I'm not feeling too articulate these days. I'm watching the economy around me melt down, we're having increased levels of stupid crime, and I'm having anxiety about an application to a university to increase my marketability in the area.
I'm having decent enough workdays for a change, and most of the classes I've been in have been really pretty good, without the balance tipping in favor of the truly screwed up. That is to say, the class ratio of Hopeless Cases versus Workable Kids has lately been about 5 to 1 in favor of Workable Kids. The students I've been getting lately act like kids, with the usual expected kid behavior, and haven't been crossing that line into sociopathy, criminality, and insanity. So that's been cool.
Incidentally, anyone who works in a lower-income place and wants to tell me to my face that 'all kids are salvageable' is full of it. Some are too far gone by 1st Grade, and the best you can hope for is to keep them under control, and instill some level of respect for authority, and that's about it. Their personalities are so wrecked by beatings, neglect, mayhem, and negative stimuli their brains have developed in those directions.
They come to school covered in scars and injuries, in filthy coats, with snot draining over their faces and ears so full of dirty wax it oozes down their necks. Their breath stinks because they never brush their teeth. Their potty-training is incomplete, and they will pee in a corner in 2nd Grade. They smell like stale cigarette smoke and dollar-store detergent. Their heads crawl with lice.
They steal food from subsidized lunch baskets (more on THAT below, *) and assault fellow students for candy. They fight over literally everything, and attack other students for getting anything they don't get themselves. If they can't find a belonging they accuse the nearest classmate of having stolen it and attack them. They cannot stand to lose, at anything, and playing any kind of competitive game in any classroom at any time is an invitation to a riot. They become furious and fly into rages if they lose, and they viciously mock anyone else who loses.
When other students talk, they scream at them to 'shut up' at room-clearing volume, and will not stop until a fight has been provoked.
I am very hard on such students, and this is not a popular 'technique' with some other employees where I work. Many employees feel such students need love and understanding, and for the staff that can effortlessly supply bottomless emotional support for these screwed-up people, I reserve my endless and sincere respect.
However, for better or worse, I am not full of love and acceptance. I view the world as a harsh and largely unforgiving place. Very few people are going to truly care about you, and if someone says they do, be wary of dishonesty.
I am very much like the most screwed-up of students, and actually, I care about them most of all. You don't call the fire department if your house isn't on fire; most 'good kids' don't really need any more support than what they already have. After all, where is the generosity of spirit that gives to someone who already deserves it? That's not a gift, it's a transaction. A gift only becomes such when it's given unexpectedly or to someone who has done nothing to deserve it. It's the nature of a gift.
Knowing my limitations, and specifically my own emotional limitations, I work on the basis that my best bet to do some good in the world is to try to communicate to messed-up people that they need to learn some measure of discipline. Simply brawling your way through life, and fighting openly with every authority figure in your way, will put you in one of two places: jail or a grave. Why do that to yourself?
If you learn discipline, you will learn pride in yourself; if you learn pride in yourself, you will find self-respect, and that discovery of self-respect will enable you to respect others. With that self-respect will come the recognition that you can be stronger than the circumstances around you.
To this end, I will not reward poor behavior with support and 'love'. That is a sucker's bet. I will not have some kid throw a chair across the room and say, "That's okay Johnny, it's alright". Not happening. What this kid needs to learn, and this an opinion born of long and bloody experience, is to learn to control himself; in that self-control he will find pride and strength. Same goes for girls. Learn some self-control, ladies. There are women's prisons too.
That said, I've been seriously questioning my ability to function in the venue I'm in at the moment, as I believe my behavior is misinterpreted by fellow staff. My forcefulness is perceived as out-of-control aggression; my insistence on classroom discipline is viewed as self-satisfying tyranny. Perhaps, like Colonel Kurtz, my methods are... 'unsound'. I'm really, really working on this and trying to figure out whether to pursue this further, and it's not being helped by the current massive financial stress.
*There is no conceivable excuse for a 2nd grader to steal food from the school lunchroom, when they are already on the Federal free breakfast and lunch program. In this case, there are four children in the home and the mother doesn't work. In Wisconsin, these kids get free medical care, the mother gets free birth control, and they can collect, at minimum, $400 per month in free food through Qwest. There is no excuse for those kids to be hungry, ever, at any time, period, unless the parent bought food and then traded it for another... item. Which is illegal, by the way, and very much so, and rampant. Naturally, food stamp money goes for about what it always has, which is about 2/3 face value, and the food that gets traded is always expensive meat, like steak and seafood, which will burn through $400 in no time. Excuse me, I'm depressed now.
Well, there is a difference, at least to me, for asserting discipline for its own sake and for edification, as opposed to say that written about in The Great Santini, which often seemed more for self-promotion.
ReplyDeleteI have only ever been in one school where we had a majority of students at or near the poverty level. I was in that school from grades 3-6. And, yeah, if I were given a yearbook now I could tell you which of the kids came from good situations or ones that messed them up. It was a small school.
As far as the head lice goes, I can remember that the county health agency came out often for eye exams, dental checks, and checking for head lice. If they found lice on you, they shaved your head.
For the guys, embarrasing, but doable. I remember a pudgy kid named Floyd who, after having his head shaved, looked a Native American 'Curly'. And I remember there was one girl, already painfully shy, very bright, but overly tall for her age, thick glasses, who had her head shaved. I wonder if the memories haunt her as the pain in her eyes I can recall as clearly now as I could then.