Inevitably, adolescents will make decisions without fully considering what it is that they are doing. Quite simply, this is not a case of kids being good or bad, so to speak, they just don’t have the capacity to fully consider the impact of their actions. Despite this fact, there is always the question of how one deals with something when it goes askew. Such was the case this week, when I received a text from Audrey, the woman that cleans The Beech Hill School, that informed me that kids were messing around with the toilet paper in the boys’ bathroom, resulting in at least one unused roll being thrown out because it was soaked.
As the Head of School, I had a choice about how to handle this situation. Of course, I know how hard Audrey works and I would hate to think that students at BHS would be disrespecting her or the school. At the same time, I really did not think that this was the result malicious behavior. As such, I decided that I was not going to make a federal case out of this but would still address the matter at Community.
The morning after the text from Audrey, I shared with the students a story of when I had made a poor decision in fifth grade. I embellished a bit, and got quite theatric, but the point of the story was that it is possible for adolescents to do foolish things without really understanding that how they might be impacting others. I then shared with the students that Audrey notified me about the state of the bathroom, and that it needs to stop immediately. I had figured that should at least make the individuals think twice about their actions.
Later that morning, three students asked to see me. I brought them in my office, and they proceeded to tell me that it was their fault that the bathroom was in disarray and that they were playing volleyball with the extra roll of toilet paper and owned up to everything. I did not ask them to, nor did I expect this. They, however, felt so bad about what they did, because they assumed that they were involved in victimless shenanigans.
The students felt incredibly guilty and without my asking, wrote a letter of apology to Audrey. So, while it is certainly true that adolescents are likely to make poor choices, often times, when given the opportunity to reconsider their actions, they can amaze you with their desire to atone and to learn from their mistakes.