I will write the school update though. Cause yeah… I just will. 🙂
I had a gnarly situation this week with a student that lead to considerable angst. For the first several days in class he announced loudly that he wasn’t going to read and he didn’t care what I said about it. I tried calling his mom after class on Monday but she wasn’t home and he took a message. I called back on Tuesday… she hadn’t gotten the message. Turns out his mom is a wacko and before I could explain to her why I was calling she started yelling at him and I listened to a screaming match between them. I felt awful. He wasn’t actually in trouble with me. I was calling to ask him mom if she could please check with him in the evenings to see if he had reading homework and ask him to please do it. That was all I wanted to get across.
Wednesday and Thursday in class was a nightmare. The kid was willfully defiant and rude and just plain awful to me. He made a huge point out of letting everyone in the room know that he hated me and he wasn’t going to do the work. Friday started out even worse. He asked me a question in a nasty tone of voice and I let my temper get the better of me and I wasn’t very helpful in response. I had sent in a referal to the student/family center (our counseling center) the day before because I didn’t want to give him a referal for detention and just as he called me a bitch for not being helpful with his question in came a TA with a pass for him to leave class to talk to the student/family center. I gratefully handed him the pass and sent him out of class. Multiple students told me that he didn’t have the right to treat me that way and that he was not adequately provoked for that kind of behavior.
He came back into class with about 15 minutes left obviously with a huge chip still on his shoulder. The class was working silently on writing so I pulled him out of class. The first words out of my mouth were an apology. I told him at length why I called his mom, what my intentions were, and why I now know that it was a horrible idea and I feel really bad. He was visibly shocked. We talked for a few minutes about the mistakes I have made with him and I apologized again. He apologized for his behavior and explained why he was lashing out at me (his mom really is pretty crazy) and we agreed to start over with one another on Monday. I gave him permission to stay in at break any time something comes up that he is upset about. He was really surprised that when I do something that is messed up he can call me on it. I think things will be ok now. He really is a nice kid and I had been looking forward to working with him.
In other news:
My unit plan for short stories is basically done and I have figured out almost everything that I am doing for every other unit other than poetry. Poetry isn’t my thing and I am having a bitch of a time figuring out that unit. I also took over the senior class Friday. AHH!! For the next three weeks I am doing exactly what my master teacher wants done because I don’t want to change approaches with the kids mid-way through a book. That wouldn’t be fair. Then I take over and have them on my own for 12 weeks. 🙂 That is… if my school doesn’t add on another English class… and it looks like they will. oy. All of the senior Enligh classes have 34-37 kids in them and the teaching contract says 33 kids. This is a problem.
I started writers workshop this week and I am really blown away by how personal a lot of the writing was! I thought it was weird that I volunteered so much personal information with people I didn’t know well. Yeah right! I’m apparently normal. It is really cool to get to know the kids and I think this year is going to be so much fun!
This weekend my goal is to get all of the assignments and rubrics done for this unit so that I can make all of my overheads and copies on Tuesday when I will have extra time on campus. Then I won’t have to be so worried about arriving as early in the mornings. 🙂
Good for you. Sounds like you ended up winning his respect by being honest and fair. Peter is a teacher, so I get to hear stories about his middle schoolers sometimes and it just amazes me how well he handles them. Even though things didn’t start out perfectly with this one, I think you handled the situation very well. Just think – he will probably remember you forever because already you have made a difference!
autononomous kids
What’s the age group you’re working with again?
Just curious.
I hope you’re on the right track. If he’s a bright kid, you probably are.
I was a pretty angry and willful kid too sometimes, and one of the things that really got on my wrong side was the attitude of some teachers that if I was going to be difficult for them, they could ‘go over my head’ and ‘tell on me’ to my parents. Especially after my parents divorced (4th grade), my mom, while maybe not explicitly crazy, was frequently not a rational or competent person and the authority I gave her over me was pretty slight. And my dad simply was not in the picture.
So when a teacher acted like they didn’t have to deal with me directly because they somehow thought they held the whip hand over me at home, they didn’t exactly get anything that looked like respect or cooperation back from me.
I think you might have done exactly the right thing with this kid, though of course it’s hard to tell from here. I know it certainly would have set me back on MY heels to have a teacher show that kind of comprehension and understanding in dealing with me. It certainly would have changed my attitude towards them as a person.
In any case, it surely reflects well on you, to be in the position of authority and to be dealing with those kind of responses and still be able to push your ego and emotion to the side enough to be able to say “I’m sorry” to the kid for causing problems for him that you did not intend.
I was not exactly a great student in school. Like I say, after divorce, nobody really had the power to ‘make’ me do what I wasn’t interested in doing, and I frequently had report cards that were an even mix of ‘A’s and ‘D’s or ‘F’s. And aside from my interest in the subject, the thing that made the biggest difference for me was my respect for the teacher and their ability to make their subject interesting.
I tended to have a love/hate relationship with teachers and they tended to feel the same way about me. But the ones that acted like they were dealing with me as an autonomous individual, regardless of how well I was doing in the subject, always had my respect and sometimes my love as well.
I think I would have loved you. I hope things continue to go better with this kid, but even if they don’t, all I can say is ‘you go, girl!’.
😀
Re: autononomous kids
English 3, so they are in the 15 (if they have September/October birthday as a Junior) to 17 cause I have several seniors.
Malixe, thank you so much for writing this. I think you hit the nail on the head and you made me actually stop and think back to how I would have handled the same situation. I can’t believe it didn’t even occur to me that he would be pissed off because I talked to his mom, but I would have been.
Re: autononomous kids
OK, I could suddenly not remember if you were doing middle school or high school, so I had to ask.
I was initially thinking middle school, so his reactions are a little more serious than if he were a younger student, (in my eyes anyway). But at that age, autonomy and respect are things they’re really craving, even if they’re not entirely ready for or entitled to them.
I’m sure it can be a hell of a job trying to keep track of the quality of relationship between parents and kids both, (and definitely not in your job description) but yeah–if you can use the parents to help with the kids, by all means do it. But if the parents are not functional, try to deal with the kids on their own first.
I surely don’t care for the idea of him being disrespectful and calling you names, but I can understand his feelings. In my time, I wouldn’t have bothered to pass on any teacher messages to my mom either, and I openly laughed at teachers that threatened to ‘call my parents’ over issues that I felt were between the teacher and myself. My feelings were, if you want to ‘deal with me’, then deal with ME.
Heh. After a fight with my stepmother, I more or less ‘kicked myself out of the house’ a little over halfway through my senior year and was living on my own and supporting myself. I was still going to classes, knowing I wasn’t going to graduate, but still wanting to at least finish the year.
A couple of months later I walked into my graphics class and my teacher told me that my ‘mother’ had stopped by and inquired about how I was doing. I was momentarily baffled, because as far as I knew, my mother was 500 miles away.
When he described my stepmother, I got so angry that I scared the poor man. Fortunately for us both, he was one of the teachers that I loved, and I shortly calmed down enough to realize that -he- had no way of knowing any better. I spent the rest of the class session trying to make him feel okay about it. Mr. Morsett was such a nice man…
Great job! It really is amazing how far you can get with high schoolers when you treat them as young adults. A lot of teachers are reluctant to reach out on a personal level with kids, and just want to be automatons. I can’t deal that way, and I’m very happy with the results I get. Sometimes you do get burned, in that they are KIDS and they are capable of lashing out pretty hard. It’s a risk, but I think it’s a valuable risk. Great work.
You are a mighty teacher, hon. I’m going to admire you now. (I think you handled it pretty well–who knew that his mom was crazy?) It really makes me happy seeing somebody go into the teaching line who treats students like people. You and Aberdeen are my heroes.
It also sounds to me like you handled it really well. He started off the interaction with visible rebellion. If he’s used to being in antagonistic relationships, he probably does that with all his teachers, and some fraction of them probably eventually get around to calling the parents to complain about his bad behavior. The mother’s reaction (even if she is nuts) indicates that she is used a teacher calling meaning that he’s in trouble for something, again. More strife at home would then lead him to be even more rebellious at school, because he’d want to lash out at the one who just caused it. Congratulations, you may have just cut a vicious cycle off at the knees.
Hmm, I was such an annoying little goody-two-shoes, that I don’t ever remember my teachers having any contact with my parents beyond any mandated everybody’s-has-to meetings. And those, that I remember, were in elementary school. I’ve always kinda had the impression that contact with parents was discouraged unless there was some serious problem. What were you given in your training about when/if/appropriateness of such contact?
I’m impressed. Not a bit surprised but impressed none the less. You make the world a better place lady.
Thank you.
You rock – We know that, but it’s fun to tell you. 😉