Anarchy in the Preschool

I got called in to substitute teach at our school district's preschool. It is held in a beautiful facility on the campus of our local community college. There is a Head teacher, and about 4-5 asssistants. The staff is wonderful and caring, and the classroom is a spacious room filled with books, paints, games, blocks, gym mats, tunnels, a piano---you name it. Approximately 24 children attend the preschool every day from 9 am until about 3:45 pm. The children range in age from 3 to 5. They were all absolutely adorable. And yes, I believe 98% of them were also demon-possessed! But then I have always believed that the reason God made 3 year olds so cute is because if they were ugly, we would probably be more tempted to kill them.

I realized about 5 minutes into the day that my philosophy of teaching children is definitely considered "old school." The philosopy of this particular school is: "if a child misbehaves, there are no negative consequences." The child is re-directed to another activity or area, or is "talked-to". This talk goes something like this: "I know you're angry, but you need to use words to tell Katie how you feel and what you want. We don't use our fists to show how we feel." This might work when one is counselling a married couple, but have you ever tried to "reason" with a 4-year old? My belief is that they need to feel some pain in order to be trained not to repeat a particular undesirable behavior. When dealing with my OWN preschool-aged children, this meant a swat on the bottom or a flick on their hands. It is Pavlovian conditioning that we learned about in college Psych 101. It's how you train a dog or a dolphin, and it works pretty good with humans if you stay consistent. However, at this particular preschool there were no negative consequences for bad behavior....not even a "time-out" rug or chair, and no removal of privileges. If you were being a brat you simply got escorted to another activity in the room and given a nice little talk. These children were aggressive and defiant. There were countless incidences of one girl smacking another in the face and then the "victim" would immediately retaliate. They particularly enjoyed running from the teachers. They also enjoyed not cleaning up after themselves. (I think I burned off 3,000 calories yesterday.) Naptime was optional, so the 6 wild children who didn't want to take a nap simply reaked havoc while the others tried to rest in a dark room. I do not take sass from a child who comes up to my knees. I had to work within their framework, their philosopy, even though I think these children are going to be headed to prison if they don't understand about consequences. However, if one of the children told me "NO!" or tried to fight me physically, I had to get in their face and put a little fear into them....I'm sorry, they won't be getting a "how does that make you feel" therapy session from me. I also MADE a child pick up the food he threw on the floor....and I wasn't goin' anywhere until he did it. Am I bad? Yeah. And how does that make me feel? Really GOOD!