Schools NOT Rules
· William L Hartwick
A blog by William L. Hartwick — Retired Teacher & Principal | Founder, The Invisible Backpack Organization
Where ordinary becomes extraordinary.
Here's my truth
I was labeled functionally illiterate as a kid. Teachers wrote me off. I was the child the teacher didn't know what to do with — the one with the tics, the one who couldn't sit still, the one whose brain worked differently than the curriculum wanted it to.
Then I spent my career as a teacher and a principal, sitting on the other side of that same desk. And I'll tell you what I learned in four words:
Schools, not rules.
Not no rules. I ran a building. I know what a hallway looks like at 7:52 in the morning. Rules keep kids safe. But somewhere along the way we stopped running schools and started running rulebooks — and the rulebook has never once hugged a child.
The kid in the office is not the problem
Every school in America has that chair outside the principal's office. I sat in it as a boy. I sat behind the desk facing it for almost three decades. Here is what almost nobody says out loud: the child in that chair is almost never the problem. The child in that chair is a child with a problem, and the problem walked in with him.
I wrote a poem about it. I'll let it do the talking, because rhythm gets past the part of us that argues:
"I'm not a problem child, I'm a child who has a problem, please understand
It's very common with us who are "different" across our great land
Because I have a label of Tourette's, ADHD, Autism or any other neuro
Being able to survive ignorance should really make "us" your hero
The problem is not the child the problem's not the school
The problem is we humans have become so very cruel
So before you judge a child as a problem not a gift from above
Please remember that every child deserves the gift of love"
— I'm Not a Problem Child, from Mental Health, Mental Hell, Mental Help… You Decide
Why rhythm teaches when rules can't
Here is the fun part, and it happens to be the true part. Give a child a list of twelve rules on a laminated poster and by Thursday it's wallpaper. Give that same child two lines that rhyme and they'll be saying it on the bus in October.
Rhythm is a teaching tool. It always was. We learned the alphabet in a song. We learned "i before e" in a jingle. Then somewhere around fourth grade we decided learning had to be boring to count. That's the moment we lose the kids who learn sideways — and sideways learners are a huge percentage of every classroom in this country.
I don't teach compliance. I teach cadence. Say it, feel it, keep it.
Four words I gave every staff I ever led, and I want them on a wall in every building in America:
Acceptance. Patience. Tolerance. Love.
"Acceptance, patience, tolerance, and love should be a part of your every day
Without these basic standards success will go away"
That's not a slogan. That's the whole job description.
What I actually know, and how I know it
I was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome at 35 years old — after 35 years of adults telling me what was wrong with me and not one of them being right.
"Living thirty-five years of my life, always wondering why
I would go from complete laughter to a sudden tearful cry
Teased my entire childhood mainly by those we "trust"
Adults were the worst of all"
— Tourette's, July 22, 2019
Read that middle line again, because it's the one educators need: adults were the worst of all. Not the kids. The adults. The grown people with lanyards and clipboards and a rule for everything and a minute for nothing.
I have since sold over 10,000 books and I've stood in front of rooms full of teachers who cried in the back row because they recognized a kid in my story. Sometimes they recognized themselves.
The rear view mirror belongs in a school too
A student's file is a rear view mirror. Last year's referral. The note from the third-grade teacher. The label that follows a child from building to building like a rumor.
"The reason the rear view mirror in your car is so small
Because the windshield in front of you definitely tells it all"
Glance at the file. Then look out the windshield at the kid actually standing in front of you today. That child is not last year's paperwork.
So what does "Schools NOT Rules" actually look like on a Tuesday?
1. Ask the question the rulebook skips. When a child acts out, the rulebook asks what did he do? A school asks what happened to him? Those are two different buildings.
2. Teach it in rhythm. Expectations, routines, calming strategies — put them in cadence. Kids keep what they can repeat.
3. Say the child's name more than the child's label. Tourette's, autism, ADHD, bipolar, Down syndrome — those are conditions, not identities. The name goes first, every time.
4. Take one thing out. TOTO — Take One Thing Out. Every child carries an invisible backpack into your room. You cannot unpack the whole thing by lunch. Take one thing out. You can never get to two without one.
5. Let the adults be the ones who change. We spend a fortune trying to fix children and almost nothing teaching adults to read them. Flip the budget.
The last word
I'm the kid they gave up on who came back with keys to the building. I'm not angry about it anymore — I'm useful about it. Every rule I ever enforced I could defend. Not one of them ever changed a child. What changed children was an adult who slowed down, looked past the file, and stayed.
Pick your battles and win them and let the rest go.
Run a school with love not a rule book.
— William L. Hartwick
Founder, The Invisible Backpack Organization
Where ordinary becomes extraordinary.
St. Augustine, FL | 904.609.1313 | william@theinvisiblebackpack.org