The Stop Rule

So far, one of my favorite things about working at the Free School is that I don't have to give punishments or consequences for students' behavior.  There are two reasons for this.

First, the Free School is non-coercive, meaning they don't make kids do things.  There are a few exceptions - council meetings and community class are mandatory and I will tell you more about those in later posts - but for the most part activities are chosen by kids and are completely optional.  So no one is punished for not participating, not doing an assignment, or not attending a class.  Students do what they are motivated to do, and as you saw in my previous post about Melody, they are actually motivated to do quite a lot.  In our first few days I saw students spontaneously begin art projects, paint murals, request a teacher to help them make a stop-motion movie, and of course, demand math lessons.  Students were so eager for their first social-studies lesson that they requested homework!

Day two of the math class Melody demanded - she brought friends this time.

Impromptu painting time on a Friday morning.

The second reason I don't have to give punishments or consequences is that the Free School empowers students to resolve most interpersonal conflicts themselves.  The centerpiece of this is the "stop" rule.  If a child is bothering another child, the child who is being bothered can say "stop" and the person bothering them has to stop what they are doing.  The kids are really good at enforcing this rule on each other.  So if a child pushes another child on the playground, my first response is not to intervene but to watch closely.  Usually someone says, "stop," the pusher stops, and that is the end of it.  If a child comes to me with a complaint, I say, "did you tell them to stop? Go tell them to stop" and send them back to deal with it.  Or I might add, "tell them you don't like that."  For the most part, kids respect each other enough to listen.

If telling someone to stop doesn't work, kids can ask an adult to help mediate.  The adult is not there to dole out punishments or say who is right or who is wrong, but really to listen to both parties and help them come to a resolution that they are okay with.  The kids don't come to me for this yet because I am brand new, but I have overhead Caroline, one of the most senior teachers, talking to a first-grader and a second-grader.  The second-grader is new and I think she expected that Caroline would take her side, but Caroline merely encouraged her to think about how her behavior had upset the other student.  A tough message but an important one, and it means that by the time the kids get to be a bit older, they rarely need adults to help mediate.

If mediation still doesn't solve the problem or it persists, a child can call a council meeting.  In a council meeting, the whole school gets together to talk through a problem.  We haven't had a council meeting to resolve a conflict yet but when we do I will tell all about it.