Snitch

If you would have seen me during my first year of teaching, you probably would have laughed, then cried for me. Before I got it together I would use any means necessary to keep kids in my classroom, in their seats, and doing work. To this fashion, I would often use my body as a blockade to students trying to exit my classroom without being prompted by the bell (which is a fancy way of saying I had 12 year olds trying to escape from my class). I resorted to requiring my students to write "I know the rules, I will follow the rules, and I will learn to love the rules" time and time again on a piece of paper, and I was contantly in verbal arguments with my students which looked similar to a tennis match between Venus Williams and Ted Kennedy. While I should have been playing the part of Venus, truely I was Ted. One student who was a constant escape and verbal combat artist with Anthony.

To the core, one of my sweetest students, Anthony suffered from boughts of emotional stress. He would laugh and smile and run in excited one day, then the next be set off by one of the twins in my classroom, cry crocodile tears, slam a desk on the ground, then run out. He was cautious with people and didn't want to be seen as needing help. Eventually Anthony let me in and his story was one of the hardest to hear.

Anthony lived an unsettled life with his family. Person after person had moved away, been incarcerated, died, or just left. Anthony had little siblings that he tried very hard to take care of. On one occassion he came in without shoe laces. When I inquired about the missing fasteners he told me he gave them to his little brother who was wearing shoes too big for him. Sometimes Anthony verbally let me know when things were bad enough that he couldn't handle it, and sometimes his behaviors displayed everything I needed to know.

Anthony, like the others, was in my classroom for math and language arts. It was with students like Anthony that this consistency was a blessing.

My sixth grade language arts students started each day off with Daily Oral Language. At first, teaching subject/predicate, nouns, verbs, and adjectives was perceived as the equivalency of water boarding my students in an act of true torture. But by second quarter, they could correctly identify the above parts of speech and had moved on to adverbs. They learned to love words as I do. Anthony really came around academically when he asked me one day, "Ms. Frech, can I be your predicate man, I mean I just want to underline it every day". Now that is love of learning.

Anthony struggled through reading, especially reading out loud. But, he always tried and would accept help. Though persistent, Anthony would give me a couple of sentences before he asked that I moved on to another student. This stopped when we got to the drama section of the curriculum. I decided to read The Phantom Tollbooth with my students because it was my sister and my favorite book growing up. After the first scene, Anthony fought to read Milo, the main character, every day. Anthony connected to Milo's conflict between his world of numbers and words and grasped to Milo's imagination as he created the scenes for Dictionopolis and Digitopolis.

These were the good days.

On the harder days, Anthony liked to run and yell. In fact during one day's rant I had had enough and decided to call his mother, right then and there. I suppose this was a traitorous thing to do because as I was dialing Anthony proceeded to stand on his desk and yell, "You see everyone she IS a snitch, let's all call her one, SNITCH SNITCH SNITCH!"

ohmygoodlord. Really? pleaspleaseplease do not let anyone walk in right now.

Luckily the other students did not join in, but instead looked in awe at this small boy, standing on a desk while their teacher held up her cell phone for his mother to hear the ridiculousness that was going on. His mother was good to me and calmed Anthony down enough to finish class. She would have been right in questioning my teaching methods and ability to lead 12 year olds without inciting a riot. Thank goodness for pity.

The next few months were rough. It came to a peak when Anthony, finally tired of being provoced by the twins, punched me in an attempt to punch one of them. (Note to teachers out there, do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT, use yourself as a shield in a student fight).

Anthony came back to school and actually, all was okay. Eventually Anthony made enough progress to audit a more difficult math class and on his bad days in there, he came to me. Through all the tribulations, I never gave up on Anthony because I knew his outbursts were beyond his control level. By giving him the benefit of the doubt, I became safe space for him. By his seventh grade year, Anthony made daily trips to see me, get a hug, or just a few encouraging words. Half way through the year he moved to a different school. I hope he found someone there who loves him enough to go through the days of snitching to get to the days of glory.