What else can we say about those really rare rude kids who challenge us at the deepest gut level and even cause us to lose sleep at night?
1. The student seems to be not at all interested in learning the language I am teaching in my classroom.
2. The student seems very interested in contacting other students in the classroom who can be groomed to support his position of not being interested in class.
3. By “adopting a position of not being interested in my class”, we can say that the student has then adopted a position of being interested in something else. What is that interest? It is in taking control of the classroom.
4. But since this student cannot do that, being met with countless (every five minutes or so) corrections on behavior from the teacher, the student is forced to become passive with his desire to control the classroom. The teacher, meanwhile, looks like an idiot who can’t stop the behavior and the wheel goes ’round and ’round every day.
5. This becomes a big problem for the student, because how can one control a group of people when someone else, an adult no less, won’t allow him his behavior and confronts and talks to him daily about how what he is doing won’t work. But are the continuous redirections from the teacher shooting the teacher in the foot? Shouldn’t something HAPPEN so that the other students can believe in the teacher?
6. The teacher even talks to other adults, to his parents and school administrators, about this one kid in the hopes that he will give it up and just be a regular student for the good of all. But, being incapable of giving up his need to disrupt and hopefully take over the class some day (this is called narcissism) he persists in spite of the opposition he faces in the form of the teacher and whatever other fully conscious adults are there to support him so that he understands how to behave in a group. He’s gotten away with it in other classes, so why not in this one?
5. When the student senses weakness in the teacher, who usually requires about a month into the school year to even figure out that the student is monstrous, and if the teacher fails to get help from other adults, then that teacher is in for a long year. The kid won’t change any more than pigs can fly.
6. What about the other students who are being recruited by the misbehaving student? They play a crucial role in what happens. The teacher must separate the students in the “cell” by seating charts. They should not be able to see each other in the classroom.