Tinkerings

Originally Posted June 6, 2008

I am in the process of bidding on a foreclosed house that is badly in need of repairs. All the sheetrock would need to be removed, part of the subfloor is weak, there are fluorescent lights in nearly every room, bathrooms must be gutted, dog urine smell needs to go…you get the idea. This is not a house you want to buy and expect to move in the day of closing.

The negotiation stage is always interesting. The bank (located in Shanghai I believe) knows their bottom line acceptable price. They start the bidding somewhere above that line. I know the absolute highest amount I’m willing to pay. I start my bidding somewhere below that line. It is the dance to the middle that is always fun.

I made an offer yesterday. It was well below their asking price. Within a few hours (nearly unheard of by the way), the countered by coming down a little. I think their bottom line and my top line are going to wind up being around $5,000 or less apart. That’s when someone has to make a decision.

Classroom management is like that with some students. There is a negotiation dance that goes on between teacher and student. The teacher has set the behavior expectation bar high. Probably higher than they expect students to truly behave in the “real world.” Students labeled “behavior problem” by previous teachers or administrators (or even parents) come to class with an unacceptable level of behavior, but they are really willing to act better if they just get a little something in return. The negotiation dance begins.

Too often I find myself forgetting that this is a dance. We each have certain steps to the dance, and if it is performed well the outcome can be fairly good for all parties. However, if I stop dancing the student stops learning.

I watched this in action this past year with a first-year teacher. She sought out the kids on campus that had been thrown away by others. These kids had no parental support. Teachers had given up on them (including me for some of them). Administrators installed a revolving door for these kids (no, not literally). But this teacher saw “love babies.” Yes, we joked about the term being such a throw back to the 60’s (way before she was born). But the kids responded. They sought her out on campus when they had problems. She connected. She negotiated behavior change.

Next year, I hope to be more open to negotiating than I was this year. It is a long, painful, sometimes heartbreaking dance for both students and buying houses. But what would happen if the negotation dance had never taken place?