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I have a student, we’ll call him O.G., who is full-time busy making sure everyone knows he’s hard. He’s playing his part well. But I can tell he’s not naturally “that badass guy.” Naturally, he’s more “that guy that makes everyone feel comfortable & makes everybody laugh.” He’s very smart and charming, and he has a beautiful smile. He also hates to be told what to do.
O.G. thinks I don’t like him, so I’m on trial right now. It goes something like this:
O.G. (knowing full well that he didn’t turn in a major project) You’re going to fail me aren’t you?
Taylor: Yes. I’m going to fail you. I do things like that because I’m secretly plotting your destruction.
O.G. I don’t care if I fail.
Taylor: Is that why you asked?
O.G. I don’t. I don’t care.
(He’s getting deeper into character since I didn’t play the doe-eyed, milk-opening, nose-wiping teacher. He doesn’t need to be babied, but now it’s time to diffuse. I’m not trying to challenge him into a corner.)
Taylor: Come here, you poor thing. Bless your heart. You shouldn’t have to work so hard.
Just kidding.
Taylor: I hope you’ll change your mind about that. You should care. You know you’re too smart for this.
O.G.’s daily trips to the bathroom are also becoming a problem. I don’t usually count bathroom passes, as some teachers in my school do. You might want to sit down for this: if my students need to go to the bathroom, I let them go to the bathroom. But O.G. has been going every day, and to say he doesn’t use the time he is in the room wisely would be the “professional” way to say it. The way I say it is he’s nearly always screwing around. I was starting to get suspicious, so I told him that he goes to the restroom too often and that he could go only one more time between now and Christmas (this was 2 days ago.) Then we’d re-evaluate. He decided to go that day. That was his choice to make.
So today when he asked, I told him no. This means I hate his face. Five minutes later, I caught him standing in the doorway making some kind of hand signal to someone in the hallway. Then, the devil made me be mean to him again and tell him to sit down.
Fully armed now with evidence of my inner loathing of him, he decided he would refuse to sit in his assigned seat. It was time for a hallway chat.
The bottom line for O.G. is this: I am tired of the “do you really care about me” game. I do care about him, and have tried to show him that. But as long as he’s convinced that everyone is out to get him, nothing I do will convince him I care. Until he cares, he deflects all care off of himself and sinks lower. As long as he continues to wake up in the morning looking to blame everyone else for how the day goes, he is giving everyone but himself power over his life. Seeing that (as he told me) he doesn’t trust any soul on this earth, that’s a bad place to be. If I thought everyone was out to get me the way he does, I’d immediately begin looking for ways to maintain power over my own life. This is one of those times that the harder route is the right one. Taking responsibility for the fact that he didn’t turn the project in might be painful in the short run, but it’s the easy route compared to the one he’s choosing.
So that’s what I told him. He seemed to listen. I’m rooting for him, but I cannot do it for him.
6 responses so far ↓
1 amanda // Dec 5, 2007 at 11:39 pm
if you’ve said you know he’s smart - what motivation does he have to try?
perhaps not the most logical way of thought, no, but that’s how i seemed to think when as young.
when teachers continually said “we know you’re smart…,” “you’re so smart…” and etc., i really had nothing to prove. BUT have a teacher or someone insinuate or outright tell me that they don’t think i can do it, in a manner quite serious, and then i’d prove otherwise and get an A.
it’s just a thought… something i’ve always remembered that one of my teachers did on purpose (with a “i knew you could do it” at the end of the year), and i will never, ever forget.
2 Anne // Dec 6, 2007 at 12:21 am
I remember a student saying, “You know I know it! I knew it yesterday, I just forgot to put it down.” I told her that my psychic powers were also not working that day and therefore I couldn’t do my usual mindreading to figure out what she knew. She would just have to go back to using her talent of handwriting until my psychic abilities returned.
Obviously, too giddy to work with your young man. But, did you “fail him?” I would say he “failed himself.” If he graded himself, what would he say? Could he review his own rubric? If all he wants is to “pass,” then perhaps he could work out a way to do just (and only) that. I’m not really offering suggestions, but thinking that I’ve got a few like this in my class right now.
3 ken // Dec 6, 2007 at 9:35 am
let him sit if he has to go to the bathroom. you can be all adult and ‘yo-I-respect-your-innate-right-to-determine-when-the-walls-of-your-bladder-send-you-the-undeniable-message-that-you-have-to-pee-pee but it’s your class, he’s your student, and now it’s December and he’s clearly abused what you call a right and he views as leniency.
So O.G. will Go-PP, and then everyone in the room will be like OMG! O.G. done gone PP!
4 Josh // Dec 6, 2007 at 3:12 pm
What teacher does not have that student, and furthermore what teacher doesn’t lay awake at night trying to figure out what might work for “O.G.” tomorrow.
My O.G. just finished a 3 week stretch of not talking to me for ‘disrespecting’ him, and now is back in my room every chance he gets - reveling in making me walk him out of the room. I miss him being mad at me already.
5 NYC Educator // Dec 7, 2007 at 8:41 pm
I like when kids get mad and walk out. “Well, he showed me,” I announce.
I always try to contact the homes of kids like that. No matter how tough they are, they may find it inconvenient for their school lives to follow them home. And so many of them don’t expect that to happen, ever.
They’re particularly grateful when you call the day before Christmas vacation, for some reason. Parents like it just as much when you say, “Gee, I’d hate for you to have to take a day off and come to school.” Here in NY, parents who don’t show up can be charged with neglect.
I think that’s fair.
6 youdontknowmyname // Dec 23, 2007 at 4:00 am
nyc educator. gah. round here in the south, thats grounds to get a kid “murdered”
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