It was about 9:16 Monday morning, the start of second period, when CJ decided to take his last stand in my class. I guess it was a long time coming; he was ready to let me have it, since it had been a power struggle between him and me since the first day he came to class with his earbuds in and mouth wide open. Dude didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut. A constant stream of sewage, a ranting litany of rapped profanity just low enough so I couldn’t quite hear it and thus couldn’t quite call him on it was always brewing. So when he refused to finish a required assignment on Monday morning, I wrote him a referral to the office to finish his work.
CJ, knowing he’d be kicked out of school for another referral, decided he’d better go out with a bang. “This is bullshit; I’m not gonna leave. You’re just making me more mad. I’m not gonna go to the fucking office; fuck this shit!”
Me: “CJ, You’re disrupting class and preventing other students from learning right now; please leave.” Calmly yet firmly: “CJ, take the referral and go to the office.” “If you don’t leave on your own, I’m going to have to call security.” “Ok, I’m calling security.”
When security finally arrived, CJ stood up without hesitation or reluctance. He seemed willing enough to leave, but not without delivering this emphatic final announcement: “I’m gonna rip this bitch’s head off.” He was furious with me.
I felt shaken, sad, hopeless. What had I done to drive this student to such anger? To respond in such a way to me? I know I wasn’t singling him out; I had already sent another student down to the office for the same offense earlier in the period. The rest of my lesson was shot and I was summoned out midway through to speak with a police officer and my assistant principal, since CJ’s outburst constituted a violent threat. CJ was eventually expelled, and after his explosion in my class, I never saw him again.
I stewed over this incident ever and felt like a failure as a teacher. I should be able to reach these tough cases like CJ. I should have better discipline in the classroom. I should command my students’ respect.
Suddenly, though, it clicked for me. Students can be dumb-shits and smart-asses, and it might have nothing to do with me, besides the fact that I’m a handy punching bag and an authority figure who’s difficult for many male students to reconcile themselves to. For I am a young female teacher, one they don’t want to admit is more knowledgeable and experienced than themselves. CJ is like Tyler, my high school boyfriend.
Although Tyler and I didn’t start “going steady” until our junior year, we met during sophomore year. Tyler spent his fourth periods slouched in the assistant principal’s office working on homework because he’d been kicked out of his fourth period teacher’s class and wasn’t allowed to return until he wrote her a letter of apology. I was always in and out of the AP’s office during fourth period because I was an ASB nerd and needed various signatures and approvals for the school activities I was planning.
I got to chatting with Tyler whenever I’d pass through the office, and I asked him what he was doing in there. He had that bitch Butler as an English teacher that year. She was so anal. I had her too, and suddenly the story she had recently related to my fifth period class after the incident with Tyler came rushing back to me.
My fifth period classmates and I filed into class boisterous and excited from lunch one day to find Mrs. Butler in a near hysterical state, blonde curls quivering in anger. “I tell you!” she told us, “In all my years of teaching, I’ve never had a student behave this way towards me. I’m just speechless!” she proclaimed and proceeded to speak the whole darn story. During fourth period, she had asked students to take out a piece of paper as usual for the reading quiz. One student, Tyler refused. He didn’t understand why this was important, or why anything the teacher asked him to do in class was important at all, for that matter. In fact, Mrs. Butler was a Nazi! She was a fascist, anal Nazi! He wanted to pour pig’s blood all over the classroom and burn it down! I know Tyler, he can be quite forceful, scathing, and dramatic when he wishes.
After this violent and disgusting outburst, Tyler was allowed to return to class on one condition, that he write Mrs. Butler a letter of apology. This, however, went against all his principles. He was right, and she was a Nazi, as far as he was concerned. So, as a matter of principle, Tyler spent the remainder of sophomore year in the office during fourth period.
Karma’s a bitch, though, and Tyler had to retake sophomore English during his senior year in order to graduate. And guess which teacher he got?! Mrs. Butler. Just the luck of the draw. By senior year, though, Tyler had grown a little bit in the way of humility and forgiveness. He made his long-overdue apology to Mrs. Butler, then passed sophomore English with flying colors, albeit a bit of annoyance at being stuck with the immature 10th graders all semester.
My take-aways from all this?
• Nice kids do stupid things.
• My students aren’t any shittier than my own high school boyfriend was, and I thought he was pretty funny (though also stupid and incredibly rude) at the time for standing up to Mrs. Butler. Thus, I must have been a little shit back then, too.
• Be transparent and explicit about your reasons for doing everything in the classroom.
• Student buy-in to the lessons is important.
• I will probably be able to laugh about this years later, though I’m crying about it now.
Post Script to these events:
After having this profound realization that everything was going to be okay, kids are kids and life goes on, I had to share my story and take-aways with my freshman class who’d been witness to the demise of CJ’s high school career. Their take-away from my profound story? “Ahhh, Ms. Sterling goes for bad boys!!”
Another week later, Frank, my student and CJ’s enlisted messenger, came to tell me, “Ms. Sterling, CJ said to tell you he’s sorry.” I responded, “Tell CJ I say thank you.” I was very thankful, and I was sorry, too, sorry that I could not help CJ more in his reading skills or in the difficult hand life had dealt him. Unfortunately, though CJ’s apology is enough for me, it will never be enough to salvage CJ’s academic career, to reverse the disservice our school system has done him in allowing him to reach 9th grade without achieving the reading and writing skills of a middle schooler, or to counteract the years of struggle he now faces. Life is supremely unfair.
