Failure Story (where it *should* be posted)

I failed to manage my 3rd block Algebra II class effectively this past spring. When I think back on it and try to identify why things went wrong, it is hard to accept full responsibility. It was just a bad group of students, I prefer to tell myself. After all, none of my other classes, whom I endeavored to treat the very same way and largely did, were ever so bad. Perhaps there is some small truth to these self-absolving thoughts, but in all honesty, I know I f***ed it up.

What was so bad about it? Well, the majority of students failed. All the seniors put their heads down and stopped trying. There were times toward the end of the term when the entire class, with their lack of participation and general bad attitudes, all but prevented me from teaching. There was constant teasing and put-downs-manship that lasted the whole term long. And, selfishly, I hated teaching that class.

Probably the first bad move I made was letting M-(girl) sleep and not do anything. She was hardly ever in class anyway, and her name was familiar to me from the in-school suspension and administrative detention announcements. Although her younger sister had done well in my class the previous term, M-(girl) came into my class with an unmistakable I don’t give a crap about you or this class scowl on her face, and so I reflexively did nothing when she put her head down the first day, and every day afterward. I stopped caring whether she was in class or not. No, I correct myself: I would actually prefer she not even be there. Mind you, I was under the delusion for some time that I was able to get away with this bad precedent—and M-(girl’s) spotty, at best, attendance certainly contributed to the perception—but eventually it did catch up to me. It made me reluctant to call anyone else out in class when they began to zone out and put their heads down, until finally, toward the very end, it became such an epidemic I had to do something or I would literally have no one left to teach!

Back when I taught in Namibia, the teachers at my school rotated, and the students stayed put. Some of the other teachers were so unconscientious about their duties that some the classes were unsupervised half the day, anyway. So I got pretty used to having no real control over the initial physical classroom environment. Here in Mississippi, with a classroom of my own, I tried to do it right, and of course that means a seating chart. Only I never really liked making a seating chart, and it seemed to me, when things are good, you don’t even need one, but when things are bad, it really doesn’t make that much difference, anyway. Well, at my school, we run a 4-by-4 block schedule, which means that every semester is a new, fresh start. So for the second term, I decided to experiment without a seating chart at all. Now, this is not to say that I would exert no authority over their arrangement whatsoever. I would make the students sit in the first three rows by three columns (I called it my “magic nine” square) if they left a lot of those chairs empty, and I would sometimes move one or two students to respond to specific problems. It happens all the time in college classes, and it’s largely true in high school, as well: Students decide where to sit on the first day of class and, unless forced to do so, barely move at all for the rest of the year! Did my lack of a seating chart contribute to bad classroom management? Perhaps. Certainly it was a risk, yet still I doubt whether it was a major factor.

What probably did contribute to the problem was my utter failure to contact parents adequately, if at all. I have a phobia about telephones, and I blogged several times about this problem throughout the year, yet I never managed to overcome my thinly-veiled procrastination and pick up the damn phone on a consistent basis. I caught some flak at the end of the year for my high failure rate because of this. I hated being told I had not done my job. As unfair as that accusation seemed, I had to admit there was a small sliver of truth to it. So hopefully that shame will motivate me to do better next year.

Finally, there was the Rivalry. T-(girl) was one of my brightest students, period. She always did her work, even while she pretended to hate the class. One time, while I was away for a conference or something, she was the only student who actually solved a cipher puzzle I had left behind for them to work on. But she was so ghetto, too. She always, always, always had to act the part like she was all tough and disrespectful and narrow-minded lazy to impress her ghetto friends. She was a walking contradiction: A great student—and a great big pain in the butt. I tried to convey to her that she could go anywhere, do anything she wanted in life, but she would need to loose the attitude to get anywhere nice. When I would talk to her about her behavior and attitude, it seemed like I was talking to a brick wall. Well, T-(girl) and her ghetto friends led the way in a class-wide rivalry against J-(boy). Now, J-(boy) was no little angel himself. He was a big-head little S.O.B. who was lazy and insolent toward me. His dad was something-something in the community, and his parents even admitted that they spoiled him. Anyway, J-(boy) would get into little put-down teasing games with almost everyone else in the class. It was all sort of under my nose, yet it was done with whispers and unfamiliar slang (e.g. “Star Crunch” after the Little Debbie treat, for a black person with acne) and behind my back. Even when I knew this was going on, it was difficult for pick out specific instances of the back-and-forth teasing, so I had a difficult time applying consequences for it. Then, of course there would always be an argument from J-(boy)—which the class would cheer—or T-(girl) and her friends if I did write a detention, which often led to an office referral, which would lead to ISS. It didn’t matter. At one point, I was asked to attend a conference with the principal, vice-principal, and J-(boy)’s parents. The parents had calmed down a little bit by the time I was brought in, but apparently they were steaming mad about their son’s grade (he had like 50% because he didn’t pay attention in class, didn’t do homework, and didn’t study) and the notion that he was getting picked on. Now, to be fair, he probably got in trouble more often than the rest of the class before this conference, probably because he was the only one on his side of the rivalry. Anyway, after the parent conference, my discipline bias probably swung a little bit the other way, and I am not really happy about that, either. It was such a difficult and persistent problem, and I’m not really sure what went wrong, and how I should have been able to stop it. It’s not like I didn’t do anything! I gave out several consequences (detentions or referrals) a week for this very pattern, yet it persisted throughout! I just don’t know.

What am I going to learn from this failure? (1) I will be more consistent about what I allow and do not allow (especially in terms of non-participation), so as not to set any unsustainable precedent within a class. (2) I will not try to treat every class the same. Some classes can handle more freedom, and some cannot. I am thinking about ways I can actually write different rule sets, according to the maturity of each class—because they are not the same. Perhaps I should have even implemented a seating chart for 3rd block halfway through the term, even if just to symbolize in my own mind how the classes were not the same. (3) I need to keep in better contact with the parents. It will only actually make a difference in some cases, but it needs to be done.