Student Misbehavior # 1

I have had a plum assignment this past week. A teacher went to a week-long conference and left me with four periods each day to take charge of. The first three of those periods were taken up each of the five days by a presentation put on by a local health organization. These preentations concerned STDs, AIDS, HIV, Alcohol use and stress. Frankly I am very proud of the school district and thje school for having these presentations given to ouyr high school students.

One sometimes wonders what possesses individual kids to make them behave the way they do. Many are polite and respectful, but not a small number are openly hostile. This hostility shouldn't be taken personally because the causes are usually not personal. As I was told two weeks ago, "I don't like you. We don't like substitute teachers."

While not taking this kind of remark personally, it is sometimes not easy to accept behavior and attitude. Students are aware that substitutes don't know their names. They believe that they can act with impunity without a disciplinary write-up. They assume they can talk, ignore the lesson, listen to their iPods, and bother each other without consequences.

The school where I substitute is the only school where I work, and I am there about 3/4 of the time. After a while I get to know the bad eggs by name, so they are no longer anonymous. This begins to give me a handle on at least some of them.

Once they learn that their substitute teacher knows them by name, this improves their behavior. But if bad behavior isn't penalized and the same substitute meets the same students elsewhere, these same students will walk all over the teacher.

Thia week on Monday as the first period was beginning and our guest speaker was prepared to start her preentation, I approached three students standing in the back of the room. I made it a conscious effort to be as casual, as respectful and as courteous as I could when I asked them to take their seats so the lecture could begin. One of them, a kid in a red cap, baggy blue jeans with heavily embroidered back pockets -- see another post of this type of dress --, and a red-striped polo shirt told me, "Get outta my face."

I didn't know this student by name, but I recognized him as one who'd given me minor defiance in another class the week before.

Now, how can one deal with that ? No teacher can force these kids to do anything. They will do whatever they want. The trick, obviously, is to make them want to behave. I was aware at the time that if I didn't check this student's behavior right away, he would walk all over me every time I substituted in any of his future classes. He also knew that I didn't know his name.

I looked the kid straight in the face and stated, "I wasnt you to know that I have a policy. Whenever any student tells me, 'Get outta my face' I automatically write him up for disciplinary action." With that I simply returned to my desk, took out a disciplinary write-up slip, and began filling it out. At this point I still didn't know his name. I also knew that he was probably counting on my being there that day only and not being there for the rest of the week.

The kid came running to me, saying, "I was only fooling." I replied that I had noted his behavior the week before in another class, and I didn't think so. At this, he ran out of the room, missing that day's presentation.

The next day he once more arrived and stood with his friends in the back of the room. The sign-in sheet was being passed from student to student and I saw him sign in right after a student whose name I knew. Because of this, it was easy later to look at the sheet and identify the troublemaker. I could then put his correct name on the disciplinary write-up, whch I hadn't yet passed in. Obviously he wasn't counting on me knowing his name. Later I checked his name and photo on the school computer just to make certain I was correct, and passed the disciplinary clip in the the appropriate vice-principal.

He came to class the rest of the week, but avoided me. On Friday he was sitting at a desk in the back of the room. Students who misbehave tend to gravitate to locations as far away from the teacher as possible. In my rounds I came up to him with the sign-in sheet. Without a word, he stood up and left the classroom, probably thinking I still didn't know his name. For that particular day I simply marked him absent.

Understand, it isn't the kid I dislike. It is his behavior. If this could successfully be modified, we might be able to turn him into a serious student. This may happen in the next two or three years because as high school students mature their behavior improves. Let's hope this maturation happens to him.