Well, honeymoon season is definitely over. Students have sussed out their turf and their cloaks of good behavior have dropped off. I finish my week at one of my more difficult schools, and the last class of the day is the children from a lesser god. At the beginning of the year their were 12 kids and it has more than doubled. This school is almost as transient as my last year's school, But hey, it's an "achievement zone" school so maybe their achievement is that no one stays put.
Anyway, their teacher has a habit of keeping the good kids with her to do important things like stack chairs, so she thoughtfully sends me all the clowns. I was all set to tell her to stop doing that, but she had a sub this week, so finally I got to see the entire class. Now I know that this class is very gifted; they can say shut up more than 392 times a minute. They are seriously THAT good at telling each other to shut up. I finally sat them down, folded my arms and stared at them for about 5 minutes while they sat their silently staring either at me or at a dust mote on the ceiling. I told them if they kept this up, this is what music class would be. None of them looked very upset, but then I realized that they were weighing the pros and cons of silence vs doing something. Ultimately they decided that doing nothing was a little on the boring side, even if they had previously been entranced by the dust motes they were staring at. I got up to try and resume my activity, which was allowing them to create an 8 beat body percussion and/or movement pattern to perform with a partner. I watched some of them work out interesting things while others tried to engage themselves in productive activities such as trying to inflict bodily harm on themselves or their classmates.
This is when I noticed that one of the shut up squadron leaders was also quite adept at jumping up and down. I watched him leap around the room until finally he knocked out a cord that was hanging out of the ceiling. (*Note to self: Why was a cord hanging from my ceiling and what did it connect to?) I walked over to him and he told me it happened because someone tripped him. iI looked at him and said, Really? You mean to tell me that someone tripped you and you fell upwards? That violates every law of physics that I know." I told him to sit his flying bottom in a chair so that I could prevent him from further levitating activities.
And while I'm talking about their special talents, let me not forget how good these guys are at sucking their teeth. I turned to the only well behaved students --4 girls-- and said, "One day, when you own your own company and one of these nudniks come to you for an interview, you will say," I remember you. You were great at sucking your teeth, but we do not offer a position that requires that particular skill set."
I also got screamed at by the PE parapro at another of my schools. My class is across the hall from the gym and the hall is quite narrow. My door was closed and was just starting my fourth grade class. All of a sudden the quiet is interrupted by the SCREAMING of a teacher at some poor shnooky kid. The kids said, "oh that's Dr. Smith," whom I assume is the resident screamer,and she, like the students in my Friday class, is quite good at an awful skill. She was so loud that I couldn't get the kids' attention so I went across the hall to close the door. I was smiling and tried to appear nonplussed, but I didn't notice that the juvenile offender's hand was in the space between the door and where it closes, so when i reached for the door, they yelled at me about his hands. He moved his hands, I apologized, and tried again to close the door, but the PE para wouldn't let me--she caught the door, gave me a withering look and told me NOT to close it. So I gave up and walked back to class.
After my class departed, in came the PE parapro and she let me have it. She and the screamer were offended that I wanted to close the door because the kid's hand could've been injured. Ok. They had a point. I apologized. Then I said, "I only wanted to close the door because my class was sitting there slack-jawed. Her response? "They are used to that." I could see that I was dealing with a full-fledged idiot and was a little intimidated by her snarl, so I said, "I'm so sorry. My bad. It won't happen again." The para pro hissed, "Thank you for that." But I'm pretty sure by the way she stormed out of my room that she wasn't really thanking me.
I work with difficult kids. I've been working with them for ten years now. No matter how egregious an act a student commits, I can not bring myself to shout and scream at an ear splitting decibel. I have my stern voice and I trot it out when need be, but I would never get 2 inches from a student's face and scream into it. I've had students that make me want to drink until I black out, but screaming at a child means that I have lost all moral authority.
When did screaming become an acceptable behavior for a teacher? I hope the answer is, It hasn't.
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