I guess all things are relative, but I sometimes smile when I hear a teacher telling stories of angst and suffering because of a certain student in one of their classes acting out and creating problems. I’m not smirking, I wouldn’t do that. I’m not even smiling about their story; I’m just remembering mine. My first teaching job was as a team teacher in a classroom comprised of 18 students between the ages of sixteen and twenty who the system considered unmanageable in a normal school setting.
Imagine the most aberrant teenagers in the district, placed together to form the appearance of a traditional classroom with desks, books and lesson plans; a classroom that looks a lot like the ones these kids couldn’t function in to begin with. It wasn’t a fun place, and sometimes bordered on insanity. Forget about failing math and English, these kids were failing; the get along with others test, the social mores test, the respect your peers test, the respect adults test, and most of all, the no fighting with other students or the teacher test. It was like putting all the animals at the zoo in one cage, throwing in the circus ringmaster without a whip, and expecting them to all get along.
Brad and I met in college, became friends, and ended up teaching at the same private special education school after graduation. He’s five years older than me and we graduated the same year because he took a hiatus from school to go fight in a war, but age is and was irrelevant to us. We are friends and equals. We were team-teachers with the students nobody else wanted; the big boy’s and girl’s class with the 16-20 year olds; the classroom that went through three teachers the year before.
Unfortunately, many of these kids knew that being in our classroom was like having a get-out-of-jail free card. Every time they got in trouble with the law, the justice system declared our classroom the best frigging place for them, at least until they turned twenty-one. As the class size grew it was halved; and we both ended up with classrooms. Sort of a divide and conquer thing for us and them, making everything at times a challenge.
In the first hour of my first day, in my first classroom setting with these 18 students, one kid decided not to sit down when I asked everyone to sit. He just looked straight at me and said; “You’re not in charge, I am, so if I don’t sit down, what the f**k are you going to do about it?” I told him if he didn’t sit down on his own, I would personally sit him down, and so the story begins.
New teachers like apples, all bright and shiny when they first walk through the door, slowly and inexorably turn into applesauce; that’s just the way it is. Smart teachers realize this before its tool late and modify their behavior or position. Not so smart ones become ineffective, mentally absent, or hopefully, promoted out of the classroom.
The label emotionally disturbed, often paired with “learning disabled” (ED/LD) is code for; aggressive and anti-social, incorrigible, uncontrollable, or the big one; sometimes dangerous.
On the record at an intake meeting for a perspective student, public school administrators and professionals would explain why our private school’s specialized teaching curriculum was exactly what their young lad needed, but off the record, we often heard the real reasoning and it usually sounded a little like; “I fear for my teachers and for myself because there’s the distinct possibility one or all of us is going to lose whatever self-control we have left, and probably our jobs if this kid continues to show up at our school; so for my own sanity as well as my staffs’, get this frigging kid, out of my frigging school, and out of my frigging life”. Our administration seeing dollar signs, never wanted to disappoint, and usually responded with an affirming; “Absolutely, we have just what this child needs to help him successfully transition into society.”
Teaching special needs kids especially those that exhibit aberrant behavior is often a double-edged sword, especially with older kids. There’s a reason they were labeled Emotionally Disturbed, and it wasn’t because they couldn’t grasp the concept of geometry, don’t get me wrong though, they absolutely do want help. They either don’t realize it, don’t know how to ask for it, or they’re having so much fun shitting on you and everyone else, they’ve decided to put off the whole idea until some other time.
To be continued…