It's 1 pm on a warm and sunny Friday afternoon in late May. Oh my, 26 kids should be busting through my classroom door in a matter of minutes for the last class of the day. The clock ticks on and a few filter in...roughly 5 students. Where are they? Five minutes later I have marked 7 tardy and we begin class with 12 out of the 26 on the roster. The scene is my remedial English class, all the students are repeating 10th grade English for the 3rd time.
This was an experiment. Instead of allow these students to take an additional elective our administration decided to put these students directly back in the same course.
I wasn’t very thrilled when I was asked to teach this class, what teacher would be?
Who wants 26 kids who have no desire to learn in one classroom the last hour of the day, the last trimester of the year? They are all a challenge, they all lack motivation and they all have very bad attendance. Yet, they all have colorful and fun personalities and they need an adult role model in their lives. They are desperately in need of consistency and someone to give them a second chance.
Their former teachers gave up on them, they wrote them off as failures -this is how I inherited them. Just like my own children they can test my patience; Brandon tries to sleep all hour, Marcus begs to go to detention, Ivy has anger management issues, Samantha never brings paper or pencil, and Jared has never turned in anything. Every day I demand their participation and effort and never allow them a way out. They know that I won’t give in and I won’t give up on them even if at the end we have some that repeat again, they are learning to hold themselves accountable. I have taken the time to call every parent and introduce myself, telling them that whatever problems they have had in the past are erased in my class. We started fresh and the experiment is working for the most part…
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You know this will pay off someday! Even if they fail, they will remember you as the one who taught them about responsibility and didn't give up. You'll get a letter from one of them years from now, and he'll tell you how he turned his life around and how you inspired him...it's not instant gratification, but it does make it all worthwhile!
ReplyDeleteEverything you wrote in your last paragraph demonstrates that you are a good teacher, Amy. To many of those kids, you probably have a reputation as a "mean" teacher because you hold them to standards and won't let them do nothing. (I have the same reputation.) But maybe deep down they know you are doing what's best for them. And if they don't realize it, well at least you know that you have done your job.
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