There’s a shift happening in education right now, often framed as a return to “back to basics.” On the surface, that sounds reasonable—necessary, even. Literacy, numeracy, order, and structure are foundational to good schooling, and few would argue against the importance of calm, focused classrooms where learning can occur.
What is less often acknowledged, however, is what is sitting just beneath that language. Increasingly, there is a quiet but growing belief that some students simply do not belong in those spaces.
More specifically, the students being pushed to the margins are not those with identified learning disabilities, medical needs, or cognitive delays. As a profession, we have made meaningful strides in supporting those learners. The students we continue to struggle with are those whose challenges present behaviorally—students who are defiant, dysregulated, non-compliant, or, at times, aggressive. These are the students who disrupt classrooms and, in doing so, disrupt the expectations teachers have for what teaching should feel like.
The response, whether explicit or implied, is becoming more common: remove the child.
It is easy to interpret this trend as a lack of care or compassion. I don’t believe that’s the case. A more honest—and more uncomfortable—truth is that many educators do not feel adequately prepared to support these students effectively. Rather than addressing that gap in capacity, we have begun to redefine the problem itself. Exclusion becomes “structure.” Removal becomes “rigor.” Avoidance becomes “back to basics.”
Teaching Human Beings, Not “Students”
Years ago, I attended a session led by Phyllis Cardinal at Samson Elementary School, and her message has stayed with me ever since. She reminded us that children who are hungry, angry, lonely, or tired are not ready to learn, and that our role is not to teach abstract “students,” but to teach human beings.
That distinction matters. When we think in terms of “students,” it becomes easier to define success in terms of compliance, productivity, and performance. When we recognize that we are working with human beings, we are forced to consider the broader context each child brings into the classroom. Their behaviour is not random; it reflects their experiences, their needs, and the conclusions they have drawn about themselves, others, and the world around them.
Where Our Thinking Breaks Down
What is striking is that we already know how to respond to difficulty—just not consistently.
When a child struggles with reading, we do not assume intent. We do not interpret the difficulty as defiance or laziness. Instead, we assess the situation, analyze the underlying issue, and adjust our instructional approach. We treat the struggle as information, and we respond with thoughtful, intentional design.
That same logic rarely carries over to behaviour.
When a child struggles to regulate emotion, follow directions, or engage appropriately with peers, the response often shifts from curiosity to judgment. The question changes from “What skill is missing?” to “What is wrong with this child?” In that shift, the systems thinking we rely on in academic contexts disappears.
Design Thinking as the Missing Link
This is where Ross Greene's work becomes critical. Through his Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (CPS) model, advanced through Lives in the Balance, Greene challenges a deeply embedded assumption in education. His premise is simple but profound: kids do well if they can.
If a child is not doing well, it is not a matter of will—it is a matter of skill. More specifically, it is a matter of lagging skills and unresolved problems.
This is entirely consistent with how we approach academic learning. When a child cannot decode text, we identify the gap and intervene. When a child cannot manage frustration or navigate social situations, however, we are far more likely to interpret the behavior as intentional and respond with a consequence rather than instruction.
The inconsistency is difficult to justify. In one context, we see struggle as a call to teach. In another, we see it as a reason to remove.
What We Actually Control
An important reality often gets lost in these conversations: we cannot control the child, but we have significant control over the environment in which that child is expected to learn.
That environment includes expectations, structures, relationships, instructional approaches, and the ways adults respond in moments of difficulty. In other words, it includes the very conditions that shape whether a student is successful.
Systems thinking helps us recognize patterns and understand how different elements interact. On its own, however, it is not enough. Without corresponding design thinking—without a willingness to adjust the environment in response to what we are seeing—systems thinking becomes little more than observation.
If behavior is information, then it is also an opportunity. It tells us something about the fit between the learner and the environment. Our responsibility is to respond to that information in ways that improve that fit.
This aligns closely with the perspective I explored in an earlier piece on redefining failure. When viewed through a systems lens, failure is not simply a student falling short of a standard; it is an indication that something within the system is not functioning as intended, and therefore requires reflection and adjustment.
Trust and the Conditions for Learning
The importance of relationships in this work cannot be overstated. In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni identifies the absence of trust as the foundational issue in ineffective teams. The same principle applies in classrooms.
As Nel Noddings reminds us, children will do remarkably complex and even unexpected things, like adding fractions, for adults they trust. Without that trust, the conditions for learning are significantly diminished.
A Necessary Confrontation
This leads to a tension that is not often addressed directly. As educators, we regularly assert that we care about all students. At the same time, our actions can suggest that our care is conditional—extended more readily to students who are compliant, regulated, and easy to teach.
When students challenge those conditions, our willingness to include them is often tested.
It is not uncommon to hear the assertion that addressing behavioral complexity is not the teacher’s role. This raises an important question: if teaching is not about responding to the full range of human needs present in a classroom, then what exactly is the role?
If we define teaching narrowly as content delivery, then the argument for exclusion becomes easier to make. If, however, we understand teaching as the development of human beings within a learning community, then the students who challenge us most are not peripheral to the work—they are central to it.
The Moral Imperative
Michael Fullan describes this as the moral imperative of education. It is not limited to improving academic outcomes; it extends to improving lives. It requires educators to shape environments that support both learning and human development, even when doing so is complex and demanding.
This is not a standard that can be adjusted for convenience. Difficulty does not reduce responsibility.
Rethinking “Back to Basics”
If the profession is genuinely interested in returning to foundational principles, it is worth reconsidering what those principles actually are. They are not limited to content coverage or classroom order. They include the conditions that make learning possible in the first place: connection, trust, understanding, and thoughtful design.
