Karen said this:
….[What] is up with these bratty egotistical kids that think they know how to teach a language better than a language teacher?…
The obvious answers are parents and TV shows – the kids often grow up with those kinds of images of what a teacher is. But, as per the prayer of our brother Saint Francis, we can’t change those things, but we can change how we react.
I think that most teachers are afraid to meet an attack with a counterattack, especially when those attacks come around a crowded desks with lots of kids around, or right in the middle of class.
The misinformed, rude, ill-raised and just basically ignorant kids, who, as Karen implies, actually speak as if they were aware of the research and standards, rarely choose to confront us alone. That is the M.O. of a bully, to get an audience first, and then tell lies.
No, it is our own failure that is the real answer to Karen’s question. We must react with force to each comment. It took me until this year to get that. Here is an example:
Ariel is the cheerleader memorizer who is in a third year class because she learned her métier of memorizing and her command of worksheets by copying them from other cheerleaders in middle school. It worked for her because she has confidence in her social skills. Her teachers think she is great. Until she walks into a TPRS/CI classroom.
In that one moment, everything that ever worked for her in a classroom, all those skills so carefully developed in the sham intellectual environment that secondary schools have become, are useless. Now, Ariel must develop social skills that are genunine. She must listen for an A, and not memorize and copy.
Ariel can no longer braid the hair of the cheerleader in front of her, who has been moved away from her. She is suddenly vulnerable. And what do bullies do when they feel vulnerable? They attack. And that is what she did with me in the first weeks of this year.
One attack came in a classroom next door, the room of the yearbook teacher, after school. Ariel had two other cheerleaders with her, but one was not of her ilk – her parents had taught her – Mariah – to respect adults. Mariah also takes French, but is a great student and gets jGR.
So it was two against one when I walked in and I said, in a very lighthearted way:
Me: “Ariel, your grade needs some help…what can we do to learn those skill on that [jGR] poster better?” (Ariel’s current jGR grade is 2.)
Ariel: “Now I’m doing better. I hated your class at first!”
Me: “Oh! You hated my class!”
Ariel: “Yes, I thought it was stupid. My old teacher gave me work!”
Me: “You mean work sheets, right? You learned a lot from them?”
Ariel: “Yes, and it was more fun in that class. We played games. We need to play more games.”
Me: “Ariel, I have sensed that you feel this way and I am so happy we can have this conversation. I want you to leave my class. You are not happy in it. I am going to your counselor right now. And what is your phone number?”
Ariel: “Oh, I like the class now. I acted, remember?”
Me: “Yes, I do remember that you acted. But as I was grading you during that class, I saw that you were braiding Sugely’s hair and not listening to the story.”
Ariel: “But I like the class now! I even don’t skip classes anymore.”
Me: “Ariel, until I see a 100% turnaround in how you listen in class, I am going to keep the emails going with your counselor and your parents. Your grade will continue to be low. I am going to ask them for a meeting. You can’t come to my class and braid hair…”.
This is just a sample of the way I work with Ariel. It is very difficult to describe in words. It has to do with a core strength that is verbally conveyed.
There is something I have seen in over 90% of teachers including me and it is some kind of desire to be nice which actually trumps our own authority in the classroom. We trump ourselves, we trump our own authority, by trying to be nice!
I use this core strength constantly now. I am always on my guard for the People Pleasing Ben in my teaching and in my interactions with kids. Certain kids like Ariel have, almost unbelieveably, learned – in our current blown system – to find and wrestle down the people pleasing side of teachers.
I honestly feel that that is one of the causes of the Columbine massacre, which, living one block away from, I have come to study closely over the years and since I have a student there now. When I go into the building, I see clearly that the culture, with the same principal, is still the same.
There are all kinds of cheerleaders walking around – cheerleaders walking around everywhere! But they are 37 year old cheerleaders who now delivers of instructional services, worksheets and such, in foreign languages. No wonder Ariel wants that world back.
So now I attack. I do not in any way doubt that jGR is freaking out Ariel’s bot side, and I will not let her bot side attack me. I will not let a child who got an A in a class where worksheets dominated tell me what to do and I will not mince my words when any volley is made in my direction.
I have the standards and I represent what will one day be commonly accepted practice – 90% use of the TL in the classroom – and I have a good way of meeting that standard, and nobody will tell me otherwise.
Just yesterday, we did some Word Chunking as a reward for a great story this past week in my 3/4 traditionally trained class – unfortunately using French 1 vocabulary that is up on the wall because it is the only vocabulary that those 3/4 traditional kids know. It was a big success and I want to address that in an article here sometime because I don’t think WCT is used properly to greatest effect in many classrooms.
Ariel, who keeps score (get it?), blurted out, “We need to play more games!” I stopped everything and turned away from the big group, which was all smiles and loving the game, and pointedly told Ariel in a serious way never to tell me what to do in my class again.
Many would call that an overeaction to an innocent fun suggestion from a kid, but it was not, given Ariel’s background. This is the point I am trying to make here. For some odd reason, no one has ever suggested to many of us that we ever needed to grow a spine as a teacher and be able to know when a child crosses a line.
Perhaps because we spend so much time in front of people and we don’t want to offend the poor darlings, we fail to confront, because we don’t want to hurt the child or embarass them. But, when people are watching and the child – who is really a bully – cover their lies and attack us with smiles very often, that is the moment to calmly inform the bully in no uncertain terms that we get what they are doing and we will not accept it.