Becoming a Teacher VII

I had some great success with difficult students early on in my career and as I have said, that meant that I got almost every difficult one that came along. Most of those kids would be in a behavior disorder classroom now but there wasn’t such a place back then. Several times the district transferred a difficult kid in town to be in my room. On one occasion a student from the Salem Elementary school was bused to my building to be in my room. Twice students from the Trenton area who would have gone to Pleasant Lawn were bused to my classroom.

These were kids who generally brought terror to the eyes of teachers in the building and students on the playground. Somehow, with patience, I was able to calm everyone including the kid. Sometimes the kid would come and there wouldn’t be any problems at all. The change and having a male teacher had been enough to influence the behavior. Other times it wasn’t so easy! Then it was a journey.

Negative behavior usually just doesn’t go away overnight. It takes time and persistence. Even the smallest gain must be celebrated and rewarded. The goal is to constantly reframe every situation so the student is ready to learn. Some of my colleagues wanted the kid to be contrite while I wanted the kid to be back in the room with a positive attitude. That meant that he/she didn’t carry the punishment, whatever it was, on his shoulders for long. There is a strong psychological foundation for that approach but some of my colleagues were more into punishment until it hurts.

Many parents believed in the latter philosophy. If their child was involved in some kind of a problem they always wanted to make sure everyone got the same punishment. If it was clearly the other kids fault they wanted to make sure his punishment was severe. They always pressed me for details but the consequences for someone else’s child is really done of their business. I usually assured them the child was punished and left it at that.

I had a particularly challenging kid who was very violent during my time at Harlan. His family background was horrible. He had witnessed a great deal of violence and inappropriate behavior in his ten years of life. Some of the stories related to him made me physically ill.

I tried every trick in the book to manage him with little success. His father told me to “just whup his butt!” and the principal actually did that once. I was a witness to it and found it very sobering. It worked for a while.

What really finally worked was developing a relationship with the kid…eventually playing with him and others on the playground. The better I knew him and he knew me the more I could reason with him. That was an important point in my emerging belief that relationships are everything. I have held fast to that since.

Once, I had to ask this student to leave the room. In the hall I chastised him severely and shaking my finger backed him into the wall. Suddenly, I saw a tear run down his cheek. I couldn’t believe my words had that kind of effect and, bewildered, I said, “Why are you crying?” He meekly responded, “I backed in to the wall heater!”