matching tracksuits

I received an email with the title,

You are nominated for a Ph.d

I think I’ll pass.

Still, it’s not as bad as Armstrong College spelling “curriculum” with two “i’s” (i.e., “cirriculum”) on their “Academics” menu when their little site went live a couple of years ago…

Our school has a fairly strict dress code, and part of that includes the prohibition of wearing jackets inside the building. If students are cold, they are to bring a sweater.

Yesterday, before the last period, a young man came sauntering down the hall, slightly dragging one foot behind him in that ever-so-fashionable gangster shuffle, his camouflage jacket on, and everything about him shouting, "I have low self-esteem."

As he approached me, I found myself thinking, "Come on -- take the jacket off now so I don't have to say something." It was the last day before Christmas break; I'd finished all my classes; I did not want to have a confrontation over something silly.

But he didn't, and so I said something, and he started showing his full "gangster" plumage. He refused to look at me; he refused to acknowledge me; in short, he acted like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum.

I told him, "You're making an issue of something that need not be an issue by showing me extreme disrespect. If we're unable to work this out here, I'll simply write a referral to the administration and let the vice principle work it out." Nothing, for a moment. Finally, he looked at me. "That's a start."

As we talked, I eventually asked him, "How many times have you gotten in-school suspension."

"Two."

"Notice what I did?" I asked. "I didn't even ask you 'Have you ever gotten ISS?' I knew. I don't even know your name, yet I knew you'd had ISS. Want to know how I knew that?"

A begrudging, "How?"

"Your body language screams it," I told him. "No one who hadn't been to ISS would have acted as you've been acting over a stupid coat. Your slouching refusal to give me eye contact, your silly refusal to acknowledge anything I said, the way you smack your teeth as if to provide punctuation to every single sentence I utter -- all these things said, 'This is a kid who finds himself in trouble a lot.' Did you want to tell me that?"

These kids have no idea how much they communicate without even opening their mouths, something I hope to start remedying next quarter when I teach my related arts class. More later -- right now the syllabus is still in development...

What is it that's so difficult about walking in a line? Is there some genetic abnormality that appeared about the same time as public education that makes it all but impossible to walk in a single-file line 100 feet to the media center?

I have to preteach each and every class before heading down the hall to the library or to the computer lab, or anywhere for that matter, and of my four classes, only one manages to do it consistently well. Another manages most of the time. The other two are just disasters.

Time for Natural Consequences.

What is the natural consequence of people walking down the hallway disruptively? Kids in the classrooms they pass lose learning time. The cost is time; the consequence, then, should be time. And that's why our sixth period spent some portion of the twenty minutes of pre-lunch outside time practicing walking in a straight line. But I really didn't want to belabor the point, and as always, I didn't want to make it seem vindictive. Time for classroom management technique number two: provide choices, not threats.

"So, folks, we have a choice before us: either we're going to walk down the hall in a manner befitting mature eighth graders and then we'll go outside, or we'll continue to try it until we do get it right."

Of course they nailed it the first time, which is for them both good and bad. It's good because they got to go outside immediately; it's "bad" because they've once again shown that they're capable of it and that there's no reason for them to do otherwise.

A teacher who wakes up thinking, "Oh my, what lovely light streaming in through the window" on an early-September Thursday morning has such calming thoughts for only a few milliseconds until the realization hits, the panic sets in, and stupid certainty that there's no way he'll get to work on time.