I am always interested in historic stories of how animals have contributed to our human advancements or endeavors. The movie, War Horse, is a great example. (If you haven't seen it, you should!).
I heard a story a while ago about canaries. Canaries were used in gold mines to detect carbon monoxide. As long as the bird was singing in the mine, all was well. When a canary was silent, it was time to evacuate! (You can read about it by clicking the link below)
Later, I read an article that suggesting that we might have “canary” students in our classes. These students are ones that indicate problems in the classroom that we should to pay attention to. I liked the idea, but really couldn't come up with an example from my experience, so I brushed the idea aside and moved on.
My son was in third grade at the time. Suddenly, he started complaining of stomach pains every morning. Not just once in a while. EVERY. MORNING. Being a science person, I asked good questions (sharp or dull, near appendix or not), and received quite vague data from Matthew. Being the "mother of the year" that I usually am (insert sarcastic tone here), I just told him to "deal with it" and get to school!
On a day when I was dropping the kids off, I noticed that the closer he got to school, the more his
stomach hurt. You think I would have wondered about that. Instead, I assumed (once again in mother of the year style) that he needed to start eating more fiber!
Then he started wearing a hoodie every day. In California, we have some hot days. He wore one even then! So strange, I thought.
I received an email from his teacher that claimed he was being super defiant and "sulking" in class, two words that DO NOT describe my son. I chalked it up to a lack of sleep and decided to bump back the bedtime.
Then. I finally saw it!
My son was fine every single day at home, but each day, as we pulled up to the school,
his stomach would hurt,
the hood on his sweatshirt would go up over his head AND
he got super quiet!
My canary stopped singing!
My normally happy, funny, silly son, was telling us that something was wrong.
Long conversations and a refusal to give up led us to the realization that there was a bullying problem in the class the teacher was unaware of. A move of seat, and some internal actions on the part of the teacher brought my son back to his happy, goofy self!
How many time did I overlook the behavior and blame something else (diet, lack of sleep, love of a sweatshirt) when the signs were right there?
How many times to we see behaviors in our classroom and blame something else (laziness, lack of motivation, too many video games, lack of sleep, etc.) rather than looking around our own rooms?
Today, listen. Watch. See and hear what our student say (or don't say). Take changes in behavior and parent concerns as a reason to observe and investigate classroom climate.
We may find the behaviors we are becoming exasperated by are from our very own class “canary”.
Kim