Taylor the Teacher

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T is a student in one of my Film Criticism classes. He wears his pants so far below his butt that I seriously think he’s going to trip on them. At the beginning of the year T liked to argue with me.

But I have viewed this year off from teaching English, teaching electives all day, as both a much-needed break and an opportunity to get to know my students better and learn to relax a little.

Enter T.

I have procedures in place which I expect every student to follow. He used to like to dispute these. Even at the beginning of the year when he was arguing with me every day, he didn’t make me mad. Just tired. But I was beginning, a few weeks ago, to get the sense that it was time to try to head this thing off at the pass. I started thinking more and more about how to deal with T.

We have a gang problem at our school, as I’ve mentioned before. I don’t know if T is a member of a gang, and I’d rather not know. But he seems ripe for it.

So a couple of weeks ago I stopped by the ISS room to pick up the referrals for my After School Detention duty that day. T was in ISS. So I asked the ISS “teacher” genuinely, how does he deal with T?

His answer was that he was just waiting for T to get written up one more time so he’d have to go to OSS instead of ISS. The full impact of that statement took a while to hit as is usually the case with shock. I just changed the subject.

Next day: I see T going into the school right at the same time I do. Nobody else is with him. Cool.

It always seems easier to talk to a student like this when there’s no “meet-me-after-class” dynamic to it. So I just asked him, “Why do you wanna give me a hard time? I don’t think I’ve done anything to disrespect you, have I?”

He took a second, and seemed to answer sincerely, “No. You haven’t.”

So I just told him that I liked him, and that I didn’t need or want to think of him as an enemy. I’m not out to get him; I enforce the same rules with everyone, don’t I?

He agreed. And he agreed to not sleep in my class or debate me about silly rules any more.

And that day when he entered my classroom, he smiled at me. Big. I’d never seen that before.

Like everyone, all he wants is to be respected, taken seriously and liked. He’s still cooperating now. I didn’t even have to give him OSS. It was actually quite easy.