The First Chink in My Armor?
I have a story about a student, and, like every time I mention a student here, I’ll make up a name for him. I’ll call him Virgil. The Roman poet Virgil was Dante’s guide into Hell.
Virgil, my student, not the Roman poet, is a student with many problems. All of my students have some kind of problem, or they wouldn’t be in this program, but Virgil . . . if I ever successfully imagined what Virgil’s life has been like up to this point, I’d probably collapse into a gibbering heap on the floor (or maybe that would just be the result of getting four hours of sleep a night these days).
Virgil is completely lacking in empathy. He is more self-centered than most of my students. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume his rude and abrasive personality is a mechanism that protects him from whatever is the trauma that make up his life of being bounced around between a mother who can’t control him and a social welfare system that, for all of its good intentions, simply cannot care for him the way a good parent could or should.
Virgil had his cell phone out today. He was only checking the time, but rules are rules. I told him if I saw the cell phone again, I was going to have to take it. “Oh, OK,” he says, and I get the distinct impression, as I often get when talking to most of my students, that I might as well not even be there.
Thirty minutes later, Virgil has the phone out again. I don’t know what he’s doing with it, but it doesn’t matter. He obviously has the phone out, and if I let it slide, I’ll be fighting this from him and other students all year. So I walk over to Virgil and tell him I need his phone. I’m polite. I’m firm. I keep my voice even. And he flat-out refuses.
This does not surprise me. Very few students will simply hand over contraband the first time I ask for it. But after about five minutes of me standing there repeating variations of “These are the rules, I need your phone,” I can tell I’m not getting anywhere. And the rest of the class is getting restless. Loreese, who is actually one of my better students, keeps trying to get my attention, as if I’m not already involved in a serious issue with Virgil. “Mr. Richardson, what do we have to do? Mr. Richardson, what do we have to do?” she keeps asking over and over and over. All of my students are like this. When they want my attention, dammit, I better respond to them. When I want theirs, I practically need to shoot off fireworks in class to get their attention.
So Virgil is stonewalling me, arguing with me, not responding to me, and I have a class to teach. I know there isn’t a shred of empathy in his being that I will eventually be able to get through to, so I make a decision to tell Virgil he can keep his phone, but I’ll have to take this to the next level. According to the rules and consequences list the other teachers and I came up with in the days before school, that means I need to have a conference with his parent or guardian.
The only problem is, no one has a working home number for Virgil’s mother. And even if we did, we all know from experiences last year that a conference with Virgil’s mother is going to be less than effective. It’ll probably just make his behavior worse.
So now I have a student in my classroom who successfully refused to heed my authority, and the next step in my consequences chain isn’t going to be effective at all. I’m dreading the next time I have to take a cell phone or CD player away from a student in that class. Will they also stonewall me, braced by Virgil’s example of defiance? Or will I have enough social capital left with the other students that those kinds of distractions won’t be a problem?
The one thing I do know is that when Virgil is absent, we get a heck of a lot more accomplished in that class. There are some students who are so detrimental to the education of others that they should not be allowed in school, or at least not allowed around students who actually want to learn. The law says we have to keep him until he’s 17. And any student who gets special education services we have to keep until age 21 (I’m not sure about Virgil’s status in that regard).
I’ve been called a saint at least twice in the past two weeks by people who hear these stories I tell about teaching. I don’t want to be a saint. I just want to be a guy who does his job well and gets to go home and relax at the end of the day. I hear that special education teachers often burn out in five years or less. I’m not a special education teacher, but I deal with a lot of students who should have been classified as special ed years ago (severe deficiencies in reading and writing, which these kids have, are enough to get the paperwork moving, but since there is a limit on how many students can be referred each year, these kids have fallen through the cracks, and now they are in this program). I can see why special ed teachers can burn out so fast. When I deal with students like Virgil on only four hours of sleep a night, I’m heading for a burnout fast—or at least a day off.
And I have another worry: I ran into a gym teacher the other day I used to work with last year. His position was cut because of funding issues. He’s back teaching drivers’ ed at the school, but he can’t find a job actually teaching because, with almost 30 years of experience, he costs too much. I already cost too much for many districts because I have a masters. Will it just get more difficult for me to find jobs the more years of experience I get, thus placing me higher on the pay scale? I shudder at the thought.
Virgil, my student, not the Roman poet, is a student with many problems. All of my students have some kind of problem, or they wouldn’t be in this program, but Virgil . . . if I ever successfully imagined what Virgil’s life has been like up to this point, I’d probably collapse into a gibbering heap on the floor (or maybe that would just be the result of getting four hours of sleep a night these days).
Virgil is completely lacking in empathy. He is more self-centered than most of my students. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume his rude and abrasive personality is a mechanism that protects him from whatever is the trauma that make up his life of being bounced around between a mother who can’t control him and a social welfare system that, for all of its good intentions, simply cannot care for him the way a good parent could or should.
Virgil had his cell phone out today. He was only checking the time, but rules are rules. I told him if I saw the cell phone again, I was going to have to take it. “Oh, OK,” he says, and I get the distinct impression, as I often get when talking to most of my students, that I might as well not even be there.
Thirty minutes later, Virgil has the phone out again. I don’t know what he’s doing with it, but it doesn’t matter. He obviously has the phone out, and if I let it slide, I’ll be fighting this from him and other students all year. So I walk over to Virgil and tell him I need his phone. I’m polite. I’m firm. I keep my voice even. And he flat-out refuses.
This does not surprise me. Very few students will simply hand over contraband the first time I ask for it. But after about five minutes of me standing there repeating variations of “These are the rules, I need your phone,” I can tell I’m not getting anywhere. And the rest of the class is getting restless. Loreese, who is actually one of my better students, keeps trying to get my attention, as if I’m not already involved in a serious issue with Virgil. “Mr. Richardson, what do we have to do? Mr. Richardson, what do we have to do?” she keeps asking over and over and over. All of my students are like this. When they want my attention, dammit, I better respond to them. When I want theirs, I practically need to shoot off fireworks in class to get their attention.
So Virgil is stonewalling me, arguing with me, not responding to me, and I have a class to teach. I know there isn’t a shred of empathy in his being that I will eventually be able to get through to, so I make a decision to tell Virgil he can keep his phone, but I’ll have to take this to the next level. According to the rules and consequences list the other teachers and I came up with in the days before school, that means I need to have a conference with his parent or guardian.
The only problem is, no one has a working home number for Virgil’s mother. And even if we did, we all know from experiences last year that a conference with Virgil’s mother is going to be less than effective. It’ll probably just make his behavior worse.
So now I have a student in my classroom who successfully refused to heed my authority, and the next step in my consequences chain isn’t going to be effective at all. I’m dreading the next time I have to take a cell phone or CD player away from a student in that class. Will they also stonewall me, braced by Virgil’s example of defiance? Or will I have enough social capital left with the other students that those kinds of distractions won’t be a problem?
The one thing I do know is that when Virgil is absent, we get a heck of a lot more accomplished in that class. There are some students who are so detrimental to the education of others that they should not be allowed in school, or at least not allowed around students who actually want to learn. The law says we have to keep him until he’s 17. And any student who gets special education services we have to keep until age 21 (I’m not sure about Virgil’s status in that regard).
I’ve been called a saint at least twice in the past two weeks by people who hear these stories I tell about teaching. I don’t want to be a saint. I just want to be a guy who does his job well and gets to go home and relax at the end of the day. I hear that special education teachers often burn out in five years or less. I’m not a special education teacher, but I deal with a lot of students who should have been classified as special ed years ago (severe deficiencies in reading and writing, which these kids have, are enough to get the paperwork moving, but since there is a limit on how many students can be referred each year, these kids have fallen through the cracks, and now they are in this program). I can see why special ed teachers can burn out so fast. When I deal with students like Virgil on only four hours of sleep a night, I’m heading for a burnout fast—or at least a day off.
And I have another worry: I ran into a gym teacher the other day I used to work with last year. His position was cut because of funding issues. He’s back teaching drivers’ ed at the school, but he can’t find a job actually teaching because, with almost 30 years of experience, he costs too much. I already cost too much for many districts because I have a masters. Will it just get more difficult for me to find jobs the more years of experience I get, thus placing me higher on the pay scale? I shudder at the thought.
posted by Christopher at
10:36 PM
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