This week, I demonstrated that I can (despite all appearances) be taught.  I put a child’s best interests ahead of my own, for the umpteenth time. And I dragged 8^th period ahead, instead of behind my car.  So all in all, a good week.

If I am to write in chronological order, I put the child’s best interests ahead of my own before the demonstration of lessons-have-been-learned.  But interestingly, the two are intertwined in the complex way that most of teaching (in general, but English teaching in specific) goes.

I have taught this child, X, for parts of three years.  He and his twin sister were in the same sophomore honors class, then I had only the sister in AP English Language classes (but heard through his English teacher that his internal battles continued), and now I have him in my regular English 4 class.  X is tightly wound, and battles anxiety and who-knows-what-else on a daily basis.  He hasn’t as yet come up with a successful default setting, and so some days he shuts down completely and literally cannot function. 

He went catatonic a couple of times in class his sophomore year, and the “battle plan” at the time was to have his sister text their mother to come to school and coax him into movement.  This was only moderately successful as a plan, and X stopped coming to class at the end of the year.  He managed to pass the second semester through the accumulation of points before he stopped coming (& he did come in and take the final).

Junior year began with only the sister in a class with me.  It was a relief, frankly, because it is difficult to stay on high emotional alert for one child in a class of 30 with all of the other things swirling around.  The sister has her own issues, but functions quite well in the classroom. 

In January, I got a call from his counselor asking if I would take X in class again because he was having issues and had failed first semester English.  I said “of course!”  I had heard about one issue – he went to see his counselor during a class, was told to wait in a conference room and when no one came for him he just stayed in the conference room until his frantic mother finally found him at 11 p.m. that night. Overall, X seemed a little better on a day-to-day basis. Instead of shutting down in class, he just didn’t come to school sometimes.  And yet again, by the end of the year, he stopped coming at all. I believe yet again he had accumulated enough points to pass, however.

This year began well enough.  X was in a regular class instead of an AP class, and that seemed to help his anxiety stay at manageable levels.  This modest success only lasted for the first quarter, however.  X started to miss class in the second quarter, and the resulting accumulation of missing assignments put him on high avoidance behavior, which caused him to miss more class. This was apparently true for each class on his schedule. By November, he wasn’t coming to school at all. 

The school therapist tried to help him come up with a plan to pass his classes – he was to contact teachers and get enough assignments so that he could pass.  He just couldn’t make himself talk to some of his teachers, but because of our history, he was actually able to come see me and I gave him some of his missing work with the understanding that he would finish it and get the next installment (on the theory that if I gave it all to him at once, the mass of it would choke him). 

And then . . . nothing.  He didn’t bring work to me, or text, or email. His parents did not get in contact.  The therapist did not get in contact . . .until Finals Week, when the therapist called me one morning to ask for the final for my class so that she could supervise X taking it.  I told her there was no point in X taking the final since he hadn’t completed the work I had given him back in November, which seemed to surprise her.

Honestly, if I have a reputation at all, it’s that I am flexible and will work with the kids. I try to always take the kid’s side, unless said kid is not trying at all.  I tell them it’s the Rumpelstiltskin principle – I can help them make gold, but I have to have straw because you can’t make gold out of nothing.  So I understood why the therapist was surprised at my somewhat-belligerent answer.  It wasn’t like me to refuse.  But I felt like X already had the weight of knowing he hadn’t given me any straw, and producing a piece of gold in the form of a passing grade wouldn’t alleviate his anxiety because he would know he hadn’t actually earned it.  A couple of days later, X showed up with approximately half of the work I’d given him in November.  I sighed, accepted it, and emailed the therapist a copy of the final and a final writing assignment.

Those points were not enough straw to give X a passing grade (Rumpelstiltskin!), but I felt like I had been fair.  Keep in mind, I have other students in class, who also don’t turn in work and would really like to pass, too.  I am comfortable giving everyone approximately the same amount of leeway and letting them choose what to do with it – but I’m not going to just make up numbers and pass someone out of pity.

School began again in January, and X was still on the roll although not present.  He came once, then didn’t, then emailed for missing work . . . the pattern was the same.  I got an emailed notice of a parent-teacher-counselor conference for this week to discuss ways we could help X get enough credits to graduate.  At the meeting, his mother finally looked the number of needed credits in the eye and realized X would not be graduating with his sister; it was possible though, through a combination of night school, on-line class during a teacher-aide period, and summer school that X could accumulate enough credit to graduate by summer.  Here is where I put the child’s needs ahead of mine.

I have been teaching night school for the past year, trying to make up income missing because Dave is a full-time student instead of a full-time employee.  I dislike the necessity of night school, and it tires me disproportionately to the time involved because, I think, it falls at the end of the day and my body isn’t conditioned for an additional two hours of teaching at that time, and I’m older, and I’m approaching burnout.  I share English duties with another teacher; he teaches English 2 & 3 and I teach English 1 & 4.  Night school is divided into quarters, with the first quarter devoted to the A credit (1^st semester) and the second quarter devoted to B.  Fall semester is English 1 & 2, and winter semester is English 3 & 4.

X needs to make up a junior English credit and a senior English credit – both for A semesters.  It’s not possible to take both A classes at the same time.  He also needs to make up U.S. History and a math class (I think). I told the assembled people that if we could get administrative approval, I’d be glad to teach him English 3A during the second block of night school.  I can do that because there generally isn’t anyone in my night school class second block, because it’s for English 4B and no one has failed English 4B yet because when second block occurs they are still in the middle of English 4B.  I felt a little guilty about this last year, but I stayed at school during night school hours regardless so I wasn’t getting paid for going home – but I was getting paid for not teaching.  So morally, it felt like volunteering for an additional class was a right thing to do, even though emotionally I would rather poke out my eyes than teach night school. No word yet on if admin will approve, but at least I tried to help.

Now we get to the part of the week where I demonstrated that I can learn from past mistakes.

This year, for whatever administrative reason, the night school teachers didn’t get paid the extra stipend for teaching night school for seven weeks.  Essentially, we taught the first quarter for free.  We brought it up with the principal after a month (figuring maybe they needed time to get caught up or something), and although he said he would check on it, nothing happened.  Finally, one of us caught the efficient assistant principal (every school has at least one A.P. who is the “reliable” one) and pay was adjusted.

The first January paycheck rolled around, and there was money included for our night school work – but it was much lower than expected.  Like, over $60 a paycheck lower for me (which worked out to around $125 less per month).  Not acceptable!  So I fired off an email to the efficient A.P., asking for help.  He sent me back a note that I needed to call downtown and talk to the HR person, which I perceived to be a brush off/nothing-I –can-do move.  Well, he could do something before!

I’ve already mentioned that I don’t like teaching night school.  So I typed up a resignation letter addressed to the principal and cc’d to Mr. Efficient A.P.  I’m too old for this kind of garbage! I’ll go get a night job at Barnes & Noble!  Good luck running night school without me!

This letter remains in my “drafts” folder.  I decided to come home and cool off before addressing this problem.  Maybe on Monday it won’t seem that big of a deal, or one of the other night school teachers will have noticed the problem and also brought it up.  There was a time when I would have pressed “send” without worrying about consequences.  But I have learned and grown since that time.

Finally, to address the 8^th period problem:  There is always a class -- every one of my 19 years of teaching has had one -- that I struggle with.  Usually it’s a class of smart kids who don’t wish to do any work. They’re smart enough to get out of/argue away/avoid most of the assigned class work.  And they fight tooth and nail against anything perceived to be hard, although most of them could easily do said hard work.  These classes don’t like sitting in a seating chart (they constantly move seats), feed off of & encourage distractions, and just generally make my time with them extremely trying.  Also, these kids never seem to “get” that I’m literally sick of them some days.  It’s always these kids who, when they see me the next year, ask “do you miss me?” Ha!  Like I miss a toothache, kid.

8^th period this year is that class.  It’s English 4, so in addition to being smart (literally 1/3 of the class used to be in A.P. English but decided they didn’t want to work that hard this year), they have the added bonus of being seniors in their last semester of high school English.  Hoo boy.  I dragged them through Hamlet kicking and screaming (the only reason they all passed first semester is because I gave them thirty billion opportunities to make up their missing Hamlet assignments, which they all put off until the twenty-nine billionth opportunity). 

This semester’s big read is Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela.  I chose it for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is its applicability to current events.  But it is a looonnnggg walk to freedom (it’s a big book of over 600 pages).  My goodness, 8^th period muttered and groaned when we went to check out the book.  “Do we have to read the whole book?!” (no, actually I’ve skipped several chapters in the Reading Schedule) “Why do we have to read this huge book?!” (because I said so) “I can’t pronounce these names!” (I know).  But all of this occurred without losing my temper or getting unduly snarky!  So I consider that a win.

Tune in for next week’s version of This Week in Teaching, where Juli looks long and hard at a career in retail.  TTFN!