I've been having a hard time with one of my students. No big deal - comes with the territory. It's never even about me, it's about whatever else is going on in their lives, that manifests itself in the classroom. Especially with the kids whose parents aren't doing their jobs. The classroom is the only place they are held accountable for behavior and they don't like it. They usually take it out on me. It's part of the job. They're 12. Right? This particular child has a very bad situation. He lives with his father, who literally doesn't give a shit about him. His mother lives in Phoenix, but she's the one we are supposed to communicate with. The kid is an absolute basket case. He bullies and harasses the other kids. He is incredibly disrespectful to adults. He is one of those that thinks he is the class clown, and does stupid things to get attention but instead of laughing the other kids roll their eyes.
His mother is just downright nasty. Since the kids is constantly in trouble, the emails fly back and forth like crazy. (She is deaf, so that is her preferred means of communication.) Every single email we send to her is responded to with excuses about his behavior, and accusations and insinuations about why it's our fault, not his.
On Monday this kid had a very bad day in my class. He hates the class (it's an elective and we do calculator stuff or current events) so every single day he asks to go somewhere as soon as the bell rings. After a few days of this I just started saying, as soon as you are done with your work, you can go. Monday, the kids had just come in from lunch and I was getting them their calculators and their assignments, and this kid asks to go to the bathroom. I gave him my stock response for right after lunch - no, you can't go to the bathroom/get a drink/ use the phone/ talk to the counselor, you just had lunch. You have to do that kind of stuff on your own time. Well, he didn't like that one bit. He asked again, and this time I said, yes you can go - just do your work first and I will let you go. He asked again and I ignored him. He asked over and over again, his voice getting louder and louder, and finally got up with his things and left the room. I just said, don't come back. I wrote a referral, and sent an email to my team, the administration, and his mother, telling exactly what happened. We moved on with class, as always, like nothing happened.
Yesterday I got to work and was greeted with a nasty email from the mother, of course. She made some excuses, and then said that there was one thing she thought was particularly inappropriate. She said that her son told her as soon as he left the room, a friend of his told him that I was talking about him after he left and saying that he was just doing this for attention. She said she thought it was totally unprofessional and who would do that, talking about a kid after they left the room? Opinions like that should be kept in the teacher's lounge, not the classroom, she said. She said the kids are making fun of her son, saying that he does things just for attention. (I wonder if it occurred to her that this doesn't even make sense - the only people that would have heard me, had her son been telling the truth, were still in the classroom. He left alone, so how could a friend tell him anything?)
I responded to all and said I wasn't sure where this came from... we had resumed class as if nothing had happened, and all I had said to him was that he couldn't come back. If the other kids are making fun of him, then it is probably because they are witness to his behavior every day. I said that if she had any doubts about her son's behavior, or my behavior for that matter, she should come and observe my classroom before she jumped to conclusions. I said I work way too hard for my students to be spoken to and treated in this manner.
My entire teaching team, all three of them, replied to all and said that if this kid continues to have excuses made for him, nothing will change; that we are professionals and have been trained to work with kids; that the only person responsible for this kid's behavior is this kid. Parent replied with the same accusation, again with a rude tone, which I just deleted.
This is where it gets nasty. At lunch I found, in my mailbox, an article about how important it is to build relationships with middle school students. Somebody anonymously put it in my box. As if I didn't know that I need to have good relationships with my students. As if I haven't written papers on the subject. As if no matter what is happening, I am not doing enough. My team backed me up, so I know it wasn't one of them. It had to have been either the principal or assistant principal. I tend to think it was the principal. When a kid does something rotten and gets kicked out of class, her response is to sit with them in her office and give them warm fuzzies until their mood improves. Whatever - that is her decision. I, however, am a math teacher. I am not going to stop class and give warm fuzzies to some jerk who is disrupting, and take even more time away from the other thirty-something kids that need to learn their math, so that their mood will improve. I don't really care about their mood. It's math class, not kindergarten.
I sat the kid down after that and had a little chat. I told him exactly what his mother said - that he told her a friend told him that I was talking about him after he left the room. He says no, no, this happened a long time ago. Another teacher said she wouldn't sit me in the middle of the room because I would just try and get everyone's attention. My mom got it mixed up. I then told him that his mom said kids were making fun of him, saying he does things for attention. He said nobody is making fun of him. I said, are you sure? Because we can't have people bullying you. He said he was fine, nobody was bullying him. I said, if someone was, would you tell an adult that could help you? He said yeah. I typed up the transcript of the interview and it's in my computer.
This whole time, I have been thinking about some of the best advice I ever read - If you don't know what to do, don't do anything. So I haven't done anything. I thought, maybe I am overreacting. I will feel better tomorrow. But I don't feel better. I feel betrayed. When I started at that school in October, those kids HATED me. They had got through the entire first quarter of school without having to do anything in math. Now all of a sudden they had to be on time, act right, work the whole class period, and do homework. When they acted like an idiot, they got sent to the office with a referral. They absolutely could not stand me. They complained to the other teachers incessantly. They wanted the sub back.
There are 130 of them. At this point I would say that at least 110 of them like me. A few don't care about anything, but they don't cause me any grief. Then there is that small percentage that I have never been able to reach.
I think that for the administration to expect me to build relationships with all 130 kids, given the situation I came into, is a superhuman feat. The bottom line is that someone, probably the principal, agrees with this kid's mom that it's the teachers, not the kid. Not the kid's situation in life, which we have no control over. Not the kid's behavior, which we have no control over. So I guess I am supposed to just let him disrupt the class at his discretion, let him go wherever he wants, not make him do his work, etc. so that I can have a good relationship with him. There's just one problem - that's not a good relationship. That's the same relationship he has with every other adult in his life, who does not call him out on his crap. I refuse to be one of those adults.
No comments:
Post a Comment