The Evolution of Mr. D: "It would be easy to write these kids off"

This is part of a year-long series looking back at the journal I wrote when I was just starting out my teaching career (at that point, I taught middle school social studies). Read more about his project here. Next installment: February 13th.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Tomorrow my friend Jon from home is coming to visit for the weekend. I saw him over winter break but that was one of only a handful of times we've been able to hang out all of last year. Jon made the original drive to Texas with me; our first encounter with the Valley (McAllen) left us underwhelmed. We actually stayed overnight in Reynosa just for the sake of spending a night in Mexico. I've now learned that may not have been the safest thing to do, but we didn't know any better then and thus had fun.

It will be nice to finally introduce my friends from home to the friends I've made here. I think they'll get along famously.

School has been fine this week; I've had a lot of different types of activities going on each day to keep them interested and on their toes. We've done some reading out loud as a class, some independent work, a couple of skits and some open-ended activities as well. It went pretty smoothly and I think they are well prepared for Friday's test. Tomorrow we'll play BINGO to review for the test. I found this great spreadsheet that actually generates 25 bingo cards from your list of terms and definitions and gives you a call sheet. It is fantastic and saved me literally hours of work.

On the down side, last week I had two students sent to the alternative center and one is in juvenile (I didn't have anything to do with the latter). The two girls were just completely insubordinate--ignoring me completely, disrupting class endlessly, doing no work and causing even more of a problem when I tried to deal with them in class. They're in my homeroom, which is already a tough group, and it was really to the point where every second they remained in class was eroding my ability to discipline that class. I've given both of these girls every chance to turn things around... I've gone out of my way to help them when they've had problems outside my classroom, I've called home and met with their parents at least 3 times each, I've had the counselors, my cluster and the VP talk to them more than once just to scratch the surface of what I've tried to do.

After all of this and more, their behavior hadn't changed one bit. And then last week it came to a head, and with three strikes against them in the same class, I kicked them out and sent the referrals to the office once again. This time, since they had both had more than their fair share of ISS, OSS and having to pay tickets, the VP finally sent both of them to the alternative center. I hate having to do it, I really do. I actually like both of these girls, I think they're both really intelligent and capable if only they cared enough to apply themselves. I'll let them stew for a couple of weeks over there before I make yet another attempt to bring them around.

My attempts at reaching out to my students sent over there haven't been completely successful thus far--the first student ended up leaving our cluster after coming back with the same attitude he left with (after telling me he was willing to change). The second has done slightly better in my class, and is more willing to do things for me than she was before, but she also didn't seem to heed my much-needed advice about staying out of trouble. The other cluster teachers say she was under the influence of something--"roach pills" seem to be the drug of choice. I really thought she was going to turn it around. I'm still holding out hope.

Ironically this is what the student who went to juvenile apparently tested positive for or was caught with (I don't know the whole story yet). He's another bright but troubled kid, a constant discipline problem who was repeating the 8th grade this year. I think the rest of the cluster might actually join me to visit him and make a similar appeal to the others. I've butted heads with him so many times that I think it would do wonders for me to go and see him at this point, even this late in the year.

On top of all this, another one of my students, not surprisingly from that same rowdy homeroom, was also caught in school under the influence. Apparently he was having problems at home that he couldn't handle and so decided to take some kind of drug later in the day about 2 days ago. There was a big scene in the hallway with him going crazy, security restraining him, his mother being there and fainting because of the whole situation, and similar insanity. I'm surprised he wasn't expelled to be honest, but he'll be in alternative as well, which makes 3 at the moment and my 5th for the year. Like the others, when he actually puts his mind to things he is pretty intelligent. I will make another pilgrimage for him as well.

I guess it would be easy to write these kids off, to make some sweeping statement about them, this town, this culture, their parents or something like that. I just can't do it. I don't want to give up on any of them. I have a hard time believing any of them is a lost cause. And if I can break through maybe to just one of the four I've mentioned in this entry, I think it's all worth it. If I don't, at least I can have pride in the fact that I tried. They at least deserve that much.