Roll the rug: Changing what we do

Earlier this week I, along with many other staff members, was assisting in preparing our gymnasium for lunch periods.  This is a task that quite frankly stinks as it involves moving approximately 24 tables from a room across the hallway to our gymnasium.  It is more difficult than it sounds as it calls for navigation of tight spaces and multiple turns, all while navigating a busy hallway.

Even though I flat out hate this process, I do try to help as often as I can because I know the rest of our staff detest it at least as much as I do.  As I walked through the gymnasium to grab the next batch of tables I noticed that someone had rolled up one of the rugs in the hallway as this serves to make the transfer of tables from one place to the next much, much easier.  Now, generally many folks will simply attempt to roll the tables over this rug and inevitably it bunches up, slows the process down considerably, and typically results in a back-up of tables in the hallway until one of us rectifies the situation by getting the tables off the rug and then rolling it up and moving it out the way.

As I walked from the gymnasium to the hallway I asked, loudly, “Who rolled the rug?”  I asked twice before our music teacher, Joel Wiseman, replied hesitantly, “I did, Chris.”  Joel most likely thought less of my intellect when I then proceeded to ask him why.  He began, in best educator fashion, to explain to me the benefits of rolling the rug, summarizing by stating “It works better this way.”  I asked Joel to remember our conversation as I was going to ask him about it in our staff meeting that afternoon. 

That afternoon our entire staff gathered in a classroom for a quick staff meeting.  After acknowledging some staff members for their contributions to our success and their efforts toward establishing a positive school culture, I then reminded Joel about our earlier conversation.  I began by asking him why he rolled the rug and, just as I hoped, he replied that he did so because it made the job of moving the tables easier.  I then posed the following question to my staff: what rugs do we need to start rolling?  You see, each of us falls into habits of behavior that serve to make our daily tasks more difficult.  In my school I have a very small number of staff members possessing habits that make their respective duties much more difficult.  For example, I have a staff member with a habit of consistently arguing with students when redirecting behavior.  This staff member very quickly becomes angry, personalizes the interaction, and subsequently exacerbates the situation.  Moreover, this negative interaction leads to more negative interactions, and they all work together to build an unhealthy and unproductive relationship between this staff member and the many of the students we serve.  This staff member needs to ‘roll the rug’ and eliminate the behaviors increasing the difficulty of the job at hand.

Each of us, myself first and foremost, often fall into patterns of behavior that need to be questioned, examined, and subsequently changed or eliminated in order to make our respective lives easier.  The job we are called to do as educators is difficult enough; we certainly do not need to make it any harder by refusing to change negative behaviors simply because that is the way we have always done it.  As unpleasant as it may prove to be, occasionally we need to ‘roll the rug’ because it simply works better that way.