Someone was having a bad day. I don't know why he was having a bad day. He started out great. I worked with him on his morning message and he was done before everyone else. But then, suddenly, he was calling out, pretending to get the wrong answers, saying things like "No!" and "I don't care!" and "Send me out of the room."
I tried all kinds of tricks: whispering in the ear, praising others near him, 'catching' even the slightest positive behavior and calling attention to it. But he just decreased, regressed, spun farther and farther in to failure, misbehavior, and distraction. I finally had to just let go, acecpt that he wasn't going to learn what I was teaching this morning (which totally frustrated me because it was test prep and I know how much anxiety he has around testing).
At recess, I told the kids to think about their behavior that morning, whether or not they had helped the class to learn or whether they had kept the class from learning. I asked those who had helped, to line up to go out for early recess and for those had kept the class from learning, to stay in to come up with some strategies to help them focus better.
Of course, he lined up for early recess. And I, I had to call him back to his seat. He refused, he lingered in the hallway, leaned against the door, and complained about how unfair I was...
I talked with the other three 'distractors' and they seemed to genuinely recognize the behaviors that lead them to disrupt the class and came up with strategies to do better after recess. Then they went out to play.
He, however, continued to linger in the hallway and I, I let him be. Honestly, I had things to do. My projector was broken so I had to prepare posters for the math lesson and I had to explain the lesson to my tutor. After that, I just sat down and ate my oranges. I looked over his test worksheet and saw all the mistakes he had made and realized that I really did need to teach this to him- he really needed to do this work.
He finally came back in to the room, with an apple and a cookie. How he got them, I have no idea, but he came back in and started walking around. He kind of went on a rant and it was really telling. Normally, kids who stay in at recess, complain about the work, talk about how unfair it is that they have to do it, lament over the recess they're missing, and ask how many minutes they have left. But he, he said none of this. This is what he said instead:
You don't love me. You don't call on me because you don't want to spend time with me. If you loved me more, my uncle would come to school more often. You're upset with me. You don't understand. I'm trying my best and you still won't help me.
And then he asked what time it was.
I was really surprised, and kind of confused by this. But I responded to each of his comments honestly. I explained that I did love him and that I wanted to spend time with him. I explained to him that I had looked for his hand to be raised this morning but never saw it go up. I asked him if he could raise it higher next time so that I'd see it. I also told him that he wasn't doing his best work this morning, that I had seen him do better. Finally, I explained that his uncle wanted him to try his best and to be respectful to grownups and that he hadn't been doing that this morning.
I don't think any of this helped. In fact, I know it didn't help because he was horrible for the next period too, even though our tutor sat with him the entire time and gave him his undivided attention.
After school, I called his uncle to report what had happened (he has asked me to do this on days when he is especially disrepectful). And guess what? Guess who visited their grownup this weekend? Guess who's dealing with issues of abandonment and rejection?Yep- that's who, that's what this was all about.
I heard Paul say once that he could tell a lot about a person's relationship with their father based on their approach to him in dokusan. I guess that happened for me this morning. But I think the really interesting thing about this, the ways this ties in to practice, is that I just let him be. Normally, when someone walks around the room, refuses to come in, doesn't do their work during recess... I make them do the work. I either remind them of the time, tell them they'll have to do it for homework, or suggest a phone call home. This time, because I just wanted to have snack, I let him be. And in some ways, it was good. He told me a lot about himself and, hopefully, he heard that I loved him, cared about him, and wanted him to do well.
It's a hard thing to do, to let him not learn the test stuff, to let him linger in the hallway, to let him totally disregard my directions. But it's a harder thing to do to force him to do this work, to deny him the suffering that he's feeling. Honestly, I don't know if it helped him to express all this to me this morning. I know it helped me. It made me see that he's going through some stuff right now and he needs my compassion, my love, my acceptance.
Tomorrow morning, I'm hoping to have an intentional dokusan with him- to talk with him about my own feelings about my grownup, about how they overwhelm me sometimes. I want him to know that I understand, that I'm not mad at him for this, that it's okay to have these feelings, and that I still love him when he feels this way.
And hopefully, we can look over his test stuff too. But if not, I'll let it go. It feels more important that I let him know that I see him, that I accept him, that he is loved.
No comments:
Post a Comment