The experiences of managing, a classroom full of, ill-behaving children, translated…
“Why don’t you get angry?”, that special child, slowly moved to my desk, and inquired.
I was stumped for a bit. “Why don’t I get angry? So, you think, I should, get angry?”, the boy nodded, without a single word.
“Why do you think I need to blow up, because the students are getting rowdy and raucous?”, he’d, nodded, again.
“So, do all the other teachers explode?”, and one more time, he’d, nodded, twice. Then added, slowly, “unless, unless they’d, already, gotten angry at the very start.”
what all teachers hope that they could, get…
I seem to understand the child now. The class is the notably, “active” in the entire grade, and it’s said, that only the most fierce math instructor can, manage them well. still recalled that young girl on the first row on that first day who’d told me with her eyes opened up wide, “Teacher! Our math instructor throws the chalk at us a L-O-T. He’s so scary……we only behaved in math course!”, most of the kids are afraid of those who are awful, you know that.
For many moments during the semester, I’d felt, like an animal tamer working in a zoo, going to train those animals, instead of going to teach the classes. I’m not really a mean instructor, because I can’t start screaming, nor would I, want to, scream at my students. At most, I would maintain my silence, then, stared them down, and tell them, in that serious manner, “I think you are getting too loud, this is disrespectful toward me, and disrespect toward your fellow classmates who are taking!” these kids are, afraid of silence, once you’d stopped talking, they’d, quieted down too. But the moment you start talking again, then, chitter chatter. So many times, I want to flip the desks out of anger, and felt, tried, too fatigued to cope with this class of students, and, often contemplated that is it my classroom management skills that aren’t, enough that I can’t, maintain the order? But on the other hand, I’d felt, that maybe, it’s my internal space that’s, shrunk by multiples this year, causing myself to not get energized, encouraged to go to the classes and teach them.
All of these introspections, tug-of-war with my self, kept working me over.
And on this very day, this kid with Asperger’s told me this, it’d, made me think, really hard. As a teacher, every action, every word, entered into my students’ minds.
What, had I, given to them? Did I really, help my students become, better, more truthful human beings, better than they were, before? Did I do my duties, as their, classroom instructor?
“Why don’t you get angry?”, hmmmmmmmmmm, that’s, a good question, I thought I was, already, mean enough.
This is, a really wonderful question, thank you, Robot Boy.
And so, this, is how the kids and the teacher interacted, and, this is from a classroom full of, misfits, and, the teacher came to understand, that she’s quite patient, because, it takes patience, and a whole lot of it, to deal with a classroom full of, children, as children are, bound to misbehave, I mean, which one of you adults can sit without moving a single muscle, for eight whole hours, with only five minutes break between the sessions, huh? Yeah, not that very many would be, my guess, and we’re here, demanding that these children sit like good little boys and girls through their classroom sessions? Yeah, why don’t YOU adult try that, see how you guys manage it first, huh???
Life, the Obstacle Course 