Rule Bender

Given the circumstances, having a class of kids who don’t usually want to learn, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with my year 11s. Don’t mistake what I’m saying to mean that my year 11 boys are perfect angels, they’re not. However, they keep me on my toes. They’re an interesting bunch. They are actually the first class I’ve come to know everybody’s names in, and half of this I believe is due to the fact that each student in the class is extremely different than the person next to them. There aren’t two personalities that are alike, and I think the mistake that many teachers have made with these boys, is that they assume they ARE all exactly alike, shove them all into the same category, and then dismiss them. I’ve found that positive reinforcement has been so successful with these boys, that you’d almost think I was faking it, but I’m not. I’m genuinely thrilled with them.

There are two boys in my year 11 class, “Allan” and “Jimmy” and I had been warned multiple times that these two boys can serve as the catalyst for an entire class disruption, and it’s 100% true. HOWEVER, I’ve also noticed that these boys seek attention, and that by giving them positive attention, they do not do negative things. I’m not giving them fake attention, or praising them for doing nothing, but let’s be logical for one second. As frustrating as it MAY seem to deal with misbehavior, set all the misbehavior aside and analyze it on a more basic level. Who really wants to listen to anybody yell? If someone looked at me and told me to “shut up and sit down” honestly, I’d feel like standing up and telling that person to go to hell. Nobody wants to be talked down to, and if you pose what you want from them in a more positive light, in most cases you will get positive results.

If you help a student to realize that you care about them, and that they too should care about themselves, it makes the work seem much more relevant. Here is my example from today with my year 11 boys. It clicked yesterday that not a whole lot of people have had high expectations of these boys when I handed out a packet I put together for the boys to fill out while watching a movie.

“Oi! Miss! You’re expecting way too much of us!” Allan groaned
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“Well nobody ever really expects anything from us” he replied.
“Boys, I’m grading this” the whole class simultaneously protested “BECAUSE you can all get A’s on it, and believe it or not, I actually LIKE giving out A’s, and I’m giving you a chance to earn one while watching a movie that has all of the answers in it.” The class was silent for a minute and the protesting stopped. Suddenly it seemed easy to them.

A few times during the movie a few boys behind me became restless when they didn’t understand a question. They started saying things like I don’t wanna do this, I don’t get it. I moved myself to sit with these boys, reworded the questions, and they figured out the answers themselves. Perhaps these boys have been drilled so many times that it’s just easier to say “I don’t get it” than to actually critically think about something, but they DO get it. I whole heartedly believe that they WANT to get it, they just haven’t had many people show them that THEY want them to get it.

There are a few boys in the class I’ve been worried about when it comes to completing their final assessment for this unit, so I’m trying to stress to all of the boys that if they need help, or even just a few minutes to get organized, that at any of my breaks, during lunch, or after school I will set time aside to help them. Working with this class has really forced me to think deeply about this concept: Are students a product of their environment, or do they choose to not succeed?  Everybody I’ve talked to thinks it’s one way or another, but I think it’s both. When I say product of their environment I don’t necessarily mean their home life. While some students may have rotten home lives, I am referring to their school environment. Sometimes all it takes is one person, at any point in one’s life, to make them feel inferior, and from then on they might actually believe it. I’m not saying this is the case for all of my students, but when the boys said nobody ever really had expectations of them, what I was hearing was “nobody has ever thought enough of us to expect anything great from us.” I’m looking forward to helping these boys learn over the next few months that they have been presented with every single great opportunity that everyone else has, they just have to learn how to use the tools they’ve been given. I’m hoping not to just teach these boys English, but to teach them a little bit of self control, manners, and a little bit about life in general. What I’m looking forward to even more, is watching them succeed, and watching myself learn from them. I think this class will end up teaching me quite a bit about myself.

For a change of pace I’ll talk about my advanced year 10 class. This is quite an opinionated class, as you may expect from an advanced class. Naturally, their opinions are often valid, but I taught a very important lesson yesterday on prejudice. We are reading a book called Deadly, Unna? It’s an Australian book about Rugby (footy). The book is based on a footy team where the Australians and the Aboriginals play together on the same team, and this is the only place in the community that the two groups of people interact. While most of the book revolves around footy, the underlying issue of the book is the prejudice that goes on in the town. I wanted the students to keep this in mind while we read the book, but I also wanted them to acknowledge their own prejudices. The word prejudice is a funny word. I think a lot of us stick our noses up at it and say that we aren’t, but the truth is we all have our own prejudices. It doesn’t make us bad people, it makes us human.

I wrote the word BRITISH on the board and I had the kids list every word, slang, slurr, and term they could think of for British people. The kids listed words such as “Pomme”, snobby, tea, the queen, and big ben. Then I wrote AMERICAN and I told the kids to do the same.  Some of the words they yelled out were fat, stupid, McDonalds, gangster, school shootings, and Hollywood.  Lastly I wrote the word AUSSIE on the board and the a student yelled out “best place ever” so I wrote that on the board. Then students said things like laid back, friendly, southern cross, Sydney harbor bridge, and kangaroos.

After we had the class lists on the board I went through with a different colored marker and circled specific words. Under BRITISH I circled “Pomme” which is an Australian slur for a British person. I also circled snobby and the queen. Under AMERICAN I circled all of the words. And under AUSSIE I circled best place ever, laid back, friendly, and kangaroos.

“The words I have circled are your prejudices on other countries, and how you people might think others view your country, what do you notice?” I asked.
“We think highly of our country” a girl named “Gwen” announced.
“And you also hold prejudices on other countries. For example, I am American but I’m not fat, I hope you don’t think I’m stupid, I don’t eat McDonalds, and I’m not from Hollywood it’s actually on the opposite side of the country.” A few people in the class apologized for what they had said and I told them not to apologize, I purposely asked them to unleash, but the point was that at the time they seemed proud of the slurs and slangs they were coming up with, but once they realized how many negative things they had to say about other countries, suddenly they didn’t seem like the “friendly” and “laid back” people they thought they were.

Yesterday was the kind of day that makes you realize how great being a teacher is. People often ask me,  “Why would you ever want to be a teacher, the pay isn’t great, kids talk back to you, and you work long hours.” Yes, well the same can be said for being a parent, which I also hope to someday be. On the other hand, I have no interest in waking up in the middle of the night to change a stinky diaper. All I want to do now is help people think and create. Being an English teacher is so fantastic because I get to play with ideas and concepts that other subjects don’t get to play with. I have an entire dictionary and every word is part of my playground. I’ve always been a rule bender, and it’s exciting for me to be in a class and tell my students that for the 80 minutes that I have them, it is perfectly okay to bend the rules. What’s even more fantastic is you have the opportunity to see their lives changing right before your eyes, and at the end of the day all I can do is hope that they’ve become better people and better thinkers, even if just marginally, than when I first met them