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.
Today you asked me a question that I’ve never heard you ask before: “Mr. S, what’s my Dojo percentage.” You’ve always insisted that Class Dojo is a waste of time and a generally stupid idea, and although I’ve never given up trying to convince you of its value, I never really thought you’d come around and see it for what it is: a powerful tool for monitoring and controlling your behavior. After all, everyone is keeping points on us in their heads for all the good and bad things we do. It’s called a reputation. But at least with Dojo, you get an idea of where your strengths and weaknesses are. Anyway, your question caught me off guard, because I really didn’t know. I had to check. And that was a good thing, because in the past, I could have likely guessed it without looking: “No more than 30%, I’d say.”
And at that moment, young man, you sealed your fate. Previously, you’d simply been disrespecting me and my authority. But mocking the school-wide discipline program, you disrespected the entire school, the entire administration, and the entire teaching staff that came up with a school-wide plan to help you and students like you change some of the damaging behaviors you and students like you so clearly and brazenly exhibit. These are behaviors that will destroy your future if you do not make a serious attempt to change them, and our school discipline plan is intended to help prevent that, to help you see in an on-going basis the negative (and positive) behaviors you’re showing. And so it is not intended to scare or frighten or even punish: it’s intended to help. But you showed that you don’t want help, that you’re set the way you are, that you see a bright future with your behaviors. Ironically, it was that very short-sightedness that we’re trying to help you correct.