I suppose this is what people mean when they say that they don’t feel like they have the support of the school administrators.
I’ve had BMT (Behavior Management Technicians), or basically security people, open the door to my classroom, and start handing out candy to my students while I was trying to teach.
On April 16, 2015, Emmanuel was verbally disruptive during class. I asked him to grab his things and stand by the door to be removed, after several warnings. He left my class w/o permission. Front office was notified. I saw him in the hallway, right after lunch. His friend asked him, “Emmanuel, what did you say about Mr. Kim?” Emmanuel yelled back in the crowded hallway, “He a bi_ch!” Student asked him again. Again, Emmanuel yelled out loud “He a bi_ch!” Emmaneul received one block detention for his actions. Students have literally received 2 full day suspension for skipping class. They were sending a message that it was not only ok to curse out a teacher, and that skipping class is much, much worse than cursing out a teacher, but also rewarded him by taking him out of a class that he didn’t want to be in in the first place.
Today, Emmanuel walked out on me again. I asked him to leave his things and go outside for him to calm down. I allowed Danizjah and India to come in after a minute or two. I sent Jermaine out, but Emmanuel walked out on me. And apparently went directly to Ms. Rago. Ms. Rago, one of the Deans of Students, was at my door with Emmanuel. Ms. Rago started to ask why Emmanuel is constantly getting kicked out. “What is he doing?” She asked. I told her that he needs to stop calling me a b… She said, “ok, he understands that was wrong. What else?” So I asked him, “What did I ever do to you?” And Ms. Rago said, “Don’t take it personally, Mr. Kim. He’s not doing it because of something you did.” How can someone not take it personally when they are being personally cursed at? I said, “He needs to stop instigating Jermaine.” Emmanuel then chimed in, “Jermaine’s the one doing all the talking, I don’t do anything.” Before I could continue, Ms. Rago then told me that it’s a classroom management issue and that I’m not doing a good enough job keeping him in class. She asked if there’s a computer he can get to work on Agile Mind. So I said, sure, hold on. So because students were taking tests in the classroom, I closed the door behind me while I got a computer. As soon as I walked back out, Ms. Rago said, “Mr. Kim, I can walk into any classroom at any point in time. You don’t tell me what to do.” I was confused. She said, “You don’t tell me to hold on. I’m higher than you. You need to learn hierarchy.” And literally placed her hands to show how she was that much higher than me because, she said, “I have 30 years of experience.” I said, ok, I wasn’t trying to tell you what to do, students are taking tests, so I didn’t want them to be interrupted. Again, she said, “I can walk in right now if I wanted to, you can’t stop me. You know what, I’m going to talk to you after school. That’d be better, when both of us are more rational. I need to teach you about hierarchy.”
I suppose the realization that the school administrators and policy makers bending over backwards is creating all these problems in the first place is really dawning on me. No matter what I do, I can’t change those policies. And no matter what I do, what goes on at home is going to have a much bigger influence on students’ performance than what I can do as a teacher. I look around the room and I know 50% of my students in my 2nd and 4th block are failing or may fail. And perhaps 60-70% of students in my 3rd block are failing or will fail. I came into education thinking that I will have some positive impact if I share with them the fact that I, too, didn’t do too well in high school and that I went through similar life situation as they did. I think that would have made an impact on me, if I knew that I could relate to someone that understood what it’s like to go home to a home they didn’t want to go to, and went to school they didn’t want to go to, and attended church they didn’t ‘want to go to.
I would never blame any of my teachers for getting a lower grade than what I was capable of. I could have gotten As in all my classes if I myself were responsible. I didn’t, and don’t have any medical defects that require special education. My teachers did the best they could given the fact that they had to teach 30 different students with different needs at the same time. There is absolutely no blame on their part for the low grades that I received. I deserved every one of them, and quite possibly got higher grades than what I really deserved. However, I now see that the blame is largely on the teachers. The communication from administrative teams, Teach for America, and UNCC courses is very largely blaming the teachers. The teachers are not doing enough. If only teachers did x, y, z, our students will be that much more successful. And I am getting tired of it. How much of the blame for how Garinger High is doing is because of the teachers? How much is on the students? Well, from the sound of all that I’m hearing, its largely teachers, and very little students. We bend over backwards, multiple times, to keep straight F students in class because they deserve nothing less than chance after chance after chance. “It’s classroom management issue,” it’s the “teacher’s fault.” It’s because we are “not doing enough.” I had a frank discussion with my TFA MTLD the other day, Stephanie. I told her that I no longer believe that the mission statement of TFA is true, that “One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.” Because I believe that every single student has the opportunity already. There is no opportunity gap. They have everything that I had when I was their age, and more. They have more electives. They have more technology. They have teachers, like I did, that feel passionate about the career they chose. And yet, these same kids are told, time and time again, that there is this “opportunity gap.” That if the facility doesn’t look like a prison they’d do better. That if they didn’t have so many first year teachers that they’d do better. Well that’s total bull. I had several first year teachers. My school had worn out, dirty carpets. It was a big deal when the library got a set of computers. Some of my teachers also left mid-semester, though I must admit not as many. But it’s not as though these students are only failing those classes in which the teachers quit half-way. They’re failing all of them. So when that happens, do you think it’s the teacher that is the common denominator? Or is it the student?
Stephanie pushed back, saying, “I’m going to push back a little on that. What kind of life do you think they have at home? Don’t you think that there is a real discrimination against the races that you teach here at Garinger? That they don’t have the same opportunities that you can afford to have because of that?” I told her that I wasn’t talking about the career opportunities, and that yes, those are real. I was talking about educational opportunity, as the one portrayed by TFA. And I told her about my upbringing, how I grew up with hand-me-downs, digging furniture out of the trash, with meal plans, with food stamps, getting beat up at home by a man I didn’t know, in a land I didn’t know. But none of these students are going through what I’m going through, perhaps just a few. None of these students are missing for days at a time because they got beat up. They miss one day here and there, not a string of days. My students have free food, and Beats headphones, cell phones, game systems, and everything imaginable under the sun that they could want. I never had any of that growing up. And they have the same educational opportunity that I had. The teachers here don’t teach any differently than how I was taught. I go to my students’ houses, and they have their own rooms and Xbox-es. Those were unimaginable luxuries for me. She didn’t have too much to say after that.
So you have people trying to make excuses for the students, and it makes the problem even worse than it already is. It’s the teachers’ fault. The differentiation isn’t done well enough. Classroom management. Really? At what point do we say, no, we do not want to educate children who are disrespectful? Why does society give up educating 85% of Garinger’s population well because they want to keep 15% of the population that slowly poison the well for the rest of the school? Why do we owe that to them, when clearly all they want is a place to go, hang out, have fun with their friends, get free lunch, entertain themselves by seeing how far they can push the envelop, and perhaps even walk away with a diploma based purely on how well they happen to do on tests that they never study for? Does the society have an obligation to train and give diplomas to utterly disrespectful students? Will that diploma somehow give them a sense of respect? Or will they just be disrespectful citizens, but this time with a diploma?
I suppose the closest analogy I came up with is the day our entire pot of chicken with beans got contaminated. Kevin left the pot cracked open just a little bit over night. But the rice cooker was also spewing out spores throughout the night, and that small crack and those even smaller spores were enough to contaminate the entire pot of chicken and beans. It was so bad that we had throw away the whole thing.
When you let even a little evil enter into your heart, or into your school, or into your church, the entire pot is in danger of being contaminated. It doesn’t take much to turn something good into something bad. Something useful to something useless. It doesn’t have to be completely dead for it to be bad, it only needs a few spores and a tiny crack to allow sin and evil to permeate throughout our own lives, our schools, and in our churches. Hold fast to your doctrine of truth, because without it, you have nothing.
I think I finally got to Keion. He still doesn’t do any work, but I think he knows now that I care about him and doesn’t try to act up. After he got suspended because of what he did in my class, I asked him what his favorite candy was and got it for him. I got him two bars of Snickers. And when he hurt his hand, I gave him a fresh bag for his ice so that it wasn’t leaking all over, as well as some paper towel to clean it up. I guess those things do work a bit.
Danizjah, on the other hand, no matter what I’ve done for her, continues to not work nor cooperate. She continues to talk to her friend, India, across the room, and tries hard not to show me any respect. On the day that I got her a huge $10 Reese’s Piece’s Easter Bunny, suitable for a serving size of 12, I believe, she said nothing since and hasn’t treated me any better since. I gave her multiple chances to make up tests that she simply refused to finish multiple times. And yet still she refuses to do any work.
Sunnia took a while to get. But she’s come around now. She does ask to go to the bathroom a lot, and sometimes goes off to say hello to Ms. Prato and Ms. Patel. One day, she asked a question about something we’ve been working on during class for 30 minutes. She came back from a “bathroom” break, and asked if I can help her. I said that I can’t help her right now. And she took that personally. When I took her outside to talk to her about what’s going on, she accused me of not wanting to help her out. And also said that she knew that I talked to Ms. Prato about how much I hate her. Of course I knew that was not true, because I never talked to Prato about her. So I said, even if that were true, and I hated you so much, why do you think you’re still here? So many students have left since the first week, don’t you think it would have been so easy for you to be moved, too, if I really wanted to? And I didn’t say I don’t want to help you. You left for 30 minutes. I couldn’t possibly go over 30 minutes of material just with you when I have 30 other students waiting for me. I think that got to her, and she tried to give me attitude to save face, but that’s when it started to change, really. That was in February or so.
Last week, she asked to be moved next to Yuri, because Hope was out that day. So I allowed her to. But both of them were so distracted by each other that I asked her to move back. She defiantly said, “NO.” So I said, you don’t say no to me, move back to your seat. She again said, “NO.” So I called the BMT to have her removed. When she came back, I said that I’m not going to write her up, but that I kicked her out because she said no to me. She then said, “You have a double standard. Hope says no to you, and you don’t do nothing.” It’s somewhat true that Hope does say no to me. And it’s true that I don’t remove her. However, Hope always does what I ask her to do, even when she says no. For example, when I ask her to remove her cell phone, she says no. But I leave the basket on her table, come back after a minute to pick up the basket with the phone in it. When I ask her to move seats, she says no. But I tell her again, and carry on the lesson without bringing attention to her, and she dose it. Sunnia only sees the no part. She doesn’t see the phone being put in the basket. I think this may be the same thing we experience with God. We only see portions of his great doing, and accuse him of playing favorites.
I suppose now I’m getting more used to some thing that I didn’t know about as a first time teacher. Now I feel like I’m able to assess and diffuse a situation much better. Cell phones, for example, used to be such a big thing. But instead of me standing over them, making a scene and waiting for them to give it to me, while they take that as an opportunity to save face, entertain other students, and gain attention/notoriety, I simply give them one warning per day, and the second time I catch them I tell them that they have 10 seconds to put it in a basket and get it back at the end of the class, or for me to call someone and they can get it back at the end of the day. That tactic has been such a big lifesaver for me, it’s saved me from 80-90% of the issues I’ve had with cell phones.
A student was passing notes to another student during a test. Before, I may have spoken out loud and said, what are you doing, passing notes? Instead, I now know to get up, and talk to them softly and not draw attention to them. Some students will do certain things just to draw attention to themselves, and other students will try to save face by being obnoxious. But when it’s just between you and them, one on one, it takes a lot less effort, and they don’t have a face to save or something to make an entertainment out of.
“Can I go outside to fart?” I suppose I’m glad that she asked rather than just doing it in class.