Be the Adult: How to Make a Positive Difference in Your Students’ Lives

By F. Lance Hoopes

I will never forget the moment I first learned to “Be the Adult.” It was in my first job as an administrator after many years of teaching. I bested a kid in a passionate argument and sent him back to class while my boss and mentor looked on. I glowed with pride until he quietly deflated me with the five words that changed the rest of my career: “Remember, Lance: You’re the adult.” That phrase floods my mind with stories, the stories in this book. Some are heroic, some are embarrassing, but all of them can help you learn what I learned. I had to be the adult in a band room facing hostile kids, and facing students who played a passage so beautifully it brought tears to my eyes. I had to be the adult on 110-degree Tucson, Arizona, football fields, in band buses far from home — and facing concerned superintendents and furious teachers as an administrator. Schools can and do change students for the better, but only on one condition: Someone has to Be the Adult.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9781663261632

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Copyright © 2024 F. Lance Hoopes.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-6161-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-6162-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-6163-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024906218

iUniverse rev. date: 04/08/2024

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Things You Can’t Unsay

2 Kids to the Rescue

3 Don’t Have Any Buttons!

4 Positive Reinforcement Has To Be Honest

5 You Have to Like Your Students to Discipline Them

6 Who’s in Charge of Your Classroom?

7 Be Yourself

8 The Only Way To Get Power Is To Give It Away

9 Putting It all Together

I

dedicate this book to all of the students and colleagues who unwittingly helped me write it over a thirty-year period as an educator. Without all the wonderful students, fellow teachers and fellow administrators who influenced my life, I would never have learned the lessons they taught.

Acknowledgements

I especially want to thank my son Tom Hoopes for his help early on and throughout this process and for his continued help and support. Tom is one of the three people in this world of whom I am most proud and I am truly grateful for his love and support.

Thank you to my late wife, Annette Hoopes, for encouraging and cajoling me to actually get this done.

Thank you to all the former students who stay in touch via the internet and keep me believing that the things I did as a teacher had a positive effect on people and significantly touched their lives.

Introduction

You’re the adult. I first heard those words right when I needed to. I was just starting in administration after almost twenty years as a high-school band teacher, I was hired as the assistant principal at a middle school in Tucson, Arizona. The principal was a long-time friend of mine whom I had known since my college days.

It was one of the first days on the job and I was attempting to deal with an emotionally handicapped boy who was out of his class and wandering around the school grounds. I was in a verbal battle with this kid; we were both yelling at each other and I was determined I was going to win this battle of the wills. After a full ten minutes of berating, arguing, shouting and posturing, I got him back to his classroom.

I won!

My old friend (and principal and boss!) had a low-key personality, and usually walked around casually with his hands in his pockets. He did so now, watching my battle quietly from a short distance away without entering the fray or interfering. When I had the kid back in class we started walking back to the office. After a couple of silent minutes he said the fivex words that changed the rest of my career: Remember, Lance, you’re the adult.

There are a couple of reasons that I put this story first in the book and here in the itroduction

1. Everything we say to people has the potential of changing their lives, and

2. As educators or administrators (and as parents as well) we must always remember we are the adults.

When we get down to the level of the kids and fight on their terms we are not teaching them to be adults, we’re just trying to win. That’s not our purpose and it is counterproductive. To me, school is mostly about teaching kids to be adults; everything we do or say will teach that message or thwart it. We can determine the kind of adults we’re teaching them to be by what we say and do.

That is the theme of this entire book.

Where do I get the nerve to tell you how to teach kids to be adults? Why do I think I know how it should be done?

Because as a high school band teacher for two decades at a two-thousand-student high school north of Tucson, Arizona, I had to pick up some things. During that time I had the opportunity to influence about 100—130 kids at one time and in less-than-ideal places. I had to model adulthood in a band room, where I once had to duck drum sticks and several times had to catch my breath when the kids played a passage so beautifully it brought tears to my eyes. I had to show what it means to be an adult on 110—degree football fields — and at the Halloween night special rehearsal where I had to let them wear costumes to get them to come to the practice.

I’ve had to be the adult who called the parents of drunken students to come and retrieve them from a school bus two hours away from home. I’ve had to shepherd students through Washington, D.C., on the fourth