Working With Our Teachers

On Monday night at 7 p.m. I attended the San Leandro community forum held at my school. It was pretty great to hear all of what our city had to say. However, one particular opinion stood out to me.

One of the teachers at our school, whom I'm unfamiliar with, said simply; "We know who these children are. We know what type of child brings weapons to school."

When he said that, my thoughts exploded into millions of different little questions. I felt like he was just profiling some of the students.

"We know its the ones in the office every day for talking back, the ones that skip school so often."

In a way, it made sense. We know who the "bad kids" are. The troubled ones that nobody really wants to deal with.

It made me sad to hear him say this because I felt like his underlying statement was more like "Lets just get rid of them," rather than "Let us work together to help them." After all, that is the job of a teacher and the reason for a school is to make citizens out of children.

I knew I had to step back and see from his perspective though. As a student, it's often difficult to understand where a teacher is coming from. However, I'm quite lucky to have experience to help me understand.

Most people don't know this about me, but when I'm not enjoying my time as a student or wrestling with the girls after school, I help teach self defense at Esteller Martial Arts.

In my personal experience, I have taught people from ages 3-35, including children with severe ADD and multiple forms of autism. I understand how hard it is to run a class of 30 when a couple of them are distracting or running wild.

However, I would still never give up on helping them and just casting them off into another school never crossed my mind. Although there were many times I wanted to scream at them, it just encouraged me to work harder to get them to follow and possibly someday lead.

One phrase that I learned very quickly years ago still helps me to this day. This was for more sensitive children, or the quiet type of students, the kind that seem to lose hope so quickly, or the kind that give up and stop trying.

"I know you can do so much better."

Now, I'm not saying that just hearing that immediately made the student snap out of it and work hard. Things don't happen that way.

However, little by little every day the student started to believe it. Little by little I saw them try, and as soon as they succeeded with something they had been struggling with, it encouraged them to keep going. It teaches them determination.

Again, it takes time and lots of patience. Patience that some teachers who have thousands of kids each day might not have and most students understand that. 
However, some students need that type of confrontation.

Now before I go on, I just want to clarify that I understand the differences between teaching 45-minute classes of about 20-30 kids and an hour long class with 20-30 teens. It is so much more difficult to encourage a teenager to try doing anything these days. I just wanted to put my experience as a teacher out for others to see, and hear what they had to say about my suggestions.

Another thing about teaching that I learned was to get to know the parents as much as possible. Not so I can call them and tell them their child is rowdy or "troubled," but to see where the student is coming from and to understand them better.

When I walk into that dojo, I know almost every adult by name and we can smile and talk about their kids progress like its nothing. It helps so much!

My suggestion for the school is to have more parent-teacher involved activities. Say a club hosts a pancake breakfast on Saturday morning, for only teachers and parents. Not only can the school raise money, but the teachers can sit down and chat with the parents for awhile.

Most students at the school may not want that connection, but that's only because they always expect the teacher to talk about what the student in question has missed or has done wrong. It's almost like the tele-parent calls. All that does is report negative information, creating a fear in students whenever the school calls.

That does not help any connection between the two groups of important adults.
Dear teachers, I know you work hard. I see it in most of you every day. Put into smaller classrooms with bigger class sizes and less materials.... it's unfair.

The students feel it and because they don't really know who to be mad at or whom to lash out against, they choose the wrong target.

Dear parents, your efforts are noticed as well. Its great to see so many parents at meetings such as the one on Monday night. Keep it up!

I'm just a student at my school, concerned about our connection as a community.