I’ve always been torn as to whether or not to write about my adventures in substitute teaching on NaPP since it’s not really political and most non-political stuff goes on Hit Coffee but it is sociological. I had a two-fer assignment today, with the first period a 3rd grade class and the second period a 5th grade. The former was probably the best performance I have turned in to date. The latter was one of the most challenging classes I have filled in for. I’d actually filled in for the class before. It was a bad experience, but I thought I had screwed up. Nope.
Anyhow, the observation of the day is that there are really three kinds of male troublemakers in school (maybe in life).
The Bad Egg Group
The first are Bad Eggs. There’s usually one or two of these in every class. Sometimes it seems to be a manifestation of other problems they’re having. The overlap between Bad Eggs and special instruction is not insignificant. Sometimes, though, they’re just Bad Eggs. You know that the future holds nothing good in store for them (and, likely, people around them).
The Impulse Group
The second group is perhaps the most perplexing. It’s also the smallest group. It’s the kid who is basically a Really Good Kid, save for some serious impulse control problems. They want to be quiet. They want to be good. They try harder than any other student in the classroom to help you. But they’re also among the biggest troublemakers. They just can’t help themselves. I had to report to the teacher that the single-most helpful kid in the room was one of a handful on the Worst List. He was also the first kid I have yelled at since beginning my substitute teaching tenure. Bad Eggs may be less pleasant to deal with insofar as the Impulse Kids, who are at least good or great half or a majority of the time, but they’re easier to deal with.
The Osmosis Group.
The third group are those that absorb the mood of the class. You get the sense that in a good environment or on a good day, they’re fine. But they become a part of any problem that exists. These are actually the most problematic only because they are the most numerous. You try to get them to behave and they simply point the finger at someone who is behaving worse (typically an Egg or an Impulse). These are also the Give Them An Inch kids. You give them an inch, which they may or not be able to handle, but then Bad Egg and Impulse will take a mile and these kids will be right behind them.
It’s only the Bad Eggs that you feel good about writing up. One of the interesting aspects is that when I make my list at the end of the day, even in a really bad class like this one (this class apparently drove two different substitute teachers into retirement over the course of the year), there are only two or three Bad Eggs at most. Then you throw in a couple Impulse Kids and the Osmosis Brigade comes out of the woodwork and at that point, there is so much cover for noise that you can’t single anybody out because almost everyone else is talking and goofing around.
By way of example in the second set, it was an Impulse Kid that drafted the seating chart that was the noose around which I hung his classmates. He wasn’t on the chart, but I knew his name. I remember the good kids by their faces, I remember the problem ones by their names.
People often comment to me that they find my choice of subspecialty (adolescent medicine) totally confounding. Nothing in the whole world seems more unpleasant to them than choosing to deal with teenagers on a consistent basis.
I always tell them the same thing — one their own, teenagers are pretty great. (There are exceptions, and I occasionally bump into a kid you’d put in the Bad Egg category. I try to see if there’s something they genuinely want me to help them with, and cash in my chips when they make it obvious that there isn’t.) I like teenagers when they come to see me in my office. Teenagers in packs? I’ll pass, thanks anyway. Fifth graders are old enough to be edging into “no, thanks” territory.
I could never be a teacher.
One of the reasons I got into substituting has been to see how I would respond to it all. I shudder to think about the people who go through all of the kind of education required to be a teacher only to find out that they’re not comfortable in an environment where 20-30 kids are looking at you alternatingly as an adversary and a guide. Right now the answer is “Well, it depends on the class!”
It’s actually kind of interesting that you mention this (or put it this way). There’s been something in the water where we live where the teens have been particularly obnoxious as of late. It makes me feel like I’m getting old. Last Friday they had some town-wide hide-and-go-seek game with pickups and flashlights and kids running through backyards. Then they’ve been out to eat a lot and I’ve taken to avoiding a number of fast food places.
The older I get, the LOUDER young people, as a pack, do.
This something in the water, might it be called “impending summer vacation”?
This matters a lot more at the higher grades than the lower ones, I expect.
Jack’s knowledge of summer vacation is that, “It’s coming!” Recess… lunch… those are NOW. This weekend is just around the limit of his actual perception of time wherein it has an effect on his cognition. He’s in second grade.
I can’t imagine that third graders have senioritis just yet. Now… fifth graders on the other hand…
I think this is right. Less summer break and more graduation. Either way, third grade time horizons are such that Summer Break is still a world away.
For what it’s worth, I love hearing about the dynamics of teaching.
1+
+1 here too.
Me too. I generally love hearing about what people do all day, and teaching is particularly interesting. I do it with old ones, and I’m very fond of young ones, so it’s two interests combined.
You might be overestimating the amount of “teaching”… particularly after the third or fourth grade :).
It’s an important life skill to learn when the totally funny thing you thought of is just as funny in the privacy of your own head as it would ever be in real life. And some people never learn that skill.
I’m not sure I understand? Did this post come across as intending to be humorous? Or are you referring to impulse control?
Far be it from me to defend Density Duck, who is one of the least-clear writers in the entire universe, but I’m fairly sure he’s referring to kids developing impulse control.
I was such a suck up, it’s embarrassing. There was this one teacher in 8th grade that got to me though.
I have mixed feelings about suckups in general. Sometimes they’re a lifesaver, sometimes they’re just humping your leg (apologies for the crude metaphor, but it’s all that fits). When it comes to Impulse Kids, it comes across as something else. An attempt to harness their excess energy for good and not evil.
That may have been a little uncalled for, Will. I will assume you were not intending to insult me.
In my case, I’m confident that I successfully harnessed my excess energy to do good. Most people I know kindly characterize me as enthusiastic. I was guided into the good-girl position by my troublemaking siblings. Good thing too. If I had gone in a different direction, I could have done some serious damage with all of this “enthusiasm”.
Please do (and I wished I hadn’t said it almost as soon as I hit submit). I assume you were of the lifesaver variety :).
You are forgiven. See how nice I am?
Damn this sweet-natured personality. I could have used my powers for evil right there. Another missed opportunity. Perhpas I will go with bad-girl for my second career.
As a teacher, lots of thoughts on this. Will likely weigh in tomorrow when I’m not limited to the iPad and exhausted. Regardless, I appreciate your honesty and candidness, Will.
Okay, finally in a position to weigh in. First, a few disclaimers:
1.) Yes, I am a teacher, but almost 100% of my experience has come teaching Pre-K and K. I did a full-time student teaching gig with second grade for 4 months and work with children of other ages in other capacities. But looking specifically at classroom teaching, my experience is with children much younger than those described here.
2.) Yes, I am a teacher, but I have never substituted.
To be perfectly honest, I have some real discomfort with the broader sentiment expressed in this post. Viewing children as “trouble makers” and analyzing the ways in which they interfere with the teaching process seems to really misplace priorities. Viewing children as obstacles to teaching puts the emphasis on the teacher and him achieving his goals and takes focus away from the children/students that populate our classrooms. It is a teacher’s job to work with his students, ALL of his students, troublemakers and angels alike; it is not to work around the former to reach the latter.
Furthermore, the idea that children as young as 8 (the age a 3rd grader typically starts the year) can be described as “Bad Eggs” for whom which “[y]ou know that the future holds nothing good in store for them” is kind of scary. Again, some of these kids are 8! They are not even halfway to what we consider adulthood. But we’re going to conclude that their simply rotten to the core with nothing good in their future? Eash. It is exactly this type of attitude that often leads to the future described. They are given up on too early, told that their behavior is a perfect reflection of their character, and internalize that they do bad because they are bad.
There are lots of reasons why a child might pose behavioral problems in the classroom. Some of these are perfectly within their control and some are completely out of their control, with others filling in every space in between. It is my personal belief that, with exceedingly rare exceptions (specifically some sort of mental or other imbalance or disability), no child actively wants to do bad and wrong. They most often choose to (assuming we are on the side of the spectrum where it is in their control and they are in fact choosing to do something we consider bad and wrong) because they are seeking other ends. So the class clown, who might grate a teacher like no other, is not sadistic and deliberately attempting to piss the guy off. Rather, he is seeking the attention, the affirmation, the adulation that often comes with that role. That in no way makes his behavior acceptable or excusable, but it points to motivates that better identify him as an individual with needs instead of a problem.
In a nutshell, if you tend towards viewing children as “problems” who get in the way of teaching, as opposed to individuals with needs that must be supported by better teaching, you are probably in the wrong field. It is not the teacher who matters in the equation, it is the child/student.
None of this is meant to be a personal attack on Will, whom I’ve come to really like and respect via these pages. I apologize if my criticism comes off harsher than I intended, but it is this mentality, which is increasingly pervasive within education ranks (due in no small part to the way in which we assess education now), that really boils my blood.
I hope I’ve expressed my sentiment clearly. I feel like it’s pretty muddled. I’m happy to engage further and/or clarify as necessary.
It seems to me like substitute teaching isn’t much of teaching, most of the time. Mostly, teh teachers aren’t given stuff more complicated than “give them these worksheets and keep ’em quiet.” It is definitely different if you’re given a full week, or something longer…
But most of the goal of a substitute appeared to be — don’t destroy the classroom.
Which is why I included the disclaimer that I did. I’m not really comfortable speaking about subbing, as my experience with them has been primarily as a student. If a sub is in my room, either I’m not there (and my assistant is, assuming my role with the sub assuming hers) or he/she is there for my assistant and I’m still present. I am sure that subbing is different than everyday teaching. Which is probably a whole other conversation we should be having.
Kazzy,
I appreciate your response. It will actually give me the opportunity to clarify some things. I am not really comfortable (internally) giving the Bad Egg label to a third grader. There are third graders (and second and first) that I believe are headed in that direction, but it’s really hard to tell. It’s around the fifth, or sixth grade that I start really thinking “This child will not be saved.” The interesting thing is that if you’d asked me before I’d started, I would have said “You probably can’t tell until late junior high.” I do think that there are more kids that will be revealed between the 5th and the 8th, and that some of the fifth graders I looked at yesterday and thought or hoped it’s a phase or something that will be grown out of, won’t. Whether they would qualify as Bad Eggs that had yet to be identified or Osmosis Kids that simply internalized too many of the wrong values, I’m not sure.
And when I say “will not be saved” I am almost certainly wrong at least sometimes. I remember a kid that lived down the street that I almost certainly would have tagged a Bad Egg. He disappeared sometime early in high school (no idea where he went, his family still lived down the street) and a few years later he was tending bar and whatever he had gone through, he had come out the other end a different person. So I shouldn’t have used the word “know.”
As an aside, there was actually a middle school girl that I quickly grew to be somewhat fond of. She helped me out at a time when I desperately needed it and has always been nothing but pleasant and smiley around me. But I could tell then that the future did not likely hold good things for her. I couldn’t even tell you why, exactly. I had her again a couple times this year and “it” has already started. I got access to her rap sheet, which is growing as exponentially as her piercings (which mean something different out here than in other places). I ran across her at the Walmart, saw her family, and realized (or confirmed) where she was osmoting from and, likely, her trajectory. It confirmed my worst fears. (She won’t end up a violent criminal or anything, but the over/under is likely on whether she will graduate high school, not college or professional/vocational training).
I think that few kids actively choose to do wrong. When it comes to Bad Eggs, I think the #1 problem is simply a stunning lack of empathy. They didn’t choose to do whatever despite the fact that someone might get hurt, or even because of it, but rather because they don’t care. It doesn’t register. These are crude impressions based on a limited subset; it’s subject to change.
The district takes a number of interventionist measures for some students. I don’t think is a bad idea at all and could easily be worth the investment (having a constant authority figure year in and year out and somewhere to go when they need to mentally untie some knots). I’m not optimistic on success at least when it comes to the Bad Eggs, but I don’t think it’s not worth trying (and I think for Impulse and Osmosis Kids, could very well make the difference).
As you and Kimmi talk about, as a sub it’s not really my job to sort it all out. The district essentially encourages you to toss them out of the class at the first opportunity just to get them out of your way and let the teacher deal with them, but I hate tossing kids out of class (yesterday is the first time I have ever done so, absent a fight).
There were times when I was a Bad Egg (not when substitutes were around); I had very little empathy as a kid (still work in progress). There were times when I was the “teacher’s pet.” There were times when I was the disruptive kid in class. I read entire books during spelling tests (after I was done… mostly).
Thanks for your response.
I don’t know if it was deliberate or not, but I found your choice of language here really interesting: “This child will not be saved.”
There is a massive difference between “can not” and “will not”. “Can not”, to me, says there is something about the child that makes him incapable of salvation. “Will not” can reflect just as much on the system as on the child. Many children can be saved but won’t be because the system fails them (and I’m using the system as broadly as possible… this includes schools, their family, themselves, everything…).
You are right that you can look at a snapshot of a child and attempt to map a trajectory. However, I don’t know if at any point any one is resigned to a singular trajectory. And, much like with an angle, a minute change at the closed end (I don’t know the math terms) can lead to a massive chasm as you extend outwards.
Not every nudge will lead to these shifts as, again, the individual in question bears a great deal of responsibility. But in remembering that we are talking about children, who are largely (though not solely) a product of their environment, even those who lack empathy likely struggle in this area because of what they have or have not experience, and not because of some internal flaw.
There is an approach to working with children called “descriptive praise”. I’m sure it is known by other names and won’t go into all the details, but my primary take away from it is that we do our best to respond to actions, not individuals.
There are no bad children, just children who’ve do bad. There are no wrong children, just children who’ve done wrong. There are no mean children, just children who’ve been mean. Yes, we reach a point where an individual’s character can be viewed as the sum of their actions. But I don’t feel that most pre-adolescent children have acquired enough of a sample size to start making accurate summations. Furthermore, this approach helps avoid children internalizing a negative self-image, which might be the greatest cause of kids heading down that lost path. Sometimes adults forget just how concrete a world children live in. If I make a mistake, slap my forehead, and declare myself an idiot, I know that I’m not REALLY an idiot and that I just goofed. But for a child, such an experience might make them think of themselves as idiots, or ne’er-do-wells, or bad kids, or what have you. And if I kid believes he is any of these things, he is very likely to fulfill that vision.
When I have kids who are presenting problems in my class, I’ll get real frank with them: “I know that you want to be first. And wanting to be first is okay. But when you want to be first so bad that you push and shout at the other children, that hurts and scares them. I don’t think you want to hurt or scare them. If you are feeling like you want to hurt or scare them, then I’m going to have to have you stay next to me, since I can’t let kids get hurt or feel scared. But, if you don’t want that (and, again, I don’t think you do) then we can work together to find times for you to be first and to help you feel better about the times you aren’t.”
And just like that, we’ve turned a kid who might otherwise be labeled as a mean, violent bully into a kid who wants to be first. Which is pretty much just a kid. We’ve also properly stigmatized the negative behavior, acknowledged the legitimacy of his desired ends, demonstrated a logical/natural consequence, and aligned ourselves in support of them instead of in opposition to them.
But, yea, I wouldn’t expect that of a sub. I don’t even do it myself all the time. We’re all human…
When I have kids who are presenting problems in my class, I’ll get real frank with them: “I know that you want to be first. And wanting to be first is okay. But when you want to be first so bad that you push and shout at the other children, that hurts and scares them. I don’t think you want to hurt or scare them. If you are feeling like you want to hurt or scare them, then I’m going to have to have you stay next to me, since I can’t let kids get hurt or feel scared. But, if you don’t want that (and, again, I don’t think you do) then we can work together to find times for you to be first and to help you feel better about the times you aren’t.”
I think this is the right way to approach kids, and I do it with my 4 and 1/2 year old. But it has hilariously worn thin. He now insists that he is not just someone who does the wrong thing sometimes, but actually a bad guy. He will insist that he does indeed want other children to be hurt and scared, etc. It’s awesome.
“I think this is the right way to approach kids, and I do it with my 4 and 1/2 year old. But it has hilariously worn thin. He now insists that he is not just someone who does the wrong thing sometimes, but actually a bad guy. He will insist that he does indeed want other children to be hurt and scared, etc. It’s awesome.”
Not uncommon at all! Especially for that age! Kids that age are all about power. They want to feel powerful. It is why they love super heroes and dinosaurs and princesses… all incredibly powerful beings. Unfortunately, it is far easier to feel empowered by doing mean things than nice things. If I push you and you cry, I did that… how powerful! I made you cry! If I do something nice, maybe you smile, but maybe you were already smiling. I don’t feel quite so empowered. Bleh. PUSH!
That obviously doesn’t EXCUSE the behavior… but it helps explains it and points us towards ways to support him.
If you’re interested, I’m happy to share more, either here or via email (with the obvious caveat that I don’t know your son so I can only be so helpful…)
I do not hve kids.
I’d say you get to have this conversation:
“You are not a bad kid. but those are bad thoughts. And you keep those bad thoughts to yourself.”
(I think we all have them… like the urge to jump off a building, or slice someone’s throat… they’re relatively meaningless, but still kinda creepy)
You are starting to grow on me, Kimmi.
“Kids that age are all about power. ”
Do we ever really grow out of this? It feels like we don’t, we just manage as we get older.
Also, do princesses have any real power?
MM-
Great points. Kids at that stage are into power i a new and unique way, based primarily in a new and emerging understanding of “the other”, as in someone outside of themselves.
Princesses represent power, even if they are often powerless. They are certainy more powerful than regular folks, or at least are often portrayed as such.
Check out “The Paperbag Princess.” A short film based on a fun book turning the theme on its head.
Kimmi-
Not sure I agree. Ignoring those urges doesn’t do much, especially for someone as impulsive as a 4-year-old.
I *love* The Paper Bag Princess! My daddy used to read it to me when I was a little girl. I’ve never seen the film though, any good?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paper_Bag_Princess
Awesome! I had a copy but never actually screened it. The DVD cover was the same as the book, so I assume it might have simply been a dramatic reading. Munsch is a genius.
“[My 4 and 1/2 year old] now insists that he is not just someone who does the wrong thing sometimes, but actually a bad guy. He will insist that he does indeed want other children to be hurt and scared, etc. It’s awesome.”
ha! Your son went all Milton on you. Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. Better to be someone who does bad things on purpose than to be someone who forgot to behave because he was too excited.
I think I was pretty borderline Impulse. Just the sheer amount of soul-crushing boredom involved in an average school day forced me to act out and make something non-pointless happen.