QUOTES:
In the intro of Troublemakers, Shalaby challenges our expectations about "bad" behavior in the classroom. Instead of looking at difficult or disruptive children as problems to be solved, Shalaby invites us to see them as signals, signs that we should be asking questions about the systems we've established as the norm in schooling. Her work is not only about specific students who are labeled as being troublemakers but also about how schools themselves create climates that often suffocate rather than foster freedom, individuality, and emotional health.
One quote that stood out to me is:
"If nearly half of our children fail to follow directions, we should question the appropriateness of the requirement.”
This quote turns something that causes frustration in all schools on its head. Instead of blaming the children for not listening or following rules, Shalaby invites us to examine the rules more closely. Maybe it's not the children who are at fault, but the requirements. If that many kids are rebelling or failing, then there's something more to the reason why. Her perspective dares us to question if our requirements are developmentally appropriate, culturally responsive, or even sane. It's a reminder that disobedience is not always defiance, it may be a learning experience.
Another quote that I liked was:
"The child who deviates, who refuses to behave like everybody else, may be telling us-loudly, visibly and memorably-that the arrangements of our schools are harmful to human beings. Something toxic is in the air, and these children refuse to inhale it"
Here, Shalaby is reframing deviance not as dysfunction but as resistance. The children we label "bad" are maybe the children most attuned to problems in our classrooms. Things like tight schedules, lack of creativity, standardized expectations, and constant control.. Rather than punishing them, we need to be hearing them out. They might be silently, or not so silently, showing us what all students feel but don’t express. This quote is one of the key things that links the canary metaphor, these kids being the signal that there is “bad air” in the school.
