Often, our mistakes teach us our greatest lessons. This was brought home to me clearly this week. I had a student who was behaving poorly for a number of reasons in a class. His behavior was interfering with the learning of the rest of the students in the class. The teacher was fairly new and had a demeanor that seemed to conflict with the student. She also was regularly visibly upset by the child's behavior. So, after spending a couple of days trying to find a solution, I chose to move the student. I moved them to one of my best teachers classrooms, hoping that the change would help the student. It didn't. Instead, it disrupted the better teachers classroom and affected the learning of her kids. Now, my average teacher is happy and my better teacher is threatening to retire if she makes it through the year.
In his book, Shifting the Monkey, Todd Whitaker says that we need to do everything we can to protect our best people by not putting someone else's monkey on their back. I did just the opposite. I took the problem child monkey from my poorer teacher and placed it squarely on my better teacher's back. Bad move.
What should I have done? I should have left the child where they were and provided support and additional training to their original teacher. This would have helped her grow professionally while protecting one of my best. It would have created more work for me, but in the name of protecting my my best, it would have been worth it.
This was a hard lesson to learn, but one I will take to heart. As Todd Whitaker says, monkeys need to stay on the back of the people to whom they belong.
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