On the flip side of things, the English teacher in our 9th grade "house" shared with me the results of her recent writing assignment, and it was very eye-opening. Let me preface this by saying that this teacher offers such an open heart and open arms to our students that they share with her more than they would anyone else in the school. She has that effect on adults too; some people are just like that I guess. So anyway today at lunch she told me that even she was surprised this year with the level of trauma that exists in our students lives. I don't recall the prompt of the writing assignment, but it was one that inspired our 14 year-olds to write about such experiences as seeing their fathers being taken to jail, seeing their brother get shot and killed, being abused by their drug- or alcohol-addicted mother or father, recovering from drug and alcohol abuse themselves, and much more. There is even a student at our school that was raped by her father and her mother forced her to have the child. Not a student of mine this year, but the important thing is to realize that all these things happen surprisingly often in this community, and these are only the stories verified by our English teacher through her students' essays. One can only imagine the details that were left out. And yes, this teacher deals with these stories appropriately through avenues like Child Protective Services.
I think of these students that she specifically named off to me and the baggage that they carry around every day to and from school and it is amazing to me that I can get them to smile in my class. After all, these are kids are barely teenagers but are forced to deal with very adult issues - most that the majority of us never have to endure. But it makes sense now why some kids will just blow up in class for the most ridiculous things - I would not be surprised if some of them were to be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Translating this to the class: what looks like defiant behavior is really just a brief fault in their coping mechanisms, because these students carry the trauma with them daily, trying to suppress it, and never dealing with it appropriately. And then meanwhile I am beating them over the head with seemingly pointless math skills. The world would be such a better place if there were a way to fast-forward life to show certain individuals the long-term results of their actions; by this I mean I wish I could prove to these students that no matter what they have gone through, they can turn their life around. Talk about goal of the century - but hey, in four weeks I have had to send zero students to the office, so that's a plus.
In my one year of experience, I think I have a pretty firm grasp on the importance of getting to know your students at the beginning of the year, and there is no doubt that I am WAY better at it this time around. By knowing your students on a little bit better level than the typical teacher-student relationship, it is incredibly obvious when a student is going through troubles - and that is the difference between a teacher sending a student to the office with a referral and that same teacher attempting to initiate a private conversation with the student to figure out why the student is acting out. No joke, 95% of the time there is some bigger issue at the heart of their defiance.
So at this point I think back to everyone reassuring me in my early first year that "success in teaching will be if you reach and impact just one student" and that "some kids just don't want to learn, so focus on the ones that do" - I think back and I laugh because while all that advice helped me to not focus on the idea of "success" and "failure" as a teacher, none these ideas are true. As a teacher you do your best to reach every single student, and through parent phone calls and tutoring you pay special attention to those that look like they don't want to learn, because almost all of them really do, and I will argue that to the death. Case in point: I found out today that the reason why my two lowest Algebra students seem like they TRY to do nothing in my class is because they do not know how to multiply. At all. They are very familiar with the fact that they should have picked up those skills in the some six past years of school and frankly are so embarrassed by their situation that they would rather not draw attention to their lack of math knowledge. So the question then becomes: how do you make Algebra concepts - like square and cube roots - accessible to students that are not proficient in multiplication? I could go on forever about this and about how we are still covering Algebra concepts in my Precalculus class, but I think my time would be better spent making personal multiplication times tables for my students, because that is my on-the-spot temporary solution. Until next time.
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