The following is an essay I wrote for my staff when I was a middle school principal roughly over a decade ago.  It was right before parent-teacher conferences and I needed to share how important they are to loving, caring, and understanding our kids with a Whole Heart.  The little boy of focus in the story is now a Daddy, Husband,and a Deputy Sheriff.  

I had an opportunity to go to my son Jake’s teacher for a parent-teacher conference.  My wife and I sat down and the teacher gave a heavy sigh, looked at us, and said, “Tell me about Jake.”  Now this kind of took me by surprise.  I was looking forward to hearing from this teacher about Jake’s performance the previous grade period.  Jake had looked forward to going to school each day up to this year and now he was coming home saying, “My teacher doesn’t like me.”

This is a pretty heavy statement coming from a 2nd grade boy.  While Jake did the activities he was supposed to in class and was performing pretty well academically, Jake was pretty “busy.”  I immediately told the teacher that she could probably blame this on genetics.  With my reputation as a slightly hyper principal in another school, she understood.

To be quite frank, I believe that the teacher really didn’t care to have Jake in class.  The way that Jake felt being in that class seven hours a day, there was no way he was going to be a model student.  There was only one way to get Jake to do exactly what you wanted him to do and that was to go straight to his heart.  jake yearns for acceptance.  He needs to be loved.  He lives for praise.  If he is denied these basic human needs he simply shuts down.  He will not respond to what you want.  Yell at him and you lose him.  Treating him poorly, ignoring him, or humiliating him in front of others will cause him to simply draw back further within himself.

Try and imagine going to a job where you received no real pay check, the boss was constantly on you in a negative way, and your positive attributes were never recognized.  How long would you give your maximum effort for this company?

Most people have the same response mechanisms as my late Labrador Retriever, Katy.  katy loved to have her ears rubbed.  If you praised Katy, she would do about anything you wanted.  In my own mind, I like to believe that she understood the words I was saying.  What she really understood was how I was saying them.  She understood my pleasure with her and the love I had for her based on my body language and my tone of voice.  She understood my displeasure the same way.  Since she basically lived for my approval, she would do whatever it took to make sure I approved of her – even when she was very sick and near death.  She would work hard to do what she needed to do to gain my favor.

On her last day on this earth, I took Katy to the veterinarian because she was not responding at all to the treatment he had given her.  katy walked by my side as we entered the office.  She did NOT like to go to the veterinarian, but she did because her main source of praise wanted her to go.  There was another dog in the waiting room.  It was about the size of a good snack for my dog.  I warned her about the other dog and she seemed to understand.  I told Katy to sit.  She did.  I rubbed her ears and neck and told her how good she was.  The veterinarian picked her up and carried her into the examination room and set her on the table.  She was afraid, but calmed down when she felt my familiar touch on her back and face.  Then… she simply died, right there while I was comforting her with my words and a gentle touch.  Her last breath was on me.  She responded to love right to the end.  

As a middle school principal I encourage my teachers to make love a verb in their interaction with kids.  Many of our kids come from environments where love is not practiced in the home.  There may be a parent or two in the home, but they are literally almost orphaned by the lack of care and love.  There is a disease called Erasmus that babies contract in orphanages.  It is fatal.  The way children contract the disease is from the lack of love.  Literally, I mean, the lack of physical, caring contact that goes beyond simply feeding and changing of clothes.  The babies become hopeless and die.  What a terrible thing it would be for students at our school to live in an Erasmus state of mind.  I pray it never happens.

Jake and the rest of my children, all sons, are being trained, not only by my wife and myself, but by the many teachers with whom they will spend countless hours for the rest of their academic career.  I am hoping that most of their teachers will care whether they learn or not.  I can tell them right now that they will respond to love, caring, and understanding.  Love in the classroom is not some mushy feeling – it is a verb. It is demonstrated, as it was to my former pet, by appropriate touching, positive words, constructive feedback, and positive tones of voice.  My three (now four) sons’ academic futures are largely in the hands of the teachers who will mold their dreams and develop their “bag of tools” to give them a world of opportunity.  Whether my sons respond to the teacher is largely up to the teacher and his or her ability to see the need to “scratch my son behind the ears.”  In addition to being extremely tender-hearted, jake is amazingly loyal and would run through a brick wall for anyone who treats him well and praises him when he does what the source of praise wants him to do.  He just glows and works at a whole new level.

As a principal (now a superintendent) I try to model the behavior I want to see.  As a Daddy it is my number two job (right after doing the same for my wife).  My sons’ futures depend upon it.  Teacher… You want to know about Jake?  Please, teacher, “scratch my son behind his ears.”  He’ll be devoted to you for life.