“Remember: Everyone in the classroom has a story that leads to misbehaviour or defiance. Nine times out of ten, the misbehaviour won’t make you angry. It will break your heart.”
A young teacher friend recently posted that quote, attributed to Annette Breaux, author of REAL Teachers, REAL Challenges, REAL Solutions, and it brought back a flood of memories of kids I had taught over the years.
Sometimes the reason for misbehaviour is not obvious, and such misbehaviour requires a different intervention than the usual consequences. It’s never easy to determine why children do the things they do.
I remembered kids like Lawrence, who was given to sudden unprovoked outbursts of anger in his Grade 6 classroom. When his teacher would send him to me, the principal, I would send Lawrence out to walk around the school grounds twice, and tell him to come back and see me before returning to class.
I had learned from Lawrence’s social worker that when his dad, a sailor on a container ship, returned to their small apartment after a trip, no matter what time of day or night, Lawrence would be sent to wander the streets with instructions not to come back for several hours.
I remembered Percy, whose dad was doing time for attempted murder and whose mom based her income on entertaining a series of “uncles,” some of whom abused 12-year-old Percy.
I remembered sitting in on a presentation by a well-known cardiac specialist to a group of alternate school kids. The kids were enrolled at the alternate school because they simply could not handle what the standard classroom routine demanded of them.
The doctor was, with the best of intentions, warning the teenagers about the long-term dangers of smoking.
One boy put up his hand:
“Yes, do you have a question?”
“No, but when I get home this afternoon there will be nothing to eat in the fridge and it’s probable that my mother will be out with a new ‘friend’ and not be back until the early hours, if at all …. now you’re telling me I can’t even go to the park and enjoy a cigarette.”
The Breaux quote reminded me that I would advise young teacher trainees to look at their class not as a group but as an assembly of individuals, each of whom had brought into the classroom with them the dinner-table argument between mom and dad last night, the bully who terrorized the playground at lunchtime or maybe the effects of the heavily sugared cereal they’d been given at breakfast that morning.
The reasons why kids sometimes have difficulty paying attention in class are not always limited to the kinds of awful things happening in their “real” lives.
Sometimes, it was something as simple as the prospect of having to face up to another day of curriculum material that had nothing to do with their own interests or ambitions.
That must be like sitting through a three-hour concert of music you dislike intensely and that holds no interest for you at all because your parents insisted “this is good for you.”
For some kids, it is a matter of waiting out their time in school so they can pursue an interest or a passion that has nothing to do with the prescribed curriculum.
That reminds me of my cousin Graham, with whom I’d grown up and for whom sitting in a classroom listening to lessons on Shakespeare or algebra was agony. Graham left school in Grade 10, never to return. He learned to drive a tow truck that my uncle, frustrated by Graham’s lack of interest in anything academic, had organized for him.
That was in the 1960s. Fast forward to a recent time my wife and I were in Australia. We spent time with Graham and his wife in their palatial home on Sydney harbour.
Graham took us on a tour of the harbour and the northern beaches in his personal helicopter, not only demonstrating his meticulous ability to pilot the aircraft but also describing in detail the geography of the coastline.
Turned out Graham had a gift not only for things mechanical but for business as well.
Robert John Meehan has long been one of education’s most read and quoted education allies. Meehan’s advice to classroom teachers echoes that of Breaux: “Almost every student you meet may be fighting a battle you know nothing about. Stop and think then make your response accordingly.”
Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools.
