Dealing with Oppositional Students 2

4 thoughts on “Dealing with Oppositional Students 2”

1. skip

   February 21, 2015 at 11:33 am

   Hey Ben,
   Once again you touch on a timely issue and nail it. I just blogged (http://tcimainenewenglandandbeyond.weebly.com/si-so-blog) about a book called “The Invisible Classroom by Kirke Olson that jenschongalla sent me before Christmas. It is an effort to help teachers understand and deal with the aspect of class/school that you deal with in your post.
   In the Introduction Kirke says:
   Extensive research over many decades shows that from the first moments of birth, human brains are wired to learn best within the context of loving relationships. This does not end because children enter schools, so cultivating a positive relational culture in your classroom and school supports learning and creates a better working atmosphere for you. What’s love got to do with it? Well, everything!
   Ben, I wonder what you credit for your insight into this topic? Is it only your experience? Honestly, I truly believe that no teaching to its full potential can happen until we address students in the way you talk about above.
   If I can be successful in doing what you describe I can change not only the student’s experience in my class and my experience but the experience of the entire class!
   Thanks Ben

   Log in to Reply
2. Ben Slavic

   February 21, 2015 at 12:36 pm

   Skip there was a big change in treatment of mentally ill people in France around the time of the French Revolution. There was some doctor who thought that if patients weren’t chained to walls but rather were allowed to move around and be involved with others who also had suffered with mental illness, that is, being acknowledged for who they were instead of being labeled as a misfit (or, as Kirke says, being in a “positive relational culture” with others), the patients got better. The Quakers later brought this into the U.S. and even today there is a movement in American mental hospitals to avoid hiring super qualified “mental health experts” in those hospitals and instead hiring people with a history of mental health issues as well. The reasoning is obvious: the latter group brings empathy to the equation and the former, those mental health experts who advocate the giving of drugs to deaden the patient on all levels and don’t enter into positive relation with the patients, don’t bring much of anything to those patients except their own overly analytical left brain dominant selves, which treat the patients robotically and without love, compassion and empathy.
   The parallels with teaching as it happens in American schools these days are obvious. We work in institutions that consider the collection of data more important than the real human needs of the child to be a part of a group. In our institutions if a student is absent because of some kind of crushing family crisis, or if the student is not balanced mentally as a result of being in schools (for example like what happened in Columbine High School), they are often told that they have to do the work anyway. They have to make up the work and take the test.
   We must choose how we react to those mentally imbalanced children like Mildred. Historically up until now, a suffering child was treated as different, labeled with all sorts of terms, and put on some kind of plan/medication. (Honestly, Mildred was horrible. Her behavior in class kept me up at night. I wanted to get the biggest security guard in the building and drag her out of my class every day.) But she didn’t know that. Myrtle Beach High School WAS an insane asylum and I had to choose who I wanted to be in it. We all do. We who choose CI choose love. OK now I know I went over the line with that sentence. Maybe I should say that there is more potential to teach with love in CI than there is in using a textbook. Not to say that textbook teachers don’t bring love to their students, but that love is less free than the love we bring our students with stories. I mean, how can you bring love to someone when it’s packaged in a relative pronoun object? I do love me a good relative pronoun, but they don’t me love back much. Unless I’ve given them life in a story. Then they are happy and not two dimensional and sad anymore. That’s the best answer I can give to your question, skip, my brother.
   The only thing is that it took me a long time to let go of the idea that I had to be successful in my efforts with those kids. Luckily, I gave up long ago the idea that I could fix the system. I really can’t. The kids are too sick and most of the teachers are as well, with their focus on grades and competition and just how hard they are, how hard their faces are. All I could do was really work on taking care of myself so that I could serve my students in humility and just do the best I could. This profession has forced me to take care of myself, which I didn’t do when I first started teaching because I had bought into the competitions thing. By taking care of myself and resting properly, I very slowly learned how to avoid being like those horrible mental health people of centuries past.
   The short version of the above is: What Kirke says. Really, all of this stuff can be referenced and studied on Laurie’s site. Or just talk to her at a conference. This whole discussion, which is huge in our work, because it involves our mental health (where our minds find health by finding warmth and support in our hearts), could be labeled Laurie Clarcq 101. Just go read her blog and learn.

   Log in to Reply
3. Laurie

   February 21, 2015 at 6:42 pm

   If there is anything wise on my blog, it came through me not from me. Emotional and mental health is so important to me because there are so many UNHEALTHY practices in our lives and the most unhealthy element is that we aren’t aware of them. I wasn’t raised to know what healthy was, I wasn’t ever really taught what healthy is….and it is a constant battle for me to find a place of health (physically, emotionally etc.) It’s not popular to admit it, I suspect it is for most of us.
   A number of the adults in my family are very bright and have dealt, or do still deal. with anxiety, depression and probably a great deal more. It was not their way to explore these issues. It was/is their way to deny them. It simply made sense to them to assume that what they knew was normal. Inside, however, the struggle was/is powerful and real. What am I thinking? Why am I feeling this way? What is wrong with me? Most of their struggle has been blamed on the outer, not the inner world. Work is stressful. My kids are brats. My marriage is awful. I have no money. Etc. But I know what their greatest fear was/is. To be labeled as “crazy.” (see Ben’s post above)
   I’ve been an anxiety sufferer since my earliest memories. I have no problem sharing that I take daily meds to keep anxiety and depression under control. Sadly, I was in my late twenties before I even knew what anxiety/depression were and in my forties before I finally accepted that I needed help. For some people this is an episode, a period of time they eventually work through. That is not my reality. It’s my lifetime sidekick. But I live in the 21st century. I am extremely grateful to have been able to experience peace and grace for the majority of my adult life. I wouldn’t wish those pre-meds years and experiences on anyone.
   But the truth is that we all have our albatross (es). AND WE NEED TO KNOW THAT THAT IS NORMAL, EXPECTED AND LOVABLE. Because it isn’t the anxiety, the depression, the addiction, the abuse, the divorce, the illness, the job loss, the fear or the whatever that damages us.
   It’s the idea that these things somehow make us unacceptable and unlovable. Having them in our lives feels like proof that we deserve to be burdened or punished rather than loved.
   To feel unloved and to believe oneself unlovable…….that is the greatest affliction.
   Each of us can prevent that , or change that, for someone else.
   Any and every little thing done in love can do that.
   I believe that is what we are here for. Teaching a language is just a setting for the real work.
   with love,
   Laurie

   Log in to Reply
4. Ben Slavic

   February 21, 2015 at 10:45 pm

   As usual, Laurie comes through with the kind of honesty and transparency that I have prayed for on this blog. Not everyone will be able to relate to what Laurie describes above, but I sure do. I always thought I hated my job until I realized that it was given to me to teach me similar things to those Laurie describes above. I turned into a real workaholic with teaching until I realized what I was doing to myself (not loving myself enough to take a break). The breakthrough came when Susie Gross explained to me over a period of about seven years, in no uncertain terms, that I was to stop entering super trained kids, trained by me like top athletes, in the National French Exam and the AP French Exam and start learning to teach in this new way, which is not conducive to cut-throat exams and contests for privileged white kids, and turn to and embrace the many beneficial mental health aspects of this work, it’s all inclusiveness and how it represents what is best about America. It’s not just external politics that made me make this blog private; it was also internal mental health reasons. Laurie has always kept this topic front and center for us over the years and only those who have been along for the long haul know what that means to them personally. And so when we see Laurie each summer at the conferences, ever fresh and ever honest, just like Susie and Blaine and Jason and Diana and the other real leaders in this work, to remind us that no matter how much we got beat up in the previous year, we can and will return to the classroom in the fall by using this God-given way of teaching to not just benefit our students but also ourselves, with God’s ever-constant blessings and help as we go along with the method. That was so well said above, Laurie. Thank you, one more time.

   Log in to Reply