Losing Control

I've always been told that I have a lack of respect for authority. I don't agree with that statement. If you want to reword it to say, I have a lack of respect for overly controlling authority- I'll fully admit to that. My father has raised, and continues to raise, me with a very hands off approach. In education, we'd call it a cognitive approach. When I get told when, how, and why I need to do something I feel isn't for my benefit, my drawbridge goes up. By drawbridge I mean the 5,500 mile high, Great Wall of China-sized barricade, I create once I feel overly controlled. My feet shake, my teeth bite my upper lip, and my hands search for something to hold onto. If I feel it's something I can't handle without losing my composure, I usually leave the room to regroup. 

After twenty years, I've learned how to flip the switch in different settings. My kids in my co-op's classroom haven't quite acknowledged this is what they're feeling. What they do know is they're frustrated. Take Will for example. On Tuesday his one teacher told him she didn't care if he learned another thing from her for the rest of the year. During the team meeting, she talked about how he's going to get to the high school, and he will be alt ed-ed. The math teacher on my team turned to me and asked, "Kristen, when you were in school, did you know a class clown?" Since my opinion was asked, I shared my story...

Senior year of high school, I was a hot mess- I even believe that's putting it euphemistically. I skipped school; I slept, talked, and texted in class; and I roamed the halls, a lot. There was no shortage of sarcasm or friends for me. When I realized my sarcastic remarks to teachers increased peoples' interest level in me, I ran with it.  Discipline wise, I had a well-respected father in the building, who every teacher would report to instead of the principal. One time my AP Calculus teacher wrote me up for texting in class. I got a detention, which I attended for 20 minutes before the wrestling coach in charge asked me to run errands for him. No one really questioned me. The truth was I had nothing under control. I was so far out of control that everyone's attempts to save me weren't taken at face value. Why was I the worst behaved in calculus? She was a second year teacher, with whom it was my second year in her class. She constantly yelled at me and kicked me out. Whenever she questioned me, she cited the previous year. I was always told how much more she had liked having me the previous year. Never once did she ask WHY I acted this way. Senior year I was court appointed to spend 10 hours a week with my schizophrenic mother. Child services later decided it was a bad decision, but only after they met with me in school. When? Right before calculus. Luckily, I didn't associate the two things at all...

Midway through my story, the woman who yelled at Will told me she never had kids like me in her classes in high school. "By the time I was in high school, all the classes I had were with other AP students. They all cared about their learning," she told me. I shrugged my shoulders and said, "I was in all AP classes and dually enrolled at Penn State York." When I finished the rest of story, I posed the question, "What does Will have going on at home?" To which I received the answer, "Well, I know he has stuff going on with his sister's boyfriend. I know they don't get along, but it isn't anything as bad as other kids on our team. Many of them have it a lot worse." As I mentioned earlier, when I feel like I'm losing my composure, I walk away. Thirty seconds of silence followed. I then left the room to get a drink.

One of my core beliefs is problems are subjective. I believe everyone has issues in their lives, but the severity of the problems differs. What is a catastrophe in one person's life could be nothing more than a mishap in another's. By not acknowledging this, we're essentially telling kids they don't understand what matters to them. Will is no fool. Whenever I tell him I know he knows how much he manipulates the system, a smile creeps across his face. The teachers are fed up with him because they just see him as manipulative trouble-maker. I see him as a challenge. The kid has personality for days. He dresses head to toe in the latest fashions with Jordans adorning his feet; homeboy screams leader. His outbursts in class and refusal to sit in a seat just highlight his need for attention. He thrives on it. I totally get it, and I believe, if redirected, he could become a beneficial role model. He already is great, but I believe it's my goal to push him further. Empowering him to become something, he doesn't yet know he wants to become.  

A quote from Johnathon Kozol really stuck out to me. He said, "Instead of seeing these children for the blessings that they are, we are measuring them only by the standard of whether they will be future deficits or assets for our nation's competitive needs." He emphasizes something I buy into in this quote- all kids have something to offer the world. When we oppress kids voices, they only seem to come out stronger in other ways. In the eighth grade, it comes out in the form of constant chatter. The teachers on the team call this year's group, the "chattiest bunch". All Will does is talk. Bet him he can't interrupt a class for a day, and he won't distract the class once. From my observation in my co-op's classroom, the more she tries to control, the more she loses the kids. Every day I sit with a boy named Dawon in the period 5/7 class. Yesterday, after my co-op finished giving directions, he saluted her. Honestly, it took everything in me not to smile.