September 2014
This has been a difficult year and it's only September.  The tenor of our school has changed completely.  Previously, about 30% of the school was comprised of kids who had started with us in pre-k and stayed until they graduated fifth grade.  Not surprisingly, these were the kids who were either in TAG (talented and gifted program) or at the very least, performed at or above grade level.  Students that transferred in during the year quickly caught on that good behavior was the norm and and within a few weeks they became part of the school's fabric. Don't get me wrong; there were still many difficult kids, but they were manageable. 

 But the balance of our school has shifted now that many of the better students left to attend charter schools or private academies like KIPP . Unfortunately, this year we got in many families from\ some redistricted apartments.  The kids from these apartments are from, to put it mildly, very, very dysfunctional families. It is a high crime area and many of the parents are employed in rather questionable professions.  The atmosphere set by our "core" students is no longer existent.  The new atmosphere is chaotic and rowdy..  There were more fights in the first two months than the entire number we had last year. 

The new crop of kids come to school in mismatched, tattered and unwashed clothing because no one at home is caring for them properly.  They are so far below grade level it's hard to figure out what they do know.  The kindergarteners are almost completely non-verbal; they point at things. Those that do speak are difficult to understand because they barely pronounce words correctly. Their attention span is non-existent.  It's like teaching gnats to tap dance.

We also have some sort of karmic vacuum thing going on.  If you have a kid who wears out your last fiber of patience, you generally just have to wait a few months and he will move on. But within 24 hours the karmic vacuum police get a call and immediately fill your order with a new one and sometimes two new ones with even worse problems.  Chair throwers, tantrum kings and queens, runners--you name it, we have it in octuplet. One day I walked into school and  a tiny pre-k girl was throwing a tantrum in the middle of the front hall.  When she's not screaming she's busy running the school.  Every time I see her she's being dragged by the arm by some adult trying to shepherd her back to wherever she escaped from. Seems like a successful way to get an adult to notice you.

One of the ways to deal with very difficult children is by positive reinforcement.  I am all for that.  These kids get so little of it at home and punishing them all the time for their behavior ends up being counter productive.   We use positive behavior charts.  They do seem to work and I am supportive of this effort, but I am also exhausted by them.   I have to divide most of my classes into 10 minute sections where I walk around inserting smiley faces and/or stickers on the laminated behavior charts that  the tiny terrorists bring to me, as I try to catch them when they are doing something right. I feel like cutting out pictures of little chairs and pressing them onto their behavior charts indicating how many times they've thrown a chair in my class. Some of the kids are so awful that one of the special ed teachers has a safe word to let the kids know it's time to exit the  class and find a safe haven.  The word is cake.  Kind of ruins all thoughts of dessert for me.

These behaviorally challenged children suck up all your energy and make it almost impossible to pay attention to the rest of the class who is there, ostensibly, to learn something. What to do with these hostage takers?  First, it's important to make sure you have administrative support.  Luckily I do.  But that wasn't always the case.  A few years ago we had a principal whose first line of questioning always started with, "Well, what did you do to provoke that behavior?"  I used to answer, " I tried to teach."

Warning: I'm going to go off on a tangent for a moment.  Talking about this principal made me remember some of our more memorable exchanges.

This principal called me into his office one day to ask me if I had heard one of my first grade boys ask a girl if she wanted to "touch his nut sack."  I stared at the principal for about 15 seconds, my jaw hanging slack in disbelief because he hadn't bothered to rephrase that tasty morsel more delicately.  The principal continued by asking, "Did Talaisa (this is a made up name, but most of the names I come across already sound made up) tell you what that little boy had said.?"  "Um, no," I replied. " If she had I would've reported him.  I think what happened was that Talasia had tried to tell me, but I thought she was just going to tattle, an activity that is of paramount importance to most kids.   I told her to ignore whomever was bothering her."  "Oh," he said, "I guess that explains it."  Yeah, that explained why I didn't know what happened, but didn't address the fact that this first grade boy had probably been molested and was acting out.  And why in the world did he say nut sack and not pee pee or something else a first grader might say? Where the hell did he come up with nut sack?  That's what I wanted to know.  Well, that and if someone was going to call DFCS.

This same principal  called me into his office a few weeks later to tell me that one of the parents had called him and wanted to know why I was worshiping Buddha in my classroom. She had gone to a Chinese restaurant with her child and he saw a plastic Buddha statue and said that Ms. Jove worshiped him in her room.   That was another jaw dropping moment.  I looked at him and said, "I don't understand what that parent is talking about. First of all, I don't discuss religion with my kids and secondly, you don't worship Buddha.  Buddha isn't a god.  He was a philosopher and people who follow his teachings aren't worshiping; they are following his teachings. And thirdly, you've been in my classroom. You've seen that I don't even have a Buddha in my room."  Then it came to me.  I told him that I had a gong in my room that I used for transitions.  When I struck the gong the students would stop what they were doing, fold their hands in front of them and wait for my directions.  Perhaps the child thought this was worshiping Buddha.

The next thing the principal said was even odder, and I already thought he was a nut sack.  He said that he had never met a Jewish person before he was in college, so I stopped him there because I didn't want to have him finish that sentence with the usual thing people in my community say when they find out I'm Jewish:  (note: I am the lone Jewish person in my work place. ) "I had a Jewish friend once and he/she was really nice," to which I always respond, "Yes, my people are very nice;"  so I said, "What does my being Jewish have to do with anything?"  He didn't answer that question.  He countered with, "Well, you have to be careful about what you say in the classroom."  I said that that was always a good idea, especially for principals.

Back to the hostage situation. The second line of defense is time out in another room.  I found a kindergarten teacher who will make the older ones take part in the activity she is working on like learning the days of the week or tracing letters. This is not a particularly thrilling lesson for the older ones and the next week they are usually ready to return to my class.  However, one year I had a fifth grader who  was very large for his age--I'm guessing he was almost 5'9 and weighed in at over 200 lbs.  I sent him to the special ed kindergarten because there was a male parapro in the room and he had a good rapport with the boys in the school.  I walked into the room to fetch the kid only to see him standing in the midst of the the little ones saying a poem about colors.  I told him it was time to leave and he didn't want to go.  He said he was enjoying working with the kindergarten students and  asked if could he please help out again.  I arranged a time for him to go to their classroom and help out.  A pleasant unintended consequence. Perhaps he will want to work with kids in the future. 

And if all else fails: Ring the buzzer.