A Day Off

Yesterday I took a "day off." I have been feeling under the weather for a week now and decided that if I didn't stay home things would only get worse. But what a price to pay for staying home. I spent most of it working on final grades for the marking period and calling the homes of students who are about to find an F on their permanent record. I made so many phone calls, calls I never have the time to make or the energy left to make them with by the time school is over. Not only did I work more than rest yesterday, but I returned to the aftermath of a storm today. At the end of every day, my classroom is littered with paper balls (I've been told this is a uniquely 9th grade thing to do), but the sheer quantity of paper balls was tripled in comparison to the normal mass. One student decided to try and speed up time and get the sub off track by moving the minute hand of the wall clock with the paper face. He succeeded in breaking off the second hand and leaving the clock stuck on 1:00. I managed to fix it this morning, and he came to tell me what he did without offering an apology. In addition to this, there is now a population of fruit flies occupying my room. We haven't seen a janitor in over a week. I am strict about not letting kids eat in my classroom, but they still throw all kinds of junk into the garbage bin and down into the air conditioning vent. They are complete slobs.

I just spoke on the phone with the sub who covered for me yesterday. Not too long ago I was in her shoes. And if I haven't made it clear, the thing I hate the most about my job is that it is a lot like subbing, except I have to go back every day. My students are incredibly disrespectful, loud, messy, and annoying. Of course, there are only a handful of disrespectful students, but they manage to paint an ugly picture of the entire class. The woman who covered for me is no older than me, still standing, but not likely to want to return any time soon. I apologized for my class' behavior and felt ashamed. Then she said, "It's not your fault." That's the thing: these students aren't my fault and yet I'm somehow responsible for changing them. I am doing my best to put in place the structures they need and the routine to succeed, but they have come to me with bad habits, bad manners, and teenage hormones. What can I do about that?

This week, as a staff, we have put several boys on behavior contracts. Now when they are defiant, it goes in their record and after five they are suspended. After three suspensions they get sent to another school. What does this accomplish? It gets them out of my hair, but it opens up a space for the kid who was expelled from another area school. Today I was walking to the gym with one of these contracted students. He showed marked improvement in his behavior on Monday and Tuesday, and my guess is that it was in anticipation of the all staff meeting being held in his honor yesterday morning. Today, however, only one day after being put on a behavior contract and he's back to his former ways. He told me today that he doesn't care if he gets suspended and doesn't know why he is coming to school anyway. He said he would rather just be on the street. This makes no sense to me. I think of students with this mentality as the ones who struggle academically, who lack confidence, and support at home. This young man doesn't fit that mold. He is very smart and could easily be one of the best students in class if he cared. His mom is active in his life, too. I just don't understand. I do know that he is deeply wounded by his father's absence and blames his mother constantly for it. He is lacking male role models and I've seen him be a completely different person in the presence of an adult male. I cannot see how taking to the street is a real option for him. And yet, today at the gym he decided to trespass into the aerobics room, use the stereo to play his music, and then threw two backpacks over a wall into the office of a personal trainer before taking off down the street. He is unmanageable and way beyond the scope of what I can do for him. He is likely to end up at the continuation school, but I can't imagine he'll do much better there.

I am trying to figure out a consequence for my students tomorrow for their misbehavior. I'm hatching a plan to have them all write a reflective essay about yesterday followed by a massive cleaning of my room. Anyone who does not comply will have to stay after school and scrap gum from under the seats. Sounds like a nice plan, huh? Except the last thing I want to do on a Friday afternoon is spend any more time than necessary with a group of kids who completely disregard what I say. I can hear my grandmother in shock right now, saying, "Gosh, in my day when an authority figure told you do something you wouldn't consider not doing it." That is not the case today. The question is how to value the backbones of my students without being their victim?

Dealing with ADD

During today's kayaking outing, one of the boys was given his final strike and can no longer go out no the water with us. We were paddling through the Marina when a yacht tried to come in and dock. He had to get over to the side, but this one student paddled right out in front of the yacht and disregarded the instructor's demands. The truth is, I don't think this student knows how to paddle in reverse because he wasn't paying attention to instructions earlier. The instructor realizes this too and later was more sympathetic than when he paddled over to my student to yell at him that he would not be welcome back. The bottom line, however, is a safety issue.

I really feel for this student of mine (we'll call him Mateo). Whatever your beliefs about ADD or ADHD, put those aside for a minute and realize that those who are diagnosed suffer regardless of whether you believe in the disease/condition or not. Mateo stopped taking medication, per his doctor's orders, in middle school. He is off the wall on almost a daily basis. He talks in a high-pitched whine that is grating to say the least. He is also small for his age, but chubby which he publicly blames on free access to his uncle's taco truck. In the first weeks of school, he was my number one adversary until one day when he returned with his completed reflective essay after being dismissed from class and we had a heart to heart. He told me about the ADD and that he often gets angry in class. His angry materializes as incessant talking/whining and jokes. He told me he used to have a stress ball that he squeezed but students stole it from him last year (which reminds me that I was going to try to find him a new one and have forgotten it in my millions of other things to do). To make matters worse, Mateo is an outcast. The other students are dead tired of him because he is distracting in class, annoying, and different.

During our impromptu after school meeting, I suggested that he and I have a plan and a signal. If he needs to get up from his assigned seat because he is angry or overly restless, he shows me the signal and then takes care of his needs. I have a side table by my desk and a folding chair he can set up. Mateo now pulls his left ear when he needs to move. Well, that was the plan, but he's taken to just sitting away from the group on his own from the beginning. Sometimes he asks me if he can go for a walk and I let him. Yes, he is getting special treatment. I can hear my professor from the "Teaching Students with Special Needs" class I took last year saying, "Being fair is not treating everyone the same. It is giving people what they need as individuals." It is better for Mateo if he can walk away. It is also better for the class who can then concentrate on their own work. The good thing about Mateo is that he is smart and he has skills. With five minutes of focus he can do what takes other students a half an hour. This might be part of the problem and part of his lack of focus; it may be a way he's coped through being bored in school. I don't know. What I do know is that I wonder about the idea of mainstreaming all special needs kids. I want them to feel they are part of the fold of the school, but at the same time they do have the ability to severely stop the learning of others. If his behavior in my classroom became a safety issue as it does on the water, I would have the ability to remove him. But, that is not an option and I have to find a way to work with him.

I am getting better at keeping my personal irritation with him out of it. I feel like an advocate for him, and I'm frustrated that the other students are so mean to him. I need a plan and some supported back up on this because I think Mateo is in a position of being harassed and possibly even hurt by other students. I have heard tormented comments in the hall about him being "raped by his father," and there have been many comments made about his sexuality, students believing he is gay. One day last week, when I asked the class to write about what they would change if they could change anything in their life, he said, "I would change me. I'm too creepy and no one likes me." He was not shy or embarrassed about saying this but blurted it out to the whole class, who laughed and then got yelled at by me. I didn't fix the problem. I just got pissed off. The good thing is that as I write this update I know that I need to take this to the larger community. I am not the only teacher of Mateo's and we need to ensure his safety at our school. I'm off to write that email and then put my social worker hat to bed.