Dealing with difficult students

I want to preface this post by saying that I recognize that my class of students has not been insanely difficult. Maybe it’s my approach or tolerance, because other teachers have complained, but I have felt I am in a great situation. The classroom management that I had to deal with was nothing insane. I mentioned it in one previous post, but there was one student that I had to give a referral to the program’s associate director. This student was ignoring instructions repeatedly and it became a last resort situation because I did not want the class to get out of hand. Anyway, she came back later that day and everything was fine. The worst problem that I have had is two girls who have a teenage sassiness about them that is unlike anything that I have really seen.

These students “misbehaving” comes in the form of lack of responsiveness to questions. They hardly engage in activities and actively seek to ignore requests from me, in particular. I do not appreciate this and really could not understand where it was coming from. I repeatedly sought to help them out during problems sets in one-on-one situations and it was just as bad, if not worse, than classroom lecture situations. “So, how are you doing?” I would start off, innocently and openly. One huge sigh, a binder slammed shut later, and looking away from my direction, I got the idea of how they felt. My co-teacher repeatedly said to not take these things personally. I tried and tried, but I did feel it was personal and really did not understand the root of the behavior. Had I said something? Why was it two friends doing this? And why would they sometimes actively seek me out for help while most of the time ignoring me?

Earlier this week, I was grading one of the girls’ classroom journal entries. (We have the students spend the last 5-10 minutes of class writing about a topic of the day, to give them a chance to express themselves other than the mathematical equations that they’ve been solving all day.) The topic was “who would you go back in history and talk to?” She chose her mother. When she was young, her parents were divorced and she spent her childhood with little exposure to her father. This was something that she clearly resented. In her journal, she talked about asking her (younger) mother why she made all the mistakes that she did. I found it a brutally honest openness from a young girl who, as my co-teacher said, must have clearly thought about this previously. Her lack of candor in words was more clearly expressed on paper.

You really never know what’s going on inside of a kid’s head. I know that I will look at her with a renewed respect and acknowledge that what she has gone through must not have been easy. Even if she and her friend still ignore me, I know there are probably some more deeply seeded problems that I can’t really scratch the surface of in the position that I am. She’s a smart kid in the classroom so I’ll take my worries about how she treats me to this internet space. In the classroom, I’ll do what I can to help where I can, and let her be her.