When Life Gives You Lemons

You know that you are going to have an interesting day when the toilet mysteriously clogs in the middle of the night. I’m not going to speculate what really happened. Somethings in life are better left unknown. All I know is that I woke up at 3:30 am to a clog. Half asleep, unable to see more than a foot in front of me, I grabbed the plunger and started to plunge. After about 10 minutes, my efforts seemed futile. Besides, the toilet wasn’t going anywhere. It could wait until morning.

Then, 7am came. I grabbed my glasses, walked to the bathroom, was relieved that the toilet hadn’t actually gone anywhere, and continue my efforts. Able to see clearly, I quickly became suspicious of my failure. Upon close inspection, I realized that I had been trying to plunge a toilet with a holey plunger (that is holey as in “lots of holes”, not holy as in “sacred”). Unwilling to admit defeat, I put on some pants, grabbed my wallet, walked down to the convenient store and bought myself a plunger (less than 200 yards…rather convenient).

I didn’t really stop and think what an odd sight it is to see a man purchasing a plunger at 7:20 in the morning. I got a lot of looks and one comment from my landlord. But I was determined to complete my mission.

When I returned to the bathroom, the toilet was STILL there. Thank goodness. Unfortunately, after another 10 minutes of plunging with a functional hammer, the darn thing would not budge. $1.99 plunger…wasted.

I would have explored other methods but I needed to be at school in less than 30 minutes. So, I ate breakfast, made myself lunch, got dressed (for work, this time), packed my bag and went on my merry way. Of course, I made a point of stopping by my landlord’s store to ask if he knew anyone that could take care of the clog. He said he would take care of it before my roommates and I got back from work.

Most of my morning was rather uneventful. I subbed during my 1^st period prep, taught my reading students about the Paralympics (they are reading an article about Martine Wiltshire), and I introduced my Freshmen Physical Science students to Newton’s Second Law of Motion. Then I had my 5^th period.

I don’t talk about my students that much but today is a clogged toilet kind of day. Now, all of my classes have their trouble makers. You know, those one or two students who like to gossip instead of listen or tease other students or not follow the rules. They are easy to spot in every classroom and, once in a while, they do something so severe that they get sent to the office. Well, if my other classes have trouble makers, my 5^th period class is just plain trouble. If you can imagine every type of difficult student there can be, I’ve got one in my 5^th period. Talkative, loud, defiant, rude, a real classroom management nightmare. What makes it all worse is that, when they are almost all being bad, it is hard to single one of them out for a more severe punishment. How can I justify sending one to the office for swearing once when I know that two other students were just making fun of that students and I have giving warnings to two different students for breaking a class rule.

First semester, I saw my 5^th period class as a classroom management challenge. If I couldn’t turn this rowdy group into decent classroom of students, how could I call myself a real teacher? Like a clogged toilet, I just needed the right plunger. By the end of 1^st semester, I really thought that I was making progress. With constant reminders and gentle requests, I managed to get through each period with minimal frustration.

Then, winter break happened and things returned to chaos. In two weeks, I had completely lost them. As I stood over one of my students, demanding that he hand over his iTouch which he had been using to cheat on his quiz, I realized that I had made a huge mistake. Last semester, they weren’t getting better, I was. I was getting better at stopping the shenanigans before they started. I was starting every class period on high alert; ready to interfere at the first sign of a disruption.  I learned how to read the signs of their bad behavior but they were learning nothing about how and why they should exhibit good behavior.

After the iTouch incident, I broke down and realized that I needed to change the way I handled the class. I went to my principal, laid out the situation, and decided that, for the time being, I needed to switch to the one-warning policy. After that, I was to send them straight to the office. I informed the class of the policy change on Wednesday (our first day back because of MLK Jr. Day on Monday and another cyclone warning day on Tuesday that was marked by gorgeous weather) and I enforced it for the first time today. It was not a pretty sight.

One of boys walked into class, sat down, and put on his sunglasses. It was a test. I knew it was a test because I had played this game with him before. I ask him to take off the sunglasses, he does, but then he puts them back on. I tell him to take them off or they are mine. He takes them off and, shortly thereafter, he puts them back on. I demand that he give them to me he refuses, puts them away and then puts them back on.  Eventually, he would stop but it was either on his terms or on the off chance that I was quick enough to take them off his face before he realized. Today, I wanted none of it. It was a waste of my time, it kept the entire class from learning, and I was tired of it.

I asked him to take off the sunglasses. He pretended that he didn’t hear me. I walked up to him and gave it to him straight. He could either give me the sunglasses or go to the office. When he refused, I wrote him a referral. When he refused to leave, I called the office. Angrily, he stood up, stared me down and walked towards me. I’d seen the act before and was not amused. Then he gave me a slight shove, swore, pushed a desk and slammed the door behind himself. As I called the office back to inform them of his inappropriate departure, the rest of the class looked on in awe at what had just occurred. I returned the desk to its rightful position and began the lesson.

The rest of the day went rather smoothly until after school when that student returned. Having just received a 3-day suspension for his behavior, he was quite livid. He told me he didn’t understand why I had done what I had done and why what he had done was bad. He blamed me for his punishment. So, I did what I always do. I reasoned with him. I reminded him what happened, I showed him the passage in the school handbook that talks about the wearing of sunglasses, and he seemed to come around because, minutes later, he politely asked me for a quarter so that he could take the bus home. This turned into a conversation about how he hates to walk. From there, he asked if he could borrow my computer to check his e-mail. This, quickly, turned into him checking his Facebook.

As I watched him write on his friends’ walls and try to keep from reading his messages I remembered that my students are only 15 and 16. As much as they want me to think that they are all grown up, they are still just kids. Growing up isn’t easy. The lines between right and wrong are blurred; they have all of these new emotions that they don’t know how to control; and they don’t want/know how to take responsibility for their actions.

I am in no way trying to justify the actions of my student. His behavior was out of line. I am, however, trying to remind myself that his brains, like all of my students’ brains, is still developing and someday, maybe, it will click that I’m not cracking down because I am out to get any them. I’m not trying to ruin any of their lives. In fact, I’m trying to do the opposite. I don’t enjoy referring them to the office but they need to learn how to take responsibility for their words and actions and, if this works, then, at least, I have taught them something. I have, in fact, enriched their lives.

I got back to my house around 4pm and the toilet was completely unclogged. Just like new. Of course, 4 hours later, the water stopped running. But, that is the thing with life; there is always another challenge to be overcome.