Powerless

This week I had the chance to observe a fellow teacher.  It wasn’t pretty.

Her classroom was being run by 6 boys who did what they pleased when they pleased.  They giggled, cracked jokes, were sarcastic,  played with balloons and stickers, ignored instructions, roamed around the room, called out.

I don’t think it was their fault.

It was like watching a bad marriage. Or worse still, being in one.  Two parties unable to communicate, coexist, cooperate, or create, even though they may once have had the best of intentions towards each other.

They were caught in a bad dynamic: taunt, ignore, ignore, taunt.

But this classroom wasn’t a marriage.  There were no two equal consenting adults here.

There was one adult and a roomful of 8 and 9 year-olds.

In this situation, the adult has to take on the burden of responsibility. It’s not enough for the adult to say, this is the worst class, these kids are so badly behaved, these kids don’t know anything.

Instead, the adult has to say, what can I do differently?  Clearly, what I’m doing isn’t reaching these kids.  How can I change my behavior in order to change the dynamic?

This particular adult was talking at the kids much of the time.  Occasionally, a question was asked, and either some kids responded with a one or two word answer (because it was a simple factual question that didn’t need much thought), or else the teacher answered her own question (because it’s easier, faster, there’s a pacing plan, she’s gotten used to it).  Rarely did the students get a chance to talk to each other, to ask questions or try to answer them or to discuss a topic with any level of depth and engagement.

It was an input-output classroom.  Put a question in, get a word out.

No rigor, no vigor, no personality.

To be a good teacher you gotta have personality.  You’re a performer.  You’re part entertainer, part circus ringmaster.  You take the stage for a little bit, and then YOU STEP OFF!!!  You gotta let the animals do the show.  YOU are NOT the show.

When kids have no outlet for expression in a classroom, they act up.  Those six boys ruled the classroom for the dark side, but they could just as well have ruled for the light side.  They could be the class leaders who could be tapped to motivate other kids, to create a culture of engagement and interest and curiosity.  They were quite bright.  Sarcasm requires an intelligence.  They had potential that wasn’t being tapped.

Frankly, they were bored and even beyond bored.  They felt powerless.

So they were acting out.

I can understand how they felt.  I’ve felt that way (in a bad marriage).  You want to slash and burn.

Last year, a group of kids, probably graduates of our school, returned when the campus was closed during Spring Break and destroyed half our computer lab.  They drilled through a door, peeled back the metal doors of the mobile laptop carts, and ripped out the laptops.  They didn’t steal them.  They SMASHED and DESTROYED them.

Think about it.  Kids who could’ve taken laptops for themselves, but instead they chose to DEMOLISH them so that neither they nor anyone else could use them.

That’s rage.

That’s these 6 boys if they get a string of teachers who don’t reach them.

That’s OUR responsibility as teachers.