Tinderbox And Teacher Blame
“When he’s under my desk, he recruits other kids to join him – and lots of them do!
It’s bedlam.”
“A student crawls under your desk?” I asked. “Which one?”
“Erik” his teacher indicated to me, with a nod of her head. “He’s an instigator. And he has his crew, believe me.”
Hanging over the front of Erik’s desk was a hideous self-portrait. Large razor-sharp teeth sat in a scary scowl. Jagged black scratches made hair on the head and chin of ‘his’ face. Half-closed eyes fired two black dots. It looked like a ‘most wanted’ mug shot. Yet, there little Erik sat, behind this frightening drawing, his pink cheeks, missing front teeth and sad face a complete contradiction of his own handiwork.
“Whose face? I wondered. A parent, an uncle, someone on his mind?
The children followed the gym teacher out of class.
“And then there’s Zoey”, this devoted teacher continued. “He’ll do anything to belong. If Erik calls him from under my desk, Zoey drops everything, instantly, and runs to him.
“Yes, I know Zoey. I know his family. Mom’s left the family. Little contact with Zoey. Dad is sick. I guess from his drinking days. His older brother has been permanently placed in a group home now and his older sisters ignore him. Filthy dirty, he wears his brother’s pants, rolled up at the legs and still way too sloppy for him. When the other kids run, Zoey hoists up his pants and does his best. He has holes in the shoes he wears like sandals, the backs crushed flat over his growing feet. Zoey spends his after school and weekend time alone on his dirt driveway, shaping parking lots for his plastic cars and trucks. He fixes his own breakfast and lunch but his Dad does put together supper for them. Once he came to my house, crying, because his skin itched so badly.
I could see tiny jelly-like globs in his hair and his eyes red and swollen from his scratching. His skin is filled with scabs. I took him home and asked his sister to run a bath for him and put some salt into it. She gave Zoey a dirty look, but moved towards the bathroom with Joey following. Anyway, chronic, chronic neglect.”
“Oh” said Zoey’s teacher, her eyes moist.
“And then there’s Hazel.”
“Oh yes, Hazel. She is the one who excels at kicking the boys between the legs?
“You know her?”
“Oh yes.”
“Just before she kicks, she does a practiced little backward hop and positions her arms just so. She utters one syllable of nameless rage and leaps to kick. Then she smiles.”
“Primitive.”
“And learned. From TV - or a 3-D computer game watched over and over.”
“Yes, she gets to watch
They themselves have serious problems….forever fighting”, I explained to her.
“It goes on and on, roiling and boiling.” said Mary, no longer angry, just overwhelmed.
“…and then there’s Charlie. He sharpens pencils needle sharp and looks for his next prey. His instincts are never wrong. He goes for the loved kids. ”
As I listened to this sincere, skilled educator talking to me about this one and that, my eyes fell upon Erik’s ghoulish self portrait. I shivered.
No where else in the world, not in a dentist’s chair, nor a hospital, nor a doctor’s office, nor a beach, is such flammable energy infused into such a concentrated container - called a classroom – an veritable matchbox.
Decades upon decades of unhealed history, unresolved complexes and baked-on history unconsciously festers in little bodies, all at a pre-logical stage of personal development. Children have no idea why they are compelled to kick each other between the legs or crawl under desks or otherwise resist when a healer, a teacher, begins to teach them something bright and sparkling new. Something freeing.
The classroom is at once the most incendiary convergence of concentrated danger in our society today, ranking second only to jails. Packed tight, and getting tighter, with only one service agent, the lone teacher, per two dozen children, it is utterly unacceptable.
Oh, but we’re not done yet. When the teacher is most overwhelmed and signals for help, then there’s often (not always, gratefully) but often, ‘teacher blame’ from the other side.
Criticism, reproach, accusation, and pointing the blaming finger at the teacher is an easy way out, a common avoidance strategy, that neatly avoids facing problems in a classroom.
It’s simple and oft repeated: “The teacher lacks classroom management skills.”
This is another form of ‘blame the victim’.
“But how is it?” one administrator asks, incredulous, “That when I walk into a classroom there is complete silence? You could hear a pin drop.”
Momentary fear perhaps? Tarry awhile. Freckled little noses quickly sniff vulnerability - and are soon off to the races with you too!
While it is true that some teachers are marvelous managers at the outset, it is equally true that some students are simply unmanageable. And it is getting worse.
A 2006 Quebec Health Board published a document stating what teachers already know: aggressively among young people is on the rise. www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ch/rcap/sg/ci3a_e.pdf -
Insecure new teachers, eager to please the children, the parents and the administration, often make it very simple. They blame themselves too. And, sadly, leave the profession within the first five years of teaching. (see link below)
http://www.teachers.ab.ca/Quick+Links/Publications/Magazine/Volume+83/Number+1/Articles/Beginning+Teacher+Initiatives.htm
How is it that Public Services has a least half a dozen workers to help pave a road?
A dentist working on only one patient has a dental assistant? A doctor seeing one patient at a time has a secretary?
With the rise in early onset aggression and mental handicaps let us quickly assign each teacher a qualified teaching assistant every learning hour of every school day!
Do our children deserve this care? Or is a ratio of 1: 25 really quite okay?
(Or shall we shuffle our lone teacher, responsible for over twenty children, off to another ‘management workshop?’)
A jar filled with glistening pencils, each one dipped in sparkling gold flecks and tied at the top with a white satin ribbon stood on this loving teacher’s inviting desk.
“What are these?” I asked
“Oh, those are ‘Helper Pencils’” she smiled. “When a child is finished an assignment, then he or she can come to the front, choose a magic sparkle pencil and offer to help someone else.”
Helping each other? What a wonderful idea. Let’s do it! Let’s help Erik shape a happier face
Eleanor Cowan, B.A., B.Ed. is a teacher and Dept. Head in Special Education in Quebec, Canada.
To contact her, visit her website at http://www.eleanorcowan.ca
Tags: kids, school classroom, teaching
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