It’s good to have a code word. One of mine is “dude.” This is what I call my students when I am beyond frustrated with them. Generally, I try to keep my tone and facial expressions neutral or positive, so I need to clue my students into my disappointment with that one syllable term. It works well.
Last week, I think I used it like this:
“Dude, what are you doing?”
I called attention to a student who was not doing anything remotely connected to on-task class work. Immediately, other students pointed out, “She’s mad. She called him ‘dude’.” Realizing the gravity of the situation, Mukhtar snapped to attention and corrected his behavior by actually doing class work.
I don’t know if I was mad, but I would say I have entered the low-point of the following graph:
While this graph references the attitudes of first year teachers, I think these phases apply to nearly all teachers. The cyclical nature of the work means that there are low-points. And ours coincide with the darkest days of the year. Disillusionment was palpable last week. Poor Mukhtar may have been called ‘dude’ no fewer than four times.
Luckily, some of the tough love is paying off. Sometimes I feel I have to be really tough on my students because I know what they’re up against. Students at my school, ~90% of whom receive free or reduced lunch, come into school already well behind their grade-level peers. This year we pilot a new state test and it is HARD. Hard as in I, a college graduate who likes a challenge, had trouble with it. So when students groaned when I passed out a one-page story this week, I let them have it. I told them that while I was frustrated, the real concern was the fact that they were defeating themselves before a completely do-able task, and if this was as much grit as they could show, I wasn’t worried about them just in school, but in their whole darn lives.
I probably didn’t say darn and maybe it wasn’t nice to lay it on so thick, but I meant it. After that, I dismissed them on to the rest of their day.
One student, Quentin, missed the impromptu lecture because his behavior had been too disruptive. When he asked about the assignment the following day, Mukhtar told him, “We’re supposed to read this story. And if we don’t, she’s worried about us, not just in school but in our whole lives.”
I must have looked amazed because he smiled at me and said, “See? I listened. I heard what you said.”
That might be why having a code word pays off. Dude knows when to pay attention. It kind of made my week. Oh, and then I saw this outside today:
That beautiful scene on my school campus and Mukhtar really hearing me might get me through the whole month of November.
msellendorr 