Building on Rapport in High School

John Jensen, Ph.D.

2.8.10 - John Jensen, Ph.D. - A high school teacher had improved his students’ promptness by applying a consequence for being late.

Building on Rapport in High School

by John Jensen, Ph.D.

            A high school teacher had improved his students’ promptness by applying a consequence for being late. He continued to encounter difficulties with one student, however, who repeatedly arrived just a few minutes late. When the standard consequence was applied to him, the teacher reported “losing him” for the rest of the day.  Following was my note to the teacher:

Chris--

            Your comments about David were interesting.  I read into his behavior a number of things that may or may not be accurate.

            In adults, habitually being late is essentially declaring our own pace or priorities more important than those of the situation we enter. They state our resistance to standardization and our individuality: The group does this, but I distinguish myself by altering it in my own way.

            You mentioned “losing him” for the rest of the day if you apply the consequence everyone else faces. That behavior, probably unconscious, conveys the same message: “You think you can control me, but I can prove to you that you can’t.”  Two agendas compete, his and the school’s.  The other students apparently accept that your control of consequences is sufficient to engage their compliance, but David’s agenda, to him, is so important that he’s willing to take your consequences and go you one better.

            In adult life when we encounter competing agendas that can stalemate each other, we face a negotiation. Before this can happen, you and David need to bring his unconscious threads of thought into the conscious realm so they can be dealt with.  The process starts with a face to face connection (not confrontation) with you, and for this we turn to rapport.

            Rapport is important dealing with everyone, but with children with whom we have a problem, we can assume it’s missing. It’s defined as “an unconscious sense of matching,” established by subtle cues that occur often within just a few seconds. We launch it, I believe, by reminding ourselves in the moment that we like this person.  Then riding that energy, we make ourselves close (so we’re perceived), such as being face to face within 18 inches, speaking in a soft versus sharp voice, adopting the same eye level as the student, nodding in synch with their body movement or matching their posture. Each such adaptation is a tiny message they absorb unconsciously that we conform ourselves to them.  In a sense we move step by step into the personal turf where their feelings and identity reside, and once in there we can begin to consider a common task.

            If we know that our apriori stance with a child is oppositional, we try to delay addressing  tasks until we return to rapport.  Long ago I learned a lesson about this from a consultant I knew who did a lot of work with Indian tribes. He said that often in group meetings they would delay hour after hour with endless tangents that could be maddening to an outsider, but would continue doing this until every shred of tension was gone from the group. At that point they would address the task cleanly and effectively because they had eliminated the thought-distorting effects of tension.

            For what it’s worth, it seems to me that from the time you came to the school till now, your speech has hardened speech somewhat, sounding a little more crisp and sharp.  The change is difficult to describe, but last year I recall a sense of freedom and possibility in your voice, of casualness even. It could be that the dimension of responsibility placed on you has moved you into a different part of your brain that isn’t enjoying life the same way, and the challenge of your daily circumstances feel more grim. While your natural way of being undoubtedly takes you often into rapport with students,  if you want to develop it more consciously with David, you might try this:

            At a time you decide you want to talk to him, first exchange simple comments in the category of communications called “goblet issues.” These have minimal meaning (e.g. the weather) but serve to inform people about how close they will be, and their relative status and dominance. In this category you might find simple questions, positive feedback, commonplace observations, and small talk where both parties contribute.  A couple minutes of this with both using the same voice level is a positive signal. When you think you’ve entered rapport, you can confirm it by making a non-verbal cue like wrinkling your forehead, raising your eyebrows, or nodding slightly.  When David unconsciously imitates your cue, it’s a fairly reliable sign that you and he are in rapport and ready for a common task.

            With him, I’d suggest aiming at helping him become conscious of the reasons for his behavior, and then rethinking it.  You’d start by throwing out an observation of fact in descriptive rather than perjorative terms, and in a neutral, matter-of-fact, acceptant voice.  You want problem-solving rather than accusation, so you allow him ample time to ponder each observation. Proceed cautiously, hypothesizing about what you observe or guess, and let him correct you.  Anytime he’s processing something you say, you stop talking and watch him carefully. The reason for this is the fact that you really don‘t know what‘s going on inside him that accounts for this behavior, and he may not know himself.  So your manner of tossing ideas to him needs to have maximum consideration, gentleness, interest, and openness so that his reflection (rather than defense) is engaged. You might start with this:

            “Say David, I’ve been interested to notice that you often come to school just a little late.  Do you see that?”  (Give him time to think and agree or not.  His reply may give you a lead to follow.)

            “And when I apply a consequence, it appears that it affects you all day.  It looks like you find it hard to concentrate, and you seem a little down. Does it feel that way to you?”  (Again, give him time to think.).

            “I’m interested in whether you have any idea why that happens.“ (More time to think.) 

            “Can you remember any point in the morning, just before you come to school, when you decide to put something off for a few minutes?“ (Take him through his morning ritual minute by minute.)

            An angle to listen for is that many students don’t want to come to school and it requires an act of will in the morning for them to do so. “When you look ahead to school in the morning, is there anything about it that gives you a good feeling right away?” (If the answer is no, then this is the root of the problem. He has to push himself to comply with adult pressure on him).

            Your questions may startle him and he may be unable to respond, but whatever his response, you direct it toward understanding his thinking. In the time between arising and being in school, there’s certain to be a clue, an assessment he makes, that leads him to choose late rather than early; maybe an off-the-wall reason that wouldn’t occur to an adult. I recall a time in my life when I didn’t particularly want to reach school early because in those years I didn’t get along well with other boys.

            As you get into his thinking, stand it alongside your own: “You know, the other students have a sense of fairness.  And that makes it hard for me to give you a special break in the consequences I apply.  The school needs you here for the full learning day, so I’m limited in what I can allow.  Can you see that?” (Any way you enable him to savor how it looks from your perspective is leverage for changing his thinking). 

            You can ask him directly: “How do you think this looks from the school’s point of view?” (Simply putting words to a contrary viewpoint is often a significant step toward modifying our own.)

            Once he accepts the essential validity of your thinking, you can discuss consequences he thinks would be fair: “What consequence would you apply if you were in my place?”

            Whenever he seems stuck, rather than piling on him more of the school’s view, the longer-term strategy is to permit him to turn his mind away from the issue while knowing you’ll reliably return to it and take it the next step with him: "‘So think about it this morning, would you, and at noon I’ll ask you again if you can remember any way you think about this in the mornings before you come to school.“ You want it tugging at the edge of his awareness as a problem of understanding something, of examining his own thought processes, and that it‘s important to you to solve it at that level. You move beyond the usual short-term teacher objective of behavioral compliance. To obtain students’ long-term change and buy-in, we need to grapple with their actual thinking.

            John Jensen is a licensed clinical psychologist and author of The Silver Bullet Easy Learning System: How to Change Classrooms Fast and Energize Students for Success (Xlibris, 2008).  He welcomes comments sent to him directly at jjensen@gci.net and will email an ebook version of his book without charge to anyone upon request.