First-Grade Discipline Taught a Valuable Lesson

By this time, most schools have begun their new year or soon will. We've been unable to ignore the resumption because of the ubiquitous back-to-school ads and store displays, which have cluttered the aisle since shortly after school was out for the summer.

It's that time of year again!

Also, I've been involved in conducting three in-service training sessions for teachers during that recent week. So I've been thinking about, planning, and preparing those workshops since late May. This year was the ninth consecutive year that I've been asked to provide that service.

Presenting at in-service training session

The theme assigned me for this year's training sessions was discipline. My first session focused on the need for every teacher to be self-disciplined. The teacher must be disciplined if he or she expects the students to exhibit that trait. The second session emphasized the need for everyone involved with the school--not only students and teachers but also parents, administrators, office staff, and even the janitorial personnel--to be active in discipline-related activities. The final session offered practical suggestions for making the theory presented in the first two sessions reality.

The first-grade juvenile delinquent

As I prepared and presented those sessions, my mind went back to an incident in my first-grade experience as a student.

I wasn't a bad kid and didn't get into trouble at school. I was afraid to. I knew that if I got into trouble at school, my parents would inevitably find out, and then I would be in double trouble.

Mrs. Elsbeth Zachary, my first-grade teacher, had had my older brother in school, so she already knew our parents well. She and her husband lived only about a mile from us. Moreover, my grandmother, who lived just across the pasture from us, worked in the school cafeteria, which was literally only a dozen or so steps from Mrs. Zachary's classroom. Word of any indiscretion on my part would travel quickly from Mrs. Zachary to Mammaw to Mother and Daddy. Then I, having sown the wind, would reap the whirlwind when I got home from school.

One of Mrs. Zachary's methods of punishing misbehavior was to send the miscreant to the back of the room to stand alone beside the low set of bookcases under the back windows, which looked out upon the side driveway to the school and one of the playgrounds.

My heart was set on playing with that farm set at the back of the room.

Mrs. Zachary displayed atop the bookcase an intriguing toy farm set. It featured a red barn, white fences, all sorts of farm animals, and even a red tractor. Growing up beside Pappaw's dairy farm, with its white barn and cows and even a red Farmall tractor, I was understandably interested in that farm set. I wanted badly to play with it, but the only way I could do that was to misbehave in some way and be sentenced to standing at the back of the classroom. For a long time, the risk of the certainty of punishment at home prevented my misconduct.

But one day, my desire to play with the farm set overcame my better judgment. I conducted a first-grade version of risk or cost-benefit analysis, weighing the risk of punishment against the potential joys to be gained from playing with the farm set, and I made my decision.

I don't recall what I did to earn the ignominy of being publicly consigned to solitary confinement at the back of the room, but I did something that was egregious enough to warrant that penalty. And Mrs. Zachary predictably passed the sentence. I marched somewhat triumphantly to the back of the room and stood with my back to the farm set as instructed.

After Mrs. Zachary was satisfied that I had assumed the correct position and her attention returned to teaching the other students, I quietly turned around and began playing with that beautiful farm set. My plan had worked! And I had so much fun!

After my period of incarceration had been served, Mrs. Zachary ordered me back to my desk, and I dutifully resumed my scholarly pursuits until the dismissal bell rang.

When I walked into our house after the bus driver let me off at the end of our driveway, however, my feelings of pleasure quickly turned to chagrin. Mother confronted me with my fresh criminal record.

How had she learned of my misbehavior and punishment?! Someone had ratted me out! And not only did I have to face Mother's outrage and disappointment but also I had to await Daddy's arrival from work. I had enjoyed the farm set "music," and when Daddy got home, I would have to pay the fiddler.

I learned my lesson. Even in first grade, crime does not pay. The consequences are not worth the risk of misbehavior. That lesson has served me well ever since, and it has kept me from a lot of trouble.

Many adults have not yet learned that lesson. But, sooner or later, everyone eventually learns it, either the easy way or the hard way. And the sooner they do, the better.

What taught you that life lesson?