On Second Chances

Someone in my credentialing program, I don't remember who, once told me that kids were like puppies--remarkably resilient and forgiving. During my first year of teaching, I often thought about how untrue this claim appeared to be, based on my then-limited experience in the classroom. I remember being so frustrated with how unforgiving students seemed to be--no matter how hard I thought I was working to serve them, to help them, to uplift them, they always seemed to focus on (and remember) the most minute of injustices. When I recognized my mistakes and tried to change the classroom culture, my students seemed awfully slow to follow.

Thus, I was understandably apprehensive when I moved from 6th to 8th grade, realizing that I would once again have many of those same students with whom I started my career, and fearing that they would remember in painful detail all of my mistakes and weaknesses. The expectations we bring with us into a situation will often shape that situation more than we realize, and I feared I would return to being the sort of teacher my once-and-former-students expected me to be.

Fortunately, I had learned one vital lesson during the intervening year--how to love my students. Certainly it helps that my students matured between sixth and eighth grade, and that I learned quite a bit about effective classroom management; it also helps that time tempers even unpleasant memories, and familiarity breeds fondness in adolescents. But I still believe that love was and is the key. Last year around March, I came to the realization that I loved nearly all of my students. This year, by the grace of God, I've been given the gift to love all of my students. Even the most obnoxious students I find myself seeing with eyes of compassion, and genuine desire for their success. I no longer secretly wish that just one or two of my students will move, or suddenly be discovered to live just outside the school's attendance boundaries.

That love, a miracle in itself, has brought on a chain-reaction of other little miracles, as I build relationships with students that allow them to trust me, to open up to me. I'm still not convinced they are learning all the historical thinking skills I want them to learn, but I am convinced that because they know I care for them, and because they trust me, they will some how be better people for having been my students. And it feels good to know that. It feels good to have them come to my classroom at lunch or after school, just to visit, or to seek advice. It feels good when J., who said to me at the end of 6th grade "Mr. Douglas, you can barely handle 6th graders--how will you handle 8th graders?" now says to me "You know Mr. Douglas, I think you're doing a pretty good job."

It feels good to be given a second chance, and it only happened because I was willing to give my students a second (third, fourth, fifth...) chance.

My students did this on my birthday a few weeks ago. One of the best gifts I could have received, and something that certainly would not have happened with the same kids two years ago.

Still Here, and Thankful to Have Survived This Long

Ten months have elapsed since my last post, but I am still here--now over a quarter of the way through year three in the classroom. Already, last year seems such a distant memory--a memory that sweetens as it ferments in my mind, and in the minds of my students.

One sweet experience I have enjoyed on several occasion since the beginning of the school year is the visits from last year's eighth graders, now ninth graders looking back fondly on what must seem to them now a much simpler time. One particular visit from the first week of the school year still stands out in my mind:

Juliana was a "tough girl" when she was in my class last year. Heavy eye-shadow and a variety of piercings accompanied a general disdain for authority and a vocabulary that might embarrass a sailor. Fortunately, I had a decent relationship with her, so we rarely went head-to-head (not true for our administrators), but she also rarely took my class very seriously. We parted in June on good terms, but I had grave concerns about her academic future.

Then, one morning in late August, as I was putting some finishing touches on my syllabus, Juliana* appeared in my doorway. She rushed over to my desk, gave me a great big hug, and proceeded to tell me all about her new experiences as a ninth grader at the neighboring high school, where classes had started about two weeks previously.

"You wouldn't believe how much I've changed, Mr. Douglas," she said, "I actually care about school now! If only I could go back and tell my younger self to shape up, I would have had a much better time in middle school." She told me about the classes she loved, and the one teacher she couldn't stand, but was trying very hard to get along with. I was pleased to see some signs of academic and social maturity, and I told her so. Then came a moment I didn't think I'd have this early in my career:

"You know Mr. Douglas," she commented thoughtfully, "you came into my head the other day--I was sitting in math class, having a really bad day--it was 97 degrees outside, my hair was a mess, I didn't have make-up on, and I was bored out of my mind. I took out my cell phone to start texting a friend. As I looked at the phone, I thought 'man, Mr. Douglas should be standing behind me right now.' I put the phone away, and made myself pay attention for the rest of the period." [Last year, we had quite a game of her trying to hide her cell phone while texting, and me catching her on it. Sometimes she won, but usually I did.] That story, the idea of my voice, my memory, keeping a student on the path to success well after she was out of my gradebook, made all of last year's headaches worth it.

Perhaps it sounds trite to those who aren't teachers, and perhaps even to some who are. Those who campaign for better compensation for teachers may not appreciate the unintended consequences of stories like this, and rightly so--warm fuzzy feelings may keep me in the profession, but they won't pay the rent or the gas bill. Regardless of how trite or naive it may seem, I feel good about that experience. Perhaps the greatest part of the reward is the surprise--of all the students I might have expected to come back to, in essence, tell me thank you, this girl would not have been on my short list. But there she was, and I hope she still occasionally hears my voice telling her to put away her phone and pay attention in math class.

*Obviously not her real name.

Crossing Borders

"He doesn't respect us, why should we respect him?"

At least, that's what the school counselor told me the student said. Of course she didn't tell me which student, but I had a pretty good guess; I could hear in my head just the way he might have said it. Coming from this particular student, I knew I had to take this analysis of my teaching with a grain of salt, but still I was surprised--and disappointed--to hear it.

Almost from day one, my sixth period class tested my classroom management skills, my nerves, and my resolve to be more calm and patient in the classroom than I was last year. Once I had an administrator come in and team-teach a lesson with me. For that one day, the class went smoothly, students were on task, and I felt like a lot of learning happened. When the administrator left just before the end of the period, I commented to the class "Ladies and gentlemen, this is excellent! This is just what our class should be like every day." I heard one female student mutter under her breath, "Then you'll have to bring Ms .... in here every day." Not long after the administrator left, the class had degenerated into its usual lack of productivity.

Now, I'm not sure if this student meant the comment as an attack on my classroom management, or as a critique of her peers' inability to respond to anything gentler then the threat of the unpleasant punishments often doled out by this particular administrator. Either way, however, team teaching with an administrator was simply not an option, and neither was allowing the class to continue in its current course. For the sake of my students' academic progress (almost completely stalled) and my own mental health, something had to change. By early December it was abundantly clear taht little, if any, learning was occurring in that class, and I was on the verge of losing my sanity.

So, when we returned to school in January, I solicited the assistance of our school counselor and an "at-risk" counselor we share with a neighboring middle school. We decided to join forces one day a week, divide the class into three small discussion groups, and hold little "group therapy" sessions, in order to tap into what is going on in students' minds, to give them an appropriate forum to make their voices heard, and (hopefully) to start to reshape the culture of the class. We started by giving the students a set of ground rules for appropriate discussion, along with some sentence stems to guide them, and asked them to share their feelings about the class. (Note: if you're a new teacher and are considering trying this, make sure you have very thick skin first). From this first session came the comment that opened this post. For some reason, it stuck with me throughout the following week more than any of the feedback I received from my students that day.

Respect. What did he mean by it? How did he not see that I had it for him and for his classmates--that it is a combination of respect and love that impels me to hold them to such high standards? How could I show respect in a way that he--that they all--would recognize it? We discussed the issue of respect the following week. To my surprise, the same student who made the aforementioned comment about respect had great trouble defining it, or describing how an adult might show it to a young person. They all had trouble defining it--one student, her own words failing her, could do little more than belt out some Arethra Franklin at the top of her lungs when asked to respond to the prompt "What does respect mean to you?" Sure, a few students were able to repeat back what they thought the adults wanted to hear as a definition for respect, but I could tell that, for the most part, we simply weren't speaking the same language.

In a course on adolescent development I took in graduate school, we read a paper describing the social, cultural, and linguistic "borders" students must cross in passing from the world of home and family life to the world of academic life (Davidson, Anne Locke & Patricia Phelan, "Students' Multiple Worlds: An anthropologic approach to understanding students' engagement with school," Advances in Motivation and Achievement, vol. 11, 233-273). The authors discussed how such transitions are difficult, and often resisted, when "the knowledge, skills, and behaviors in one world are more highly valued and rewarded than those in another." As I reflected on this experience with my 6th period students, I thought of the knowledge, skills, and behaviors that are necessary for survival in the complicated world from which they come. So many of them exist in the confluence of a variety of challenging circumstances: immigrants navigating an unfamiliar country and culture, poverty, drugs, violence--what do I know about the giving and receiving of respect in such a world? Moreover, Davidson & Phelan were writing about high school students, who tend to be much further along in establishing a stable sense of identity within the context of the world around them. My students, just entering adolescence, are still trying to understand themselves and the parameters of the multiple worlds through which they must navigate each day. I cannot speak for all of my students, but I know that many of them have not had stable influences in their lives to model respect, responsibility, or compassion. Perhaps my classroom is the first time anyone has asked them to think seriously about these ideas.

I do not know just where these Tuesday afternoon sessions will lead. I can hope that my students will somehow learn to reflect on their own behavior, to see through the eyes of their teacher and of their classmates, to understand the link between their choices and the consequences they recieve. The fulfillment of that hope would be a miracle, and with each passing day I realize just how much both my students and I will need to experience miracles in order to navigate the borders that separate us and finally see one another face to face.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
-1 Corinthians 13:11-12