Therapy

Today, a student acknowledged me as ‘babe’.  Not in a flattering way, not that this could be flattering in any way, but a creepy sarcastic way.  Like anything in life, teaching, comes with a few objections that sting.  The stings, unfortunately, stick longer with you, than any great shining moment can. 

“Nick, let me help you with this sentence”.  “Ya, sure babe”.....

It is still ringing in my ears.  I can still feel my ears burn with anger and my body stiffen with furry.

When I booked this job my agent warned me that this school was not like any of the other wonderful schools I have worked at.  She referred to this school as, ‘a challenge’.

Although I am still annoyed with the disrespect I was faced with today, something else stood out, something far more important.  These students live a different life than me.  The area that this school is in is one of the less desirable in Newcastle.  I felt as if I was bringing a, self-fullfilling prophecy with me to this job, I couldn’t help it.  

My agent explicitly told me about it is a ‘challenging school’ and knowing what type of area the school was in only tainted my vision of how the day was going to go.  To make this even worse, I found that the school had a low Ofsted Rating.  Ofsted, is a private independent company that inspects schools, rates them and sends this information to parliament.  I have never worked at a school with such a low rating before, so on top of everything else I am heading to work this morning with a spoiled view of what was to come.

To summarize my day I can tell you, ‘yes it was challenging’, but still my ears are stinging with the lack of respect from ‘Nick’.  I am writing this blog today partly because I need therapy, and this blog has become my release and also to remember this ‘aha’ teaching moment I had.

Like I stated before, something else stood out, something far more important; behaviour.  I have dealt with ‘difficult students’ or ‘managed poor behaviour’ before, but today it was different.  Within the first 15 minutes I recognized a disconnect with the majority of the students.  Not the regular disconnect, this was not the disconnect that you see when your students can’t figure out the polygon formula you just taught them, this was a social disconnect.  These students come from homes that I have never seen before, homes that show more hate than love and have in some cases not enough attention.  

I have heard of this ‘disconnect’ before.  Whether it was in one of Gotshall’s social theory classes, or something I overheard other teachers refer to.  Whatever it was it was like a bell ringing, and me realizing, ‘ahhh.... so here it is’.  I am foreign to any kind of poverty, ‘other than school debt poverty’ so this is why I witnessed this disconnect today.  The type of poverty I am referring to is not simply funds or money, but more so love.  It was extremely sad to see these students yearn for attention or yearn for love or for anything that made them feel like an eleven year old should feel.  

If the students did not have the control of the class today, they would act unreasonable and disrespectful.  They would burst out in crazy laughs to interrupt my lessons, because they were left with their classmates not paying attention to them.  At first I was annoyed, having to re-teach things, do to interruptions, but late in the morning after their first break, I realized that the students were reacting to the lack of attention that they receive.  

After break, ‘Kourtney’ a student who, laid on the floor, sat on her desk top, snuck up behind me during a lesson while I was at the board to make her classmates laugh, came up to me and apologized.  At the same time she hugged me.  It was a hard embrace that I think was genuine.  I asked her what she was apologizing for, hoping she would refer to her disrespectful manor of the morning, but she simply had no answer for me.  I gave her a long drawn out ‘teacher look’ before I asked her to show me she is sorry by behaving properly for the rest of the day.   Of course she did not, in fact it got worse and she quite enjoyed entertaining her classmates.

I have to explain first how, during the last 2 months almost all of the supply work that I had has been for teachers to write report cards.  Yes, Canadian teachers who read this (I mean you REBECCA) teachers here in England get prep time for their report cards, an entire 3 days usually!! Anywho I had to explain this because the teacher was at the school today, just not in the classroom.  

It wasn’t until after the day had finished, typical of teachers, that the regular teacher informed me of the ‘social issues’ that are in his class.  Today there were 23 students in my class, 9 of which are foster children, 1 who is being sent to, what he referred to as, ‘a unit’ (I think this is some sort of boot camp) and another who was suspended for beating another student in the yard then running a mad goose chase around the school with teachers chasing him (literally) until he climbed up a tree and stayed there until night time.  On top of these social issues, there were also the regular learning difficulties, and a student with ‘high functioning autism’.  

I ache physically, mentally, and emotionally.  I cannot believe the stress that these students have.  It is so bazaar how far I am from their worlds.  Can I teach students that I have no relation with?  Why does this happen?  It shouldn’t, but of course we do not live in a perfect world.  I feel as if I robbed them today.  I could have done so much more, because these are the students that need that extra attention, they need the extra love to make them understand that they are able to do anything and can accomplish their dreams.  Instead I lost it, and heard my voice scream for the first time as a teacher.

I was absolutely appalled after the swear words, the disrespect towards me and their classmates I snapped.  “THESE ARE THE PEOPLE THAT YOU WILL PROBABLY SHARE THE NEXT 10 YEARS WITH!  HOW DISCUSTING IS IT THAT YOU ARE INTERRUPTING YOUR CLASSMATES WITH RUDE COMMENTS AND SWEAR WORDS”.  I was close to a tremble while saying this, I was through I was done, than Nick inserted his lovely two cents.

 *All names have been changed to respect the privacy of students*