Overheard, after passing out report cards:
“My parents don’t care what I get, as long as I pass. Sometimes, when I brought home an F, my dad would yell at me. But I yell back. He knows better. He sometimes forgets, but I yell back, and he backs off.”
The questions for the anticipation guide were seemingly straightforward. One would think that responses — “Do you agree or disagree and why?” — to these questions would be somewhat predictable.
Granted, for question one, adolescents might not necessarily have learned the beauty of ignorance. It seems unlikely that any adult would disagree with the statement, and in fact, a slight majority of the students agreed this afternoon.
Question two is a bit tricky: most kids think of it as a question of politeness and manners. I’m almost always the only person indicating agreement with the statement. When I explain about differentiation and remind them of special education services, most students understand where I’m coming from and smile at how I “tricked” them.
Question three is fluff. It gets conversation going, but there’s really no expected response for what I (and I hope others) would consider a well-adjusted, emotionally healthy individual.
Question four hints at the shallowness of materialism. Students seem split on the issue, but for eighth graders, one might expect that.
Question five is an interesting question for my students because so many of them — particularly those who struggle in school — are completely fatalistic. Perhaps they don’t see that in themselves, though, because many disagree with this statement.
Question six, though, seems almost painfully predictable in a room of well-adjusted, emotionally healthy individuals. The inability to feel empathy, after all, is one of the most horrifying aspects of sociopaths and one of the most tragic facets of autism.
So when a young man looked at me this afternoon with an expression of disgust and almost anger when I asked him why he didn’t think empathy is important, why he disagreed when almost everyone else agreed, why he seemed put off by the fact that I was unable to hide my surprise at his response, it left me briefly speechless.
“You mean don’t think it’s important to try to understand the lives of those less fortunate than you?” I asked after a moment.
“I never thought about it,” came the flippant response.
“And now that you’ve thought about it?” I continued.
He shrugged and glared.
Dear JT,
I’m afraid we in the middle school business have — how I hate that I’m going to use this cliche — set you up for failure. We’re programming you to be a drop-out, and I wish there was something I could do about it, but this is about it: I can explain a simple reality to you.
You’ve figured out the system, how things have worked to this point. You understand that chances are slim you’ll ever be failed another grade. After you’ve failed fourth grade, you figured out that, even if you end the year with all F’s, the school pass you on. That’s a bad choice of words, because you aren’t passed. The technical term is “placed.” As if you’re some object to be arranged in a still life.
However, things are about to change. Though you’re failing every single core class, you’ll move on to ninth grade next year. I know it; you know it; the principal knows it; all the teachers know it; your mother knows it. We all understand that. What you might not understand is the reality waiting for you in high school: teachers will not simply place you in the next grade as can happen in middle school. If you fail English I, you’ll have to take it again. If you fail it again, no one will say, “Well, he failed once; we can’t fail him twice,” and then place you in English II. If you were to fail it yet again, about the only thing the high school teacher and guidance counselor could say is, “Well, better luck the third time.” But by then, and quite probably before the third time, you’ll have dropped out. You’ll judge things to be a no-win situation and you’ll cut your losses and drop out.
At least that’s what I fear.
I don’t know if you actually believe me when I say these things. You’ve probably gotten so many empty threats from teachers in the past that you’re skeptical of everything an authority figure says. But please understand, this is not a threat, and it’s certainly not empty. It’s a word of friendly advice. And, quite frankly, a warning.
Frustrated,
Your Teacher in Room 302
Dear Terrence,
The other day was a teacher workday, which means we teachers are at school while you kids are free. I wonder what that freedom brings you.
I know you have more “freedom” than the average student because of all the out-of-school suspensions you’ve served. I’ve often wondered about the wisdom of that. I’ll bet in some ways, at least during some of the more tiring stretches of the school year, OSS seems more like a gift than a punishment. After all, there’s no one to make you do this or that. You get to choose who you spend your time with. You can pass that time however you please.
Or can you? Perhaps your mother makes you clean house while you’re serving OSS. Maybe she has a long list of tasks that she expects completed fully and well when she returns from work. Possibly, but somehow I doubt it. She might be struggling just to get enough money to keep a roof over your head and food on your table — she might not sweat the small stuff. Whatever it is you do during those OSS days, I’m fairly certain you prefer it to what you do at school.
And all of this makes me wonder about the wisdom of OSS. I’ve already mentioned to you that I think you would benefit from some direct instruction in how to learn, in how to be successful in school and life. Couldn’t we replace OSS (and ISS, for that matter) with something like that? It would be tricky, because we would have to find a teacher with a certain patience and dedication to young people because, let’s face it, you and your friends can be a real handful in the classroom. It seems possible and even desirable, but I somehow doubt it will ever happen. The American school system likes to think of itself as being cutting edge and progressive, but it’s still relatively set in its old ways in many regards, and how to help students like you is a perfect example.
So I don’t really know what you might be doing today during your day off. Whatever it is, I hope it’s not what I’ve heard in rumor among teachers: I hope you’re not spending all your time trying to impress the members of some gang — for all I know, your gang, for I hear, as the colloquial expression goes, that you “bang.” I have some thoughts I’d like to share with you on that as well, but for now, I’ll let you get back to whatever it is you’re doing on your day off.
With hope,
Your Friend in Room 302
Dear Terrence,
I heard today: You’ve been tossed out of alternative school, with your latest offense being the proclamation to a teacher that she could just “– off.”
It’s time I took the gloves off, so to speak. That’s stupid. That’s simply stupid. Look back over your long, checkered school experience: when has something like that ever made a situation better? When has such behavior ever helped? When has such behavior ever brought about anything but more trouble from a teacher? When has a teacher ever replied along the lines of, “Oh my! I’m so sorry to have offended you. Please forgive me!”? When has such language ever helped get you out of trouble? When has that language ever done anything other than get you into more trouble?
I swear, sometimes I think you guys simply don’t think.
Annoyed and saddened,
Your Frustrated Friend in Room 302
Dear JT,
I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve come lately simply to ignore when you’ve put your head down in my class. There are enough behavior problems in that class to deal with that I don’t want to pick a fight, so to speak, with you. I know I’ll likely only get attitude, and even if you do comply, it’ll only be temporarily.
It bothers me because it’s disrespectful, but quite honestly, you don’t seem to care, and you’re only a kid, so like I said earlier, bigger fish to fry and such. Today, however, you were disrespectful to close to 10,000,000 people. Did you know it was even possible to disrespect so many people at the same time? I really didn’t either: I’d never really given it much thought. But when you put your head down and slept through our Holocaust-based writing exercise as we prepared to read Anne Frank’s diary, you basically put your middle finger up to all those who died in one of the evilest atrocities in history. For all intents and pursposes, you said,
I don’t care about you. I don’t care that you lost your family to a murderous regime. I don’t care that the last image you had of your child was of her being ripped out of your hands, screaming. I don’t care that you had the responsibility of burning the corpses of thousands upon thousands of gassing victims. I don’t care that you were “experimented” upon, shot, kicked, beaten, tortured, and treated like a roach. What I care about is that I’m a little sleepy now in first period, so screw you — I’m going to sleep.
I anticipate your response being something along the lines of, “I don’t care.” That’s fine. No one can make you care about anything. But if you find yourself one day alone, if you find yourself wondering if anyone in the world cares for you, and if you decide that the answer to that question is, “No, no one other than my mother,” perhaps you’ll know how those millions upon millions of Holocaust victims felt. And ironically, the fact that you put your head down during that class session would go a long way in explain why no one cared for you.
Then again, maybe that’s what you’re experiencing now. Maybe you already feel that way. It’s a bit presumptuous of me to suggest that I know you so well as to make such an accurate assessment. After all, I only see you for a small slice of your life. Still, it strikes me as a real possibility.
At the same time, there are plenty of others who have lived lives devoid of anyone really showing them any concern or compassion as children who have grown up to be perfectly empathetic individuals. (And there are plenty who have experienced the opposite.) I do know that you’ll have an easier time in life — a more fulfilling life — if you manage to purge “I don’t care” from your vocabulary.
Still caring for you, but with greater difficulty today,
Your Friend in Room 302
P.S. I said nothing to you when you put your head down the second time after I’d already asked you politely and privately to show some respect. I didn’t want to damage the atmosphere I had created in the classroom. I will, though, address it tomorrow.
Dear Terrence,
I spoke to your English teacher today. She told me about a problem you had with another student, that this boy did something that so angered you that you were willing to fight him. That you turned over a desk and started marching toward the kid with every evil intent that anyone could imagine glowing your eyes.
Remember, we had a conversation in the hallway about this the other day. You’re letting people push your buttons. You’re essentially giving them a remote control and saying, “Hey, you want me to hop on one leg, press this button. You want me to laugh, press that one. If you want me to hit you, the red button’s the one.”
What saddened me most about what your teacher said, though, was your response later, how you asked in a low voice, “Ms. Jones, did you write me up for that?”
“What choice did you give me, Terrence?” she said.
I know that you feel you don’t have a lot of choices right now, Terrence. I know you feel that no matter what decision you make, things always turn out the same way. I know that a lack of choices feels like a prison, but not a conventional one — this one has invisible bars that seem to change location but hold you fast just the same. I know you feel you have few choices, but I’m wondering if your teachers don’t feel the same way.
“What choice did you give me, Terrence?” asked Ms. Jones, and in that, I can almost hear as much frustration as I hear when you tell me some of your stories. What choice does any teacher have when facing a child like you, a child who really needs some positive attention and someone who can sit down with him and explain and practice, as many times as it takes, some of the rules of the game that you seem somehow to have missed out on?
Before you can learn math, science, history, or English, you need, quite frankly, to learn how to learn. To learn how to be comfortable with your own stillness. To learn how to look at someone who’s giving you instruction the same way you look at me when we’re standing in my doorway, chatting. To learn how to listen with a slight smile of anticipation like you do when I call your name out as you walk down the hall and motion you over to me.
But unfortunately, we’re not in a situation where we can take a lot of time to teach you how to learn. We teachers have got deadlines and testing hovering over us, and it feels like the tests are pressing our buttons. We have choices — I’m convinced of that — but I’m not sure we’re all aware of these choices, of the various options that might lead to more success for you and kids like you in the classroom. I’m certain there are choices, but I’m not as sure that they’ve even all been discovered yet. So in a way, we teachers are just groping around, feeling out these invisible bars just like you.
I do know that for most of us, being in the classroom is a conscious choice. We’re an idealistic group at heart: it’s what led most of us to the profession and it’s what keeps us there. Maybe if you can keep that in your conscious thoughts — that everyone who stands in front of you day in and day out is there because they choose to be there, because they want to help, because they feel called to do what they do — then you’ll start to see some new choices, too.
Sincerely,
Your Friend in Room 302
Every year, as we begin a unit on the Gary Paulsen novel Nightjohn, I read Patricia Polacco’s Thank You, Mr. Falker. The story of a young dyslexic girl who was suffering the taunts of peers and the seeming neglect of teachers, the book emphasizes the life-changing nature of literacy. Trisha, the protagonist, spends the first four grades of school hiding her inability to read, feeling dumb for not being able to keep up with peers, and taking solace in her one skill, her exceptional artistic ability. It’s such a touching story that even a room of rowdy eighth-graders ends up sitting in silence, visibly moved. Every now and then, a girl — always a girl, for a boy will never show such a “vulnerability” — sniffles in the back or wipes her eye occasionally as the story nears its conclusion.
“We have Trishas in this room, guaranteed,” I tell the class this afternoon. “Someone here has felt stupid about something, been taunted for something out of her control, taken refuge in solitude and some seemingly non-academic talent that doesn’t fit today’s educational mold.”
“We’ve probably all experienced it,” says a boy who has never struck me as being particularly attuned to the pains and sufferings of others. I nod solemnly in agreement. And I think back to the quiet girl a couple of years ago who, leaving the classroom after that particular lesson, murmured, “I have a lot in common with Trisha.”
Related post: Literacy, On the Fly
It’s really just how I would imagine his mug shot to be: head cocked at an angle to show that, while he was complying with the police officer, he still wanted it clear that he was his own person. It’s the defiance of the desperate: lacking any other meaningful way to express himself, he showed that he wasn’t going to face the camera straight on.
I met De’Andre (not his real name) while working with at-risk youth in North Carolina. For a year, I and others worked with him (and others) to provide instructions and practice in the basic social skills: accepting “no”; following instructions; managing anger; maintaining eye contact in conversations with authority figures; managing impulses. The things that so many of us learned without direct instruction; the things that make basic interactions in society possible; the things without which success is unthinkable. Some days were successful; others were not.
Like De’Andre, Clearance had great difficulty with even the most basic social skills. He had a short temper that could quickly grow violent and a mischievousness that could quickly cross all boundaries of acceptability.
For both these young men, life had been a series of dead ends. Clearance’s one bit of pride came from his success in fourth grade as a football player. De’Andre had even less he would express pride about. They lived moment to moment, second to second, without any hope of making it to anything but the next meal. They shuffled in and out every day, unsure what would happen the moment they crossed the threshold, and quite honestly, unconcerned as well.
What can we do with young men — and there are thousands of them in America today — who are so very fatalistic that their probable response to seeing their own mug shots on the internet would be, “Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later?” What do we do to help young men from seeing their lives as a dead end?
It is here that I remain left-leaning with right-leaning motivations. This is not to say that I see these men as victims. They might have been victims as children — and from what I know of the personal histories of individuals like this, they certainly were victims of various forms of abuse — but the only thing they’re victims of now is their own fatalistic thinking and the habits they’ve formed over the years. Their mug shots are now on the internet because of choices they made, pure and simple.
But my left-leaning tendencies emerge when I think of their experience in school. It’s clear that they had no one in their homes to teach them these skills; it’s clear that they had no one in their lives to model these skills. That is the sense in which they are now victims of their neglected childhood. And as a teacher, I wonder if we can’t do something while such young men are children to help them develop the skills they need.
These deficiencies are as clear in early life as reading problems. In fact, they’re more clearly evident. What are the current options in such situations? There are few, if any. The classroom teacher is responsible for the academic instruction of thirty young children; she has little to no time to instruct little De’Andre or Clearance in the basic skills they seem so clearly to lack. So they get called down, sent to time out, removed from activities, and generally shunned. Instead of learning these skills, they become resentful of those who have the skills and meet with success in school. Indeed, they don’t even recognize that there are different skills successful students are using. “Those kids are just kiss-ups” is the common response.
What do we do with this students are they grow older and more intractable, more incorrigible? We do the logical thing: we suspend them. Talk back to the teacher? Get three days out of school. Fight with a student? Get five days out of school. Initiate a fight that is particularly brutal? Get ten days out of school. And this helps these students how? Giving students who don’t want to be in school because they’ve only met with failure in school a chance to get out of school advances their education how?
What’s in place for habitual offenders — alternative school — seems less than effective. Indeed, De’Andre and Clearance had already been to alternatives school, and they’d met with as much success there as they had in regular school.
I would imagine it’s the same success they’ve met everywhere else in life. And it seems to me that when people aren’t meeting success through the normal channels of life, they begin looking for it in other ways. Or, perhaps as in the cases of these boys’ lives, they apply the techniques that bring them relative success on the streets to institutional situations, where those same methods will bring not success but condemnation. Or even eventual incarceration.
And every day I see flickers of such futures in this or that student. I see reactions that I think, “Young man, that will get you fired in ten years.” And it occurs to me that perhaps the best thing I can do for such young men and women is provide an environment where they experience at least some success without resorting to a thug attitude.
They sit in their desks, which chance has placed side by side, and quibble. Snipe. Insult. Complain. One barges in on another’s conversation with an inane response meant only to provoke, then grows angry about the provocation. An act? The other talks about her nemesis as if she’s not there when in fact she’s within ten feet. Deliberate cruelty?
I intervene, and soon one or the other is saying words that could have easily come out of either’s mouth
“She’s so irritating!”
“I can’t stand her!”
“She does that stuff just to annoy me!”
“She won’t quit!”
And I find myself saying, “If.” If you’re so annoyed by her, why provoke her by cutting into her conversation? If you think she’s purposely irritating you, why encourage her by acknowledged her success? If she won’t quit, why don’t you?
The obvious answer isn’t always so obvious to adults; to expect a flash of mature intuition from thirteen-year-olds might be just looking for the miraculous. Still, I hope that eventually, once the blinders begin to fall off, they’ll recognize futility.
Girl 1: Did you lose your phone?
Girl 2: Yeah.
Girl 1: What for? For cussin’ out your mama?
Girl 2: My mama don’t care if I cuss her out.
Girl 1: Then what’d you lose the phone for?
Girl 2: I don’t know.
There is always one bright thought in our minds, when all the rest are dark. There is one thought out of which a moderately cheerful man can always make some satisfactory sunshine, if not a sufficiency of it.
Sometimes, I wonder. Some of the students I work with on a daily basis seem to have few bright images in their minds. Life is a constant crisis for them: everything from someone bumping them in the hallway to a perceived injustice from a teacher sets them off. They wear a scowl on their faces most of the time, and life seems to be one big trial for them.
Faber, in the quote above, is speaking of the belief in a joyous afterlife, but sometimes I wonder about the usefulness of that hope for someone who’s already lost all hope for a happy life here and now, and all by the age of fourteen.
The quoted excerpt is from Father Frederick Faber’s Spiritual Conferences, excerpted here.
Probably the majority of repentances have begun in the reception of acts of kindness, which, if not unexpected, touched men by the sense of their being so undeserved.
Reading Faber, I keep returning to thoughts of school and interactions with students. And I can’t deny that there are times, based on behavior of various students, that I find myself thinking that this or that student doesn’t deserve kindness. When someone is disrupting others, making it difficult to focus on the task at hand, focusing all her energies on getting everyone’s attention, she is attempting to take opportunities away from others. It’s a myth to think that students today aren’t interested in learning — the vast majority are, keenly so. But it only takes two or three in a classroom to derail the whole process, and an incorrigible student soon draws the ire of other students and the teacher.
It is precisely at those moments that I most decidedly don’t feel like being kind. It is in those situations that the temptation to cruelty is most acute. Responses come to mind that are so ineffably and cruelly inappropriate but at the same time seem so perfect. Yet a kind word can sometimes calm the whole situation, while cruelty will only debase everyone in the room. It’s the easy way out, which is why kindness can be so difficult.
The quoted excerpt is from Father Frederick Faber’s Spiritual Conferences, excerpted here.
We were writing about writing — an odd thing to my class of 25 eighth-graders, but they complied. Heads down, they scribbled for half an hour, turning out some of the best writing they’d done all year.
One young lady, Tina, after fifteen or twenty minutes of writing, declared, “I’m done!” I told her she should continue writing and that she could write about anything she chose.
“Even you?” she asked.
“Sure,” I replied, wondering what I might get. After all, Tina had a reputation, and I could tell from the first few moments of the first class that it might be a challenge to keep her quiet and focused.
In short, Tina said whatever came into her thoughts. If a comment was “stupid,” she let the poor bloke know it. If she realized she was hungry, sleepy, bored, thirsty, excited, amused, or anything else, she shared it with the whole class the instant she realized she was hungry, sleepy, bored, etc.
I’d spoken to her about it a few times. It was easy to lose my cool and simply react to her provocations, but I knew such reactions would serve little purpose. I also knew that, were I to leave her alone, she would quickly burn through all the steps in the school discipline policy; it would be easy then to get her out of class on a regular basis simply by writing administrative referral after referral.
By the end of the first quarter, she’d calmed down significantly. Her outbursts were increasingly rare, and she responded to my mild reminders to stay on task with a smile rather than an argument.
All of that went through my thoughts as I walked away from her desk. Immediately after all students were on their way to the final period of the day, I went through the papers and dug hers out.
She wrote,
Now I’m going to speak upon the Great Gary Scott. Mr. Scott, the best, is my favorite teacher. He may be boring, but he believes everybody can do it if they try. He has helped me so much and I thank him greatly and I have to say he is a great father figure. His daughter has a good daddy at home.
“She probably has no idea how great this makes me feel,” I muttered to myself, so I thanked her as she walked to the bus. “Those were very kind words, and I appreciate you sharing with me.”
She smiled and said “You’re welcome” quickly, bolting away from me as she suddenly saw a friend.
I sit in class with fourteen other adults, and we go through essays that students have submitted for group review. We share what we like and what works for us as well as what we think could be improved. We’re courteous but sufficiently critical. We take initiative, ask and answer questions, volunteer observations. The author jots notes about this or that comment, sitting silently yet respectfully listening.
Why can’t I get this to happen in my own classroom? I have a list of excuses:
For any given student, one or more of these end-of-the-day excuses might be true. Or none. Or all. Some are in my control; many are not. The common element, though, is probably the problem: “Students don’t.”
I make an effort to incorporate workshops into my teaching. Things don’t go as well as I’d hoped, so I refocus — “Stop thinking ‘students can’t’ and ‘students don’t’!” — and re-plan and try again. Somewhere, the right balance of innumerable factors exists, and someday, I’ll be leading a class like the one I participate in every Tuesday evening.
The school year ended today. It was as I predicted: lots of joy, fair amounts of crying. I told one tearful girl, “It gets less painful every time you reach the end of something like this.” Did I lie? She seemed to think, at the very least, that I didn’t know what I was talking about.
Why is it nostalgia is so much more potent when we’re young? Perhaps it’s simply our general lack of experience, and we’re often thinking, “It can’t get any better than this was,” and so we’re melancholy. Maybe it’s part of the naivete of youth, but this too is a result of being inexperienced in the cycles of contemporary life.
Of course, there were as many not tearful as there were with glistening cheeks. Perhaps they’re not as sentimental as the rest of us. Perhaps they have more experience in their fourteen years that has taught them the transience of most things. Sadly, it might be that they learned about temporariness from the love, attention, and affection they’ve received.
I have at least one such student every year. I always feel like I let him down. I always look back at the year and see countless opportunities to do more, to be more, for such students.
It leaves me wondering, once again, about the marks of a successful year. Testing-wise, I was very successful: I met my MAP score goals, and my E1H EOC grades average was just where I thought it should be. Yet what use are acronyms in determining a successful year? It seems a relatively shallow metric.
The truth is, I became a teacher because I simply love working with kids. Perhaps a selfish reason: I do get a certain high when I connect with a kid and feel I’ve somehow helped him. It’s hardly altruism, especially considering the times I’m doing the opposite: the moments when the urge to take a ridiculous behavior personally and become viscous becomes overwhelming. So maybe it’s not surprising that I have the depressive phases to go along with the manic moments.
This is all to explain why I’m feeling down even though it’s the end of the year.
Another kid left today that I find myself thinking, “I’d like to have another shot with him.” I’d like to have him in my classroom another year and manage to get myself out of the way and see what he needs and give it to him. His needs were not to be met by following the curriculum or making him play by all the admittedly arbitrary rules of the classroom. There was more going on in his life than iPods and texting friends, and I’ve a suspicion a large amount of it was negative. My class might have been one of the few bright spots in his day, but looking back over the year, I doubt it. I communicated to him all the things I swore I never would express through body language and tone to a student.
I finally caught on at the end of the year. (Why did it take so damn long? I knew — I had a similar student last year, and I swore I wouldn’t do what I did this year.) While other students were working on a final project, I realized the project might easily turn into yet another zero for him, and so I differentiated: I had him write an essay on three things he could do next year to meet with more success in the classroom. I gave him a pencil and a legal pad (he seldom had materials), and he always replaced the items on my desk at the end of the class.
What I read when he was done was a stinging condemnation, though he was polite in his tone and word choice. He didn’t even mean to condemn me. He just shared some feelings. Feelings of inadequacy that I fear I only heightened. Feelings of hopelessness that I worry I did nothing to assuage. Feelings of being trapped and only vaguely realizing it.
Real success in the classroom is not measured in completed assignments and MAP/ITBS/PASS scores. Success in the classroom is measured with a metric that, like black holes and dark matter, is hypothetical at best. We can infer it from a student’s smile, or a boy’s pride at walking into class having pencil and paper, or a girl’s wide eyes at getting a C on a test.
I forget this too often.
The school year ended today. It was as I predicted: lots of joy, fair amounts of crying. One girl said, “It’s not going to hit me until tonight. Then I’ll be sad.” And another student added, “And happy, cause we’re in high school.”
I know just how they feel. If only I can keep all this in mind until next August, when I’ll surely another Denny.
The problem with teaching is that it leads to manic-depressive thinking. When things are up, they’re really up. Confidence soars; it’s easy to get out of bed; grading and planning are a snap. When things are down, it can make one lose confidence in the entire national competency and grind one down into a pessimism that is almost palpable.
When Gorbachev and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, Reagan used one of his most loved slogans:
The President: […] We have listened to the wisdom in an old Russian maxim. And I’m sure you’re familiar with it, Mr. General Secretary, though my pronunciation may give you difficulty. The maxim is: Dovorey no provorey — trust, but verify.
The General Secretary: You repeat that at every meeting. [Laughter]
The President: I like it. [Laughter] (Source)
It was in that spirit that I approached an administrator to verify a student’s explanation of her absence.
“No she did not come talk to me” came the reply, and my own words to the students, from the beginning of the year, echoed: “You have my trust now. Once it’s gone, it will take a long time to rebuild it.” This young lady, sadly, has lost my trust.
I’m not sure she’ll care. I can see her brushing it off as if it’s no big deal, and it might very well not be a big deal. Someone who hasn’t spent much time in an environment that fosters trust might not know what it’s worth, and in that case, it’s difficult not to try to care for her.
Many of my students expose their emotional buttons and switches freely and openly. Within a few minutes of meeting some of them, I can tell what their sensitivities are.
“How many administrative referrals did you get last year?” I ask some of them, with a smile that I hope says, “I’m not trying to size you up — I’m just curious.”
“A lot,” a girl — call her Ann — responds.
“Did you notice my question?” I query. “I didn’t ask, ‘Did you receive any referrals?’ but rather ‘How many did you get?’ I’ll bet you got several of those referrals because you simply walked away from a teacher who was saying something you didn’t want to hear.”
I have her attention: she’s curious, and that’s always a good thing.
“How could you tell?” Ann asks.
With their posture, gait, tone and volume of voice, many of these kids speak loads without saying a word. Yet they’re totally unaware of it. Of more concern is that they’re unaware that others are aware of it and can use it against them.
“When you advertise what ‘makes’ you lose control,” I explain, “You provide others with ammunition. The teacher who doesn’t like you at that moment knows: ‘All I have to do is push a little harder and she’ll definitely give me something to write up.’ You let others know your weakness and they might use them against you.” I pause for a moment, deciding to use a bit of vernacular: “Then who got played? Who got owned?”
“Me,” she says meekly.
I have these little conversations after class with the kids that would be labeled “at risk” because they are at risk: they’re in danger of becoming slaves to their own impulses and the people who can pick up on those signals and use them.
Occasionally, there are moments that illustrate that they are indeed beginning to pick up on the signals they give off. They are aware that others can only “make them” mad if they allow it by advertising their sensitivities and reacting predictably.
This afternoon, while students were waiting for their buses, I was joking with a young man that I could probably get him in a state that would end in a disciplinary referral for him. We’d been joking with each other all class about such things, and he stridently denied that I could “push his buttons.”
“How about you,” I ask the boy’s neighbor. “Do you think you have advertised what gets you hot? Do you think I could push your buttons and get you furious in just a few moments in class” He shrugs his shoulders.
I turn to Ann, always one of the last students waiting for her bus. “I’ll bet I could get you.” I know I can: I already have, inadvertently. The question — the hope — appears in my mind: “Will she own up to it?”
“You already have, Mr. S.” Her grin is an odd combination of devilish delight and sheepish vulnerability.
I smile. “Do you think I could do it again if I tried? I won’t ever try, but if I were to try, what do you think?”
She shrugs her shoulders and looks away. For just a moment, though, her eyes say, “I don’t think so. At least I hope not.” A first step — an admission of ownership and of personal responsibility.
“One small step for man…” I think, as the students leave for the bus. I glance down at the roll book and see four more names that need to have such a brief moment of self-confidence in their ability to control their lives.
“I’ll start on him next week,” I mumble.
It’s all part of the growing realization I’m having about working with these “tough” kids. The cliche is spot on: they don’t care what I know until they know that I care. And they’re beginning to know that I care because with me, it’s not business as usual in the discipline department. The etymology of “discipline” includes notions of teaching, not notions of punishing, and I try to put that into practice in the classroom.
He walked onto the court, fully suited up, and all eyes were on him. In helmet and full pads, Ron stood in stark contrast to the other players, who wore tank tops and baggy pants. Their shoes squeaked on the hardwood floor while Ron’s cleats clipped, clopped, and slid about. He was ready for the game, though, and eagerly awaited the start.
Jump ball and the opposing team had the ball. Though his start was awkward as his metal cleats slid across the highly polished floor, Ron quickly got up to full speed and tackled the opponent who was, oddly enough, tempting fate by bouncing the ball on the ground. Full contact–the player went down, the ball shot off toward the center of the court, and Ron was just about to dive on it when he heard the whistle.
“Foul!” cried the ref, and Ron was confused. It had been a clean hit. There was no unnecessary roughness. Still, he shook it off and prepared for the next play.
The opposing team opted for a pass from the far sideline. Ron timed his hit perfectly: just as his victim’s fingers came in contact with the ball, Ron rammed him, driving his foe to the floor.
Another whistle; another foul.
Two clean hits in a row and mysterious fouls called on both. Ron was perplexed the first time; the second time, he was getting heated.
When his third tackle brought another foul and an ejection from the game, Ron was livid. He began yelling and screaming at the ref, protesting violently all three fouls and suggesting that the official was visually impaired.
Yet the spectators and players were utterly confused at Ron’s reaction. It was if he didn’t have any idea that the rules he’d brought onto the court weren’t the same rules everyone had agreed upon for the game. They weren’t even close. And yet, instead of trying to figure out why everything seemed to be going against him, instead of asking for help, Ron ranted violently. The referee tried to explain that Ron was applying the wrong set of rules to the game, but all Ron heard was gibberish. The ref might as well have been speaking Greek, and this infuriated Ron even more.
Finally, he declared that he couldn’t wait until this game was over and plopped himself down in the middle of the court, ignoring all pleas to move so the game could continue.
