Matching Tracksuits

Fun in Fours

Results For "at risk"

And then

Tuesday 14 January 2020

the little stinker comes into class today and says, “Can I get my work so I can take it to the library? I don’t want to get in trouble again.” Not quite, “I don’t want to disturb class again,” but an apologetic self-awareness that is uplifting and frustrating.

“You what’s so irritating about working with you?” I told Y. “I like you. That’s the problem. If you were a complete jerk all the time, it would be easier because it would be harder to like you as a person.” He smiled.

In the afternoon, he came back and apologized for yesterday.

Maybe the other shoe isn’t completely off — it’s dangling on a toe. Or maybe he’s just trying to put it back on.

The Other Shoe

Monday 13 January 2020

When we get a new kid in the school, we always get a packet of information about them: sometimes it’s a thin bracket; sometimes it’s a fat pocket. But there’s always a packet.

Many of the documents included in the packet deal with the student’s behavior. Sometimes the reports in the packet don’t match the student’s behavior at the beginning. For example, a student may have information in their pocket detailing a long history of behavior issues: insubordination, disrespect, fighting, skipping class, and everything in between. Occasionally, the packet even includes information about how many administrative referrals I didn’t and the details about those administrative referrals. In general, the fatter the packet, the more there is to worry about.

The students you really have to worry about are the ones that live up to that reputation immediately. The package says there are behavior issues, and the student shows his behavior issues from the first meeting. These are the kids are going to be a challenge because they don’t even care to try to make a good first impression: Are you unaware of the fact that they are making a person brushing.

In reality, though, the really frustrating students are those who have the thick packet and show excellent behavior at the beginning of their stay in the new school. It’s a honeymoon period: they’re feeling their way around the new school and everyone else figures out what they’re all about. This honeymoon period can last anywhere from a couple of months.

Sometimes the portrayal in the packet is incongruous with the student in the classroom. It seems a miracle has occurred. Previous teachers’ comments in referrals mention insubordination, disrespect, skipping class, fighting with other students, verbal altercations with teacher, and all the student initially shows in the classroom is compliance. The temptation is to think that something has happened, that student has seen the light somehow, some way. That the student has realized the dangerous track he was on and has made a good-faith effort to change. I wish that were the case.

It never is.

The honeymoon period will come to an end. The other shoe will drop. If the kid has been described as insubordinate, insubordination will rise to the surface sooner or later. There are few miracle transformations an education.

We’re dealing with the soon in like that right now. The really frustrating thing about it is that such students have shown themselves capable of successful behavior. It suggests the behavior, to some degree or another, is a choice. If it is a choice, it’s hard not to feel some degree of negativity towards such students. One wants to say to them, “You shown you can clearly do better; you’ve shown positive traits in the class instead of disruption that steals educational time away from other students. Why? It’s hard not to take it personally that you choose the negative with us over the positive.”

It is of course much more complicated than this. But working with such kids is so tiring: it’s one step forward, three minutes of rolling backward because why step when rolling gets more laughs?

Note: This was dictated on the way home from school to a new speech-to-text app I’m trying out. I think I’ve edited out any nonsense resulting from unavoidable technical glitches, but I’m too tired to give it another read to check…

In Line

Wednesday 20 November 2019

We reached the checkout line at Aldi roughly at the same time. I had a cart filled with items; he had a package of bacon.

“Go ahead — you have so little,” I said.

He shook his head.

“Seriously, you should go ahead of me.”

“No, no, you go,” he mumbled. He was an African American man in his sixties, it appeared, with a long, white, disheveled beard, and the faint reek of body odor, alcohol, and feces.

That particular Aldi is in an area of town that can only be described as “economically depressed.” There is one particular section where, when I ride my bike to school and back, I always smell marijuana, even at 7:15 in the morning. So seeing homeless people like that is nothing all that unexpected.

I stood there in line, wondering about the gentleman there in behind me when suddenly the manager of the store walked up to the man and politely asked if he was supposed to be in the store.

“I have a couple of cashiers telling me that you’re not supposed to be here. Are you supposed to be here?”

The man hung his head a bit and started walking out as he said, “No.” There was no defiance in his voice; no anger in his voice; no disappointment in his voice — no emotion at all. He just placed the bacon on a store display as he passed by and walked toward the door.

“If you come back in here again,” the manager continued, still calm, still very respectful, “that will be trespassing, and we will notify the authorities.” The man said nothing and simply shuffled out of the store.

What could he have possibly done to get barred from the store? Perhaps he stole something. Maybe he panhandled and that was deemed as harassing customers. Perhaps he simply harassed customers. I don’t know, but I couldn’t help but feel pity for the man. Mental illness seemed a certainty, but what about his youth? Had life always been like this for the man? Did he have a family? Did they know where he was? Did they care?

I have taught so many students over the year for whom, tragically, such a life seems an entirely realistic possibility. They, too, would leave someone who doesn’t know to wonder whether they have family, whether they have anyone to support, help, or even care about them.

I have to believe that we can do better as a society. I can’t believe someone could watch such an exchange and not feel moved. And the more pessimistic side of me — realistic? — realizes that there are countless who can look at this and not feel that there must be some dark hole in the center of our society that allows such things to happen.

Big Brother

Tuesday 15 October 2019

We got access today to some new software intended to help us rein in students’ abuse of Chromebooks. Basically, it enables all teachers to become Big Brother to students: we can see every single thing they do, block sites, shut down tabs, lock computers — the whole deal short of turning off the computer remotely. Since it’s based on time of day and rosters, I see the activity of students in, say, my fifth-period class whether or not they’re in the room: if they’re on the computer, I see it.

So when I saw one of my students who was serving in-school suspension on YouTube, I closed the tab. When he started searching for Louis Vuitton shoes, I closed that down.

When he started searching for it again, I locked his computer with the message, “You won’t be able to afford those shoes if you don’t have a good job. You’ll have difficulty getting a good job if you don’t get a good education.” After a few minutes, I unlocked his computer, and he went back to luxury shoe searches. I locked it again, leaving it locked until the end of the session.

Another student who was in the room with him was talking about how this kid’s computer kept getting locked up. “He was so mad,” this kid told his friend.

If this were a kid who normally did his work, I probably would have just ignored it. If I hadn’t just gotten access to the software (and the class hadn’t been taking a test), I probably wouldn’t have noticed it as I wouldn’t have been on the computer and wouldn’t have had the program open. Then again, if he hadn’t been in ISS, he would have been in my room, taking the test.

If, if, if…

Fear

Thursday 5 September 2019

Dear Teresa,

There are some students that I would believe could be afraid of me. I do try to seem sterner in the opening days of the school year than I actually am — it’s not an accident. It’s an act, but not an accident.

You, though, try to come off tough as iron, as if nothing moves you, frightens you, or disturbs you. That was certainly the impression I got when I met you, and it was certainly the image previous teachers painted. Or at least, that that was the impression you wanted everyone to have of you.

So when Mr. Smith told me that you absolutely refused to come to my room during advisory period to get help with your work on account of being afraid of me, I had to smile a bit.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t really want you to be afraid of me. But a little fear does go a long way: It has shades of humility that you try so hard not to exhibit. It has shadows of understanding one’s place and accepting it, which you try so hard to suggest you don’t do, won’t do, for anyone. Those attributes are essential for being able to accept help. And we all need a little help.

With hope for a fear-free, help-filled year,
Your Teacher

A Letter to Students

Tuesday 29 May 2018

Dear eighth graders,

As a teacher, it can sometimes be hard to remain optimistic. Every year there are those students who try one’s patience, who test one’s resolve, who feel they are incapable of doing anything good and seem determined to bring everyone down with them. And then there are just the immature attention-seekers who do anything they can to be the center of attention. Within the first class period or two, I can usually tell who all these folks are, and the rest of the year becomes a battle with their stubbornness as I try to help them see that their behaviors and choices are not only not helping them but in fact detrimental. Some never see the light, at least during this school year, and that’s why it can be difficult to fight the pessimism: those students left just as they came in, and I wonder if I helped them at all.

This year is one of the few in recent memory that is devoid of any such students. Sure, some of you tried my patience at times. Some of you sought attention in inappropriate ways. Yet all of you—each and every student—showed growth and maturity this year, and it has been a true privilege to work with you this year. I can honestly say this has been one of the best years I’ve experienced in my nearly-twenty years of teaching. I’ve seen growth in reading skills, gains in emotional maturity, a surge of confidence in cognitive ability, and most importantly, an increase in maturity in so many of you that it gives me real hope for the future.

Many of you developed new reading and thinking skills that help you approach problematic texts in new ways. Instead of throwing up your hands and saying, “I don’t get it,” you dig in and figure out some meaning, understanding that you don’t have to comprehend everything perfectly in order to understand the text as a whole. That kind of persistence will serve you well in the future, and I am very pleased to see that so many of you developed that newly-found tenacity.

Several of you noticeably grew emotionally over the course of the year. You learned to keep your anger in check, to keep your frustrations from determining your path, and to see yourself as in control of your own life. This is one of the most rewarding aspects of teaching eighth grade: kids genuinely mature in a very clear way over the course of the year, but some of you seemed to grow emotionally two or three years. Belligerence gave way to cooperation; fatalism gave way to self-confidence; apathy gave way to self-concern. Instead of worrying how you’ll make it emotionally in high school, I find myself calmly confident about how you’ll handle the challenges of high school.

Many of you became observably more confident in your cognitive abilities. You came into the class thinking that perhaps you couldn’t do the work, that perhaps things might be a bit more challenging than you’d expected, or that it would be just the same struggle as it always is. Instead, you found that your success doesn’t come just from your intelligence, which most of us underrate anyway. Most success comes from behaviors and decisions, and as your behaviors and decisions changed, so too your view of your own intelligence, and that self-possession produced still more confidence.

Finally, almost all of you grew more mature as the year progressed. You began handling challenges like an adult. You started accepting disappointments with calmness. You learned to set goals and priorities, understanding that achieving those aims often requires sacrifice.

To those of you who chose not to live up to your fullest potential, I can only say that I hope at some point in the not-too-distant-future you make the changes necessary for your success. Hard work and focus are never wasted, and it is through challenging ourselves that we grow stronger. Fortunately, you’re only a young teen: there’s still plenty of time to grow into this adult thing.

To those of you who did your best in this and other classes, thank you. Your focus and hard work are rewards in and of themselves, and they bring rich dividends, but I’ll willingly (and somewhat selfishly) admit that they make my job easier.

I have only one wish for you as this year closes out: I hope that you can look at your life at any moment and truthfully say to yourself about yourself, “I am doing the best with what I have where I am.” If you can always say that about yourself, the brightest of futures awaits. Thank you again for a wonderful year.

Best regards,
Your teacher

Enemies

Thursday 17 May 2018

Sometimes, the Boy can be his own worst enemy. It’s true of all kids his age — and older. He’ll get upset about something, fuss about it, then escalate it when the resolution doesn’t appear to be going his way. The trick is to get him to see that habit and stop it.

Today he was upset about something. About what, it doesn’t really matter, but it involved L, who was helping me clean the bathrooms in preparation for the Boy’s birthday party Saturday. We have too much to do in too little time, so some of Friday’s cleaning shifted to today. The incident spilled over to a whine-fest with his mother, then with me. I sat him down and talked to him about what was going on.

“We’re all getting things ready for you. For your party. Every single thing we’re doing, we’re doing it for you. I think if someone was doing this much for me, I wouldn’t be upset because they weren’t paying enough attention to me at that moment. I’d be thankful. I’d say, ‘What can I do to help?'”

He calmed himself down with the little breathing exercise I taught him — basically, slow, measured breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth — and then went to ask K if there was anything he could do to help. She set him to washing dishes, a chore he adores.

“Thank you for showing me how fun it is to work together today,” he told me in the midst of his toothbrush session. “If I’d kept fussing, I would have missed out on a lot of fun.”

Later that night, as we read Tashi in bed, Tashi had an opportunity to escape from bad guys who’d kidnapped him. He ran by the river, where he saw the wife of the Chief Bad Guy drowning. I stopped.

“Do you think Tashi should stop and help her?”

“No!” the Boy said incredulously.

“Why not?”

“Because she’s his enemy. If he helps her, she might just grab him and take him back to the other bad guys,” he explained earnestly.

“Or,” I said, thinking carefully how I could explain it, “she could be so impressed and touched that he helped her that she stops being his enemy.”

“Yeah, but in Smurfs: the Lost Village, when [some character whose name I don’t remember] fell of the boat and the Smurfs helped him out of the water, he said, ‘Yeah, but I’m still bad!’ and captured them. And it was their boat. They made it themselves!” His patience in explaining that was enchanting.

“Yes, that happens sometimes,” I replied, “but sometimes, something different happens. Sometimes they stop being enemies.” I knew this was going to happen in the book, and it rings true in my own life.

Just today, I had an encounter with a student that made me feel I was in Groundhog Day. During morning duty, I’m charged with keeping all the kids sitting in the hall quietly and the hall calm and to do this, we teachers enforce a basic rule: “You can whisper, but you can’t talk.” Suzie — not her real name, of course — always talks. She speaks in a fairly low voice, but she’s engaging her vocal cords, which means she’s talking. Plus, I can occasionally hear her thirty or forty feet away.

“Suzie, whisper please,” I said calmly. Respectfully. As I’ve done every day I’m on duty for the entire school year. Her response is to quiet her voice at first but to continue talking, not whispering. Her response to being redirected again is to suggest that because other people are also talking, that I’m unfairly targeting her. Today I explained the simple fact: “That’s because you’ve taught me to expect it from you. The other people are not consistently disobeying me. The other students do it once and a while; you do it every single day.” Again — quietly, calmly, respectfully.

Today, I talked to her about it again. It turns out, she doesn’t know what whispering is. “I am whispering,” she insisted. I explained again that if she puts her hand on her throat when she talks and she feels vibrations, she’s not whispering.

“Go ahead, try,” I said, smiling.

“No!” she cried, breaking into a smile herself. “It’s embarrassing!’

I pointed out to her that I wasn’t picking on her, that I in fact like her a lot and see a lot of potential in her. “As long as you can keep these little things under control.” (She also has a tendency to grow increasingly disrespectful when redirected multiple times.)

Here’s a girl that could have easily become my enemy. I could have simply snapped at her, signed her discipline card, or by this time, probably, simply have written an administrative referral. But instead of seeing an enemy, a rebellious little brat (like many adults would), I try to see something a little different: someone who just hasn’t had anyone take the time to show a genuine interest in her regarding the little things. It’s easier just to brush if off with sarcasm or a referral.

The funny thing is, in spite of the fact that she still grows disrespectful with me, I’m fairly certain she doesn’t see me as an enemy either. Sure, it’s not the same as saving the life of the wife of the bandit who threatened to pull all your nose hairs out like Tashi did, but it’s moving in that direction.

Tempers, Tacos, Chess, and a Church

Monday 23 April 2018

A day of contrasts. At school, the kids in eighth-grade English as working on performances of small excerpts from The Diary of Anne Frank, the play based on Anne’s diary. Most of the groups are doing great: they work well together; they take criticism from each other well since they know part of their grade comes from how well they’re performing as a group; they seem to enjoy the challenge. Most of them. One group, not so much. The group just isn’t getting along. One girl — we’ll call her Alicia — has a temper that could be measured in nanometers, and she has to express her thought when she finds herself annoyed, which is frequently. Another girl — we’ll call her Susan — just doesn’t care, and she doesn’t care that other people might care, and she doesn’t care that her apathy affects them. And she has a temper as well. One boy in the group likes to provoke anyone and everyone he can. And finally, a third girl has made a big turn-around this year in my class and has gone from being nasty to being a fairly well behaved, decent working young lady, but one who doesn’t like it when things don’t go her way. So while all other groups were developing their ideas, rehearsing their lines, planning who would bring what props, this group broke into fits of frustration and argument literally every three or four minutes.

How can you teach kids any subject when first they need to be taught how to control their temper, how to control their tongue, how to control their sense of self-injury?

At home, the Boy and I initiated what we’re going to try to make into a daily activity: a bit of chess together. He knows how to move the pawns fairly well now. He knows the basics of the rooks. Next, we’ll introduce bishops, the king, the queen, and finish up with the tricky knights.

He’s learning to pile up attackers and count defenders to determine if he can take a piece or not; he’s starting to think offensively and defensively at the same time; he’s eager to learn more — all good signs. His mind is growing. His body, too — faster, in fact.

Tonight was taco knight (see what I did there?), and the Boy loves Mexican food. We have a little Mexican restaurant down the street where the two of us have eaten dinner when the girls are out on their own, and he’s always eager for more.

Tonight, he skipped the beans and the rice and ate not one, not two, but three tacos. Half the fun for him is actually making the taco.

The calm and the joy of chess followed by tacos seemed so jarring juxtaposed with the chaos my one group of students was experiencing. Those who were causing the issues — what kind of jarring, chaotic home life might they have? It doesn’t seem that people who would go home to some time with their family and a bit of comfort food would have that much difficulty keeping themselves in check because it would have been modeled for them and perhaps taught explicitly.

In the evening, when the girls have gone to gymnastics and shopping, the Boy and I decided to play with Legos, and we decided we needed to make something we’d never made before. We decided on a church.

As I was building the roof, the Boy declared that he would start working on things for the inside. After a few minutes, he showed me something he’d made.

“It’s that table, where they do everything,” he explained.

“The altar?”

“Yeah.”

And he made it complete with chalices and a paten.

And Repeat

Monday 5 March 2018

I don’t know how many times I’ve told students that, nine out of ten times, it’s not what you do that gets you in trouble but rather how you react to being corrected. It’s not the phone out that’s the problem; it’s how you responded when told to put it away. It’s not the mild horseplay that’s the problem; it’s how you responded when told to stop. It’s not the talking; it’s the reaction to being told to be quiet.

Today, when I had hall duty, one young man insisted on chatting in the time before school actually begins, when all students sit in the hallway, leaning against the walls, and relatively silent. There’s always some whispering, and all teachers ignore that because it’s not a problem. It’s when the kids start talking, and then others talk, and then the first group has to raise their voices to be heard above the increasing din, and soon, it’s chaos on the hall. So we — as well as all other grade levels — insist on silence. This young man, though, insisted on chatting despite being told to stop talking.

In such situations, I take a simple strategy: I tell the kid to go to my classroom and wait for me there. “When it’s locker time and my duty is therefore over, I’ll come talk to you about this.” Most kids comply without issue. And what do I do when I talk to them? Sometimes I sign their school behavior cards (ROCK cards they’re called) on the positive side for complying without problems and tell them next time, it’s a negative. And sometimes, it’s a negative.

Today, I had a batch of kids that I’d never had to call down, so I took their names and told them I was pressing them into service for tomorrow: “You’re going to be my leaders, my CEOs, those who set the good example and get the others around you who are talking to stop and whisper instead.” I looked at them with a pause for effect, then asked, “And you know what happens to CEOs who don’t perform well, right?” One girl answered, “They get fired.” “And you know what that means for you, right?”

But one boy just couldn’t get past his sense of victimization. I told him, “P, you need to go to my room please.”

“What’d I do?” he asked indignantly.

“You just need to go to my room, alright.”

“I didn’t do nothin’.”

“You just need to go to my room, alright.”

“I didn’t do nothin’.”

“You just need to go to my room, alright.”

“I didn’t do nothin’.”

“You just need to go to my room, alright.”

“I didn’t do nothin’.”

Literally about that many times. Well, maybe not that many times: I don’t have that much patience. I just ended the encounter with him still sitting where he had been sitting, leaving him with the comment that he can discuss it with the assistant principal when I complete the disciplinary referral.

What will happen to him? He’ll get a day or two of In-School Suspension. Will that change him? Not at all. He sees himself as a victim — I don’t teach him, but all his teachers confirm this first impression.

It’s such kids’ futures that seem so bleak to me. How can someone like that hold down a job? How can someone like that even make it to an interview?

The only hope is age: perhaps in the next four years, by the time he becomes an adult, something will click.

On the Proper Use of Time

Wednesday 10 January 2018

1

At times, the school year seems to extend endlessly, a pile of days that stretches beyond our sight, under which we all seem to be crushed slowly. If there’s a class that’s an inordinate challenge, the weight of that pile seems to double, and somehow, no matter how well things are going in the year, a few more days seem to be tossed carelessly on the pile as third quarter approaches. “What?! I’m this exhausted, and we’re just now in the back half?!”

Decorating his pinewood derby car

Other times, the year seems entirely too short, something requiring calipers to measure. The list of standards the state requires teachers to cover seems to require twice the days the state allocates for the challenge. Some standards seem as if they might take a lifetime to master in and of themselves. “Assess the processes to revise strategies, address misconceptions, anticipate and overcome obstacles, and reflect on completeness of the inquiry.” I’m still working on that one. “Determine appropriate disciplinary tools and develop a plan to communicate findings and/or take informed action.” Ditto.

An unusually-attentive Clover

In between those two, the powers that be, in their infinite wisdom, allocate a certain number of days to testing. In the decade-plus I’ve taught in the States, that number seems to grow every year. In the case of the hard-to-handle classes, it’s a relief in a sense — for the obvious reasons. It’s tiring keeping them focused and engaged every day, and a test is just the right mind-numbing exercise to make the period pass by fairly painlessly. They get little to nothing out of it, and they put little to nothing into it, and everyone knows that’s what’s going to happen, but we do the dance anyway, and everyone goes home with their dance card happily filled. And yet for those same classes, it’s a nightmare, for teachers already feel we’re trying to cram too much into to little.

It just doesn’t seem like the proper use of time.

2

Wednesday afternoons are often when I catch up with school work. The Girl has choir practice, until five and K and the Boy are out doing the grocery shopping as they wait, and so when I arrive home, the house is empty and silent. I make a cup of coffee, get out some papers to grade, or more likely, load this or that website that now holds my students’ work and begin assessing, or I start sketching out my plans for the next week’s activities.

Frustration at the difficulty of cleaning up after an experiment

Today, however, I had a thought: I don’t have anything to do for school that is terribly pressing; my school is quite near the Aldi where K and E are shopping; I could easily pick up the Boy and take him home for a bit of playing. I called K; she asked the Boy; he was thrilled. Home we went, talking all the way about what we might play.

Said clean-up

We settled on cars, with a bit of blocks. And in the midst of it all, out of seemingly nowhere, we ended up building jails for the misbehaving cars. E designed one, which meant he placed the blocks, and I hunted them down for him if he couldn’t find them. Then we tested it, which meant he rammed a big car into the jail to see if it stood. It didn’t; the bad car escaped. So we did it again, alternating who designed the jail. No jail held the prisoner for longer than a few moments when the Boy really set his mind and muscles to the task.

The final jail

We made a big mess. The Boy got semi-hurt as he crashed his car into the pile a bit too hard. I accomplished absolutely nothing for school.

It was a proper use of time.