Making Good Choices

Over the years, to my own students and to kids who come to our summer camps, I have always made this statement: What you do when noone else is looking or when an adult is not around, is a direct reflection of who you really are.

As parents, the goal is to teach and raise our kids the best we can in hopes that when we aren't around, they make good decisions and the right choices and behave in a way the isn't emberrassing to themselves or us. Every kid that I have ever known (it's in the thousands now) has messed up at some point - but what I am concerned about is did they learn from it?

On the jazz trip this weekend, some of our students (middle and high school age) chose to behave in a way that I know would have emberrased their parents if their parents knew what they were doing. As a disclaimer, I want to take this time to point out that I think I have really good kids - kids that make the right decisions when it comes to drugs, alcohol, stealing, etc. However, in the presence of an adult that wasn't their parent, their topics of conversation and general disrespect to the adult that was with them continues to bother me. It bothers me because they are smart kids and they know better. It bothers me because I truly do not feel like the decisions they made are an honest reflection of who they are. And, it bothers me becuase those that were not part of the behavior didn't do enough to try to stop it.

So - the question is - and students you can answer this - what does it take for you to behave when your parents are not around? Do you give in to peer pressure and do things that you know you shouldn't, or do you stick to doing and saying what's right? An unfortunate side effect of poor behavior is that the teacher cannot trust the student anymore - and when a student cannot be trusted, their opportunites decline severely. We stop asking the student to help us, we start "watching" their behavior more closely, and limit the opportunties they have to make bad choices. We cannot reward poor judgments and poor behavior, but we can expect students to learn from it. We ALL make mistakes, which is ok, so long as we learn a lesson and do our best not to repeat those mistakes.

What are your thoughts?