad.
I mean, there's no judgment, but
there's something that get trigger-
gets triggered in our own emotions,
and that generates our response.
And, and some peopleâ¦
And we all have different
responses to those things.
So, um, oftentimes, and, and we're gonna
talk about the environment, but if you're
in a classroom and you have 30 other
kids that you're trying to deal with,
then you might feel like you need to
address that issue right then because
it's gonna be disruptive to the class,
and you don't have time to take in the
whole story of what a chi- like, what's
happening for that child in the moment.
And I think that, um,
there's so many factors.
Like, we project urgency onto
things, so often we justify telling
a, you know, stopping a challenging
behavior because it could be
dangerous in some way, shape, or form.
Many times that's actually not the
case, but it's, uh, you know, our
own fight, flight, or freeze kicks
in, and we perceive it that way.
And so it takes a awful lot of
self-regulation on the part of the person
who is responding to the child to be
able to sort of take in the moment and
say, "Do I need to respond right now?
Does my response need to be
control versus collaboration?
How should that look?"
And, and all of those things
are enhanced or mitigated by
what's happening around me.
So I really think that's an interesting
distinction, because in the Halloween
story, the adults could have focused
entirely on rules or punishment
and keeping kids out of trouble.
Instead, they organized
something that gave the kids
another way to spend the night.
But I don't think it was necessarily
just about keeping them busy.
Think about what Anoka did.
Teachers were involved, businesses
were involved, parents were involved,
and the students themselves helped
prepare for the celebration.
So the kids weren't simply being
handed an activity, they were becoming
part of something their community
was creating, and that made me
curious about another possibility.
Maybe the relationships being built
through these events mattered just
as much as the events themselves.
I asked Jen about that too, why she
thought that kind of approach might work.
We know about, um, community and, and
responsiveness, is that as soon as
the people in that Halloween community
recognized and, and started to build a,
a, a facial recognition, right, in person,
a, a relationship with the people around
them, it becomes much harder to do harm
to the, to, to people like that because
you know you know, so-and-so's neighbor
just lost her husband, or I, or they
need help in their yard and if I trash
it, it's gonna be really painful or, you
know, that you know things about each
other that make it much harder to respond
in a way that is impersonal and, and, and
hurtful And this part of our conversation
really stayed with me because when I first
started looking into Halloween, I thought
I was going to learn something about
where our modern celebrations came from.
And I did, but I also found a story about
communities facing a problem with children
and responding in a way I hadn't expected.
They didn't just try to
get kids under control.
They gave them something to
participate in, and in some
cases, something to help create.
I don't want to suggest that a
Halloween parade is the answer
to challenging student behavior.
It isn't.
And we don't have enough evidence from
these historical accounts to know exactly
why some of these programs appear to work.
But I do think there's
something worth considering.
When we're struggling with students'
behavior, we usually spend a lot
of time thinking about what we need
that student to do differently.
Maybe we should spend a little
more time thinking about what
we can do differently too.
Thanks for joining us on Education Talk
Radio, a part of the Beat Podcast Network.
If there's a topic you'd like us to
tackle or have a guest idea, send me a
message at dciceroedutalk at gmail.com.
Thanks for listening, and
we'll see you next time.