Road Rage in Schools

Recently, I attended a workshop by Eddie Moore Jr. During his workshop, he focused on perceived wrongs. One analogy he made was to road rage. Don’t pretend you don’t know what it is.

Sometimes, this happens when our own children are in the backseat.  I admit I have had my own experiences with road rage since becoming a parent.  Here's the deal, when someone's behavior can be a detriment or cause harm  (accident, slamming brakes, swerving, etc) our impulse is to lash out and admonish that person for their behavior. Have we modeled appropriate behavior, or replicated poor form for others to witness?

The day after the workshop, I wrote the words "road rage" on a post-it. I had thought about the idea that when someone's behavior can be detrimental to our own children, we find the courage to speak up and lash out. I pondered about the need for "road rage" in our schools.  I decided we needed an addendum to the definition of road rage as it pertains to education. 

Here is mine:

Road Rage: the courage to speak up when we know that a student's best interests are not being met or with those colleagues whose actions earnestly don't align with the culture.

Just the other day during a post-observation coaching conference, we were discussing our progress as a PLC and the work we still need to do. The conversation led to revisiting meeting norms and I posed the question, "In your team how do you hold each other accountable to stay focused?"   The response was, "Whoa, that's hard, that's really hard." But, if our allegiance is to do what’s best for kids, isn't it important to share the "rage" (not to the degree we see on the road) you feel and tell a colleague that it's time to focus on the task at hand, not discuss last night's episode of Dancing with the Stars? Otherwise, we're checking off boxes to say we had a meeting, and that really gets me raging.

Is this awkward? Uncomfortable? Difficult? Of course, until you come to the understanding that this feedback is critical to move the team forward and demonstrates our allegiance is to do what is in the best interest of our students. We ask students on a daily basis to be able to agree to disagree. Embrace the rage in a respectful manner. Productive conflict can breed solutions that benefit our students. Revisit the reason we all chose this career: to create the next set of lifelong learners who will drive on the road to success.

Hopefully, at the speed limit, obeying all traffic safety rules.

(Thanks to Barry Saide for contributing to this post)