Accepting harmful behavior

This post was written the weekend before school started.

I had had a profound experience with self rejection and it had brought to my attention the importance of acceptance. I wanted to make sure that I didn't reject my students. I had felt the ramifications of rejection by another- it had lead to self rejection- and I wanted to ensure that my students never felt that. As their teacher, as a person in a position of power over them, I felt that my acceptance or rejection of them, of their behavior, could have a profound impact on their acceptance or rejection of themselves. I wanted them to accept themselves, to never feel that who they were was devalued or unimportant.
I was telling this to a friend of mine and I thought about what I would do if one kid hit another kid. I knew that I wanted to accept that kid, even though she hit someone, but I didn't know how to do that. It's not okay for her to hit someone and I feel like I have a responsibility to the class to make sure that no one is hit in my room. At the same time, I don't want her to feel rejected. How do I accept someone when they're being harmful to another?
At first, I thought about separating her from her behavior, telling her that I loved her anyway- that her actions were just her actions, they didn't define her. But I also felt like that would be accepting the hitting and it felt like she would do it again, if I accepted it. I also thought about the other kids in the class who were watching this behavior. I was afraid that if they saw me accept this harmful behavior, they would be afraid that it would happen again and I can't have that fear in my room. I need them to know that they aren't going to be hit in my class, that it is a safe place.
Now, part of me does know that in fact, I actually cannot control the kids in my room. There is absolutely no way for me to prevent a child from hitting another child unless that child and I hold hands all day long. I get it, I get that I can't control the future. But the eight year olds in the room don't understand that, and I don't know that I want them to. What I do know is that they need a safe place- they can't learn if they feel threatened or if they feel like they have to protect themselves. I do think they need to believe that I can control the room- and in some ways I can. I can create a place where it's less likely that someone will hit someone. But this acceptance thing was was still troubling me. I absolutely knew that I didn't want to reject kids but I didn't know how to accept something that I knew was harmful.
The next morning, I was having tea and cookies after the dharma talk at the zen center. My friends were joking about what would happen if they were "bad" in my class. They laughed about getting yelled at or getting a slap on the wrist. I quickly jumped to my own defense, to kind of show off that my class wasn't like that.
"In my class, you're not bad, you just made a mistake," I said proudly.
But then Shundo (the Ino at the zen center) cautioned even that.
"It's an event," he said.
I was totally taken aback. This concept of an event- not a mistake, not good or bad, not even you-all -the-time or you-in-the-future- it had no value to it, it had no judgment, it just was. And this was acceptance, this was what I wanted for my kids, to never feel rejected, no matter what they did. The hitting, it's not okay, it just isn't, but it doesn't mean I reject you. I still love you. It happened, it's over, we move on. We'll deal with the hitting, but we're not going to reject you for it.
Now this is still tricky for me. This is tricky in a couple of ways. For me, I'm still in between in my Buddhist concepts. It's like I have one foot in the "I can't control the future, just live in the moment, let it go, it's all temporary, blah blah blah..." and another foot in the "Dude, don't do that. Don't be all zenny and let the kids run wild and accept whatever they do as beyond your control." I want to put this in to practice but I want to be realistic too. And I get it, it's actually more realistic to admit that I really can't control the kids but I can't say that that concept would go over all that well at Back-to-School night. So I'm working on it, but with a real intent to make the kids feel loved and safe.

On the other hand, I've got eight year olds in the room. And eight year olds are NOT about accepting harmful behavior. They are all about punishment. I can guarantee you that just about every kid in the room will want me to take away that kid's recess or make them sit in the hallway or do something so the kid has a consequence. That's just how they think at this age, they're very in to black and white and fixed rules and permanence. By the end of third grade, they can begin to see grays and they start to see that the concept behind the rules is more important than the rule itself and that sometimes we can break the rule if it means the bigger concept is being met.
But as I'm writing this, I also know that third graders really are capable of compassion. I actually don't think they would want me to harm the kid, I think they really would want me to forgive them. I don't know. I think the acceptance piece is more for me, it's more about how I view the children, how I respond to them. I don't think that I have to necessarily explicitly teach the kids about how this is just a moment, that they don't have to value it as good or bad; I think that's asking a lot of them. But I think that me accpeting their behavior without judgment, is really important. It's also really hard but I'd like to try.