Lost at School (42 page)

“A lot. I don’t see how this applies to Crystal.”

“Apparently, dealing well with the word ‘no’ isn’t as crucial to life in the real world as it’s made out to be. Plan B teaches kids how to solve problems, a skill you’ve just told me you used a lot in the last week. All the detentions and suspensions Crystal’s had … they haven’t helped her learn how to solve her swearing problem, or her fighting problem, or the fact that she hasn’t felt good about school since the second grade, or the fact that the only place she feels good is when she’s hanging out with a bunch of dropouts.”

“Look, I agree the kid has problems. But I’m not going to let her interfere with the learning of the kids who are here to learn, and I’m not going to let her bring her swearing and drug talk into my classroom.”

“So let’s work with her on those things, Jerry! Because I’m not giving her detentions or suspensions for them anymore.”

Mr. Armstrong looked stunned. “Our school discipline code says—”

“Our school discipline code says that discipline is administered at the discretion of the principal and assistant principal. And the assistant principal is not going to continue doing something that isn’t working.”

“Mrs. Galvin is on board with this?”

“Mrs. Galvin and I have been discussing how to work with all of our teachers to begin making the school discipline program more effective. We want to make sure this is a team effort, just like a lot of the other things we do around here. And I would like you to be part of the process.”

Mr. Armstrong was speechless. Briefly. “You want me to be part of the process of turning the school discipline program into some nambypamby, permissive—”

“Collaborative Problem Solving is not namby-pamby. And it’s not permissive, either. It’s very hard work. And I’d like you to learn more about it.”

“It doesn’t trouble you that if we don’t give Crystal consequences for swearing and fighting and drug-talk, then she’ll get the idea that she can get away with it?”

“There’s nothing about Collaborative Problem Solving that will make Crystal think she can get away with swearing or fighting or talking about drugs.”

“Crystal needs a show of strength. This is a show of weakness.”

“It takes more strength to do Plan B than it does to continue proving to Crystal how strong we are. We have no credibility with Crystal. She doesn’t think we know how to help her.”

“We know what help she needs! You know her grandmother. You know about her mother. You know her brother. Come on, Bill!”

“Jerry, so long as we think she’s swearing and talking about drugs because of her mother and her brother and her grandmother, we’ll never fix the problem. There are a lot of kids in this school who don’t have Ward and June Cleaver for parents. Most of them don’t swear or fight at school. Until we figure out and address whatever is getting in her way, we’ll continue spinning our wheels.”

“Well, I don’t have the slightest idea how to do it.”

At last, something to work with, thought Mr. Middleton. “Now
that
we can do something about. I’d like to have a meeting—me, you, and Crystal. I want to talk about the difficulties she’s having and how much she hates this place and how we can help her. She and I have already talked about it a little. Now we need you to join us.”

“You’ve talked about it already?”

“This is a very unhappy kid, Jerry. She’s already written us off. She thinks we’ve written her off. If we don’t switch gears with her—”

“So what’s one meeting going to accomplish?”

“It won’t be just one meeting. One meeting’s a start. She needs to know she can rely on us to help make school good for her again.”

Mr. Armstrong shook his head. “It’s all about us, as usual. When things aren’t working in a kid’s life, blame the teacher.”

“No, it’s about her, too. That’s why we need to talk about it together. We need to hear about and address her concerns, she needs to hear about and address ours. Tell you what, you don’t need to say anything. Just sit there. Listen. Get to know her.”

Mr. Armstrong considered this arrangement. “Look, Bill, we go way back. You know I’ve always been all about the kids. No one wants Crystal to do well more than I do. And it’s not like we never talk to kids around here.”

“I know that. This is a different kind of talking.”

Mr. Armstrong looked at his watch. “The kids’ll be here any minute. I have to think about this.”

“OK, think about it. There’s no down side, Jerry. Just remember that. There’s no down side.”

“We should probably get started,” Mrs. Galvin called the faculty meeting to order one week later. She set forth her agenda for the meeting. “I would like to focus on something a little different today. For a long time some of you have been asking for help with some of the kids who are frequent flyers in our discipline program. I was thinking maybe it would be a good idea for us to take a look at our vision and mission, and examine whether our school discipline practices are really living up to what we say we want to accomplish.

“We have a lot of kids who are missing class time because of discipline referrals, and a lot of kids who are still being disruptive in classrooms, on the bus, in the cafeteria, but it’s always the same kids and all we’re doing is sending them to Mr. Middleton. We thought that it might be a good thing for us to look at as a school.”

None of the teachers said anything. Mrs. Woods and Mrs. Franco looked anxiously at each other. Mr. Armstrong looked down at his hands.

“Mr. Middleton has prepared some data for us to consider,” said Mrs. Galvin, nodding to the assistant principal.

Mr. Middleton held up a sheet of paper. “Here are some data I’ve
pulled together. I’ve given you each a copy. Take a look at the number of students who have visited my office, the amount of time they’ve been out of class, and the number of ‘repeat offenders.’ These kids are clearly not fully accessing our ‘learning opportunities,’ and we are clearly not addressing their difficulties.”

Mrs. Galvin chimed in. “I think a lot of you are spending more time on discipline than you’d like, sometimes to the detriment of the teaching you want to be doing. I thought we could try to come up with a better plan … together.”

Mr. Armstrong looked up from the sheet. “What kind of a plan?”

“Well, a plan that would have your input and that would work better for everyone than the current plan,” said Mrs. Galvin.

“I’d like to jump in again here,” said Mr. Middleton. “To be blunt, I think the role I’ve been playing as primary disciplinarian in the school has become obsolete. Kids act up in classrooms, they get sent to me. I have some vague idea of what happened, but I also know it’s more complicated than what I’m being told. But I talk to them anyway and apply punishments as dictated by our discipline code, and the next day or the next week, sometimes even the next
hour
, they’re back in front of me and I’m doing the same thing all over again. It’s always the same kids and the same problems. I’m not in a great position to solve problems that occur in your classrooms. The problems are between you and the kids. I think my job is to help you solve those problems. But I can’t do it effectively with the existing setup and I can’t do it without your involvement.”

Ms. Estrada, the new seventh-grade teacher, hesitantly raised her hand. “I think I’m one of the people who’ve been sending kids to the office a lot. And I’m very sorry to report that I’m one of those people who’ve been spending huge amounts of time handling behaviors in my classroom. Maybe it’s because I’m a new teacher, so maybe some of you have some experience that I don’t have, but I would love the chance to talk about how to change things for the better. I’d even chair the committee!”

Ms. Estrada’s earnestness brought smiles to some faces.

“Thank you, Ms. Estrada,” said Mrs. Galvin. “I appreciate your candor. Any other thoughts?”

“Mr. Middleton, I agree that the role you’ve been playing doesn’t make a whole lot of sense anymore,” said Mrs. Franco. “And I agree that the whole discipline program doesn’t make much sense anymore, either.
I’ve felt that way for a long time. But beyond that, I don’t understand what you want from us.”

“I guess we’re looking for your ideas about the best way for us to change something that many people feel isn’t working, and that is completely inconsistent with our stated vision and mission,” said Mr. Middleton.

“This just goes back to inclusion,” said Mr. Armstrong. “Someone comes up with the great idea that we should have lots of kids in our classrooms who used to be in special ed, kids with all kinds of issues, and then we get these kids dumped on us, and no one gives any thought to what we’re supposed to do with them. Now we’re getting Response to Intervention dumped on us, too. So it’s no wonder a lot of us rely on the office for help on the problem kids. We’re not getting help from anywhere else.”

There were scattered nods of approval.

“I agree that we have a lot of kids in our classrooms who wouldn’t have been there ten years ago,” said Mrs. Franco. “And I probably run a tighter ship than I used to because of it. I mean, I do need to get some teaching done every day. But these difficult kids—the ones we wouldn’t have given any thought to fifteen years ago because they would’ve been somewhere else—they aren’t going anywhere. I mean, maybe some of us wish they’d disappear—and I’m not saying I do—but they aren’t going anywhere. They’re ours for keeps. So we’d better figure it out.”

“Unless our vision and mission are just empty words, we need to start talking more about how we help them,” said Mr. Middleton. “When we say ‘all students,’ I think we’d better mean it.”

“So what would that look like?” asked Mrs. Galvin. “Mr. Middleton’s data tells us the way we’re handling our challenging kids isn’t working very well and we want those kids to stay in our classrooms without impacting the learning of other students. How can we work together on a plan that will help us accomplish those apparently competing goals?”

“Well, you said you had some ideas,” said Mr. Armstrong. “I’d like to hear them. Although I think I already know where this is heading.”

Mr. Middleton smiled. “Yes, you probably do. We have some teachers doing something called Collaborative Problem Solving with some of their challenging kids. It’s something Dr. Bridgman brought into our school. It’s very hard work, and it is a major departure from the way we’ve been doing things. But some of our teachers are having success with it. We were
thinking it might be useful to have Mrs. Woods tell us about it, maybe at our next faculty meeting. That way everyone can hear about it and we can talk about it together. That’s what we were thinking. But we wanted to discuss this as a general topic with you before we did anything.”

“I don’t want to be a stick-in-the-mud,” said Mr. Duncan, an eighth-grade teacher. “But I don’t know anything about this problem-solving program you’re talking about, so I don’t know if I believe in it. I need to hear more about it. And I need to know how we’re going to balance that program with all the other initiatives we have going around here.”

“Well, I think that’s what we’re talking about here,” said Mr. Middleton. “I think we’re asking if you all want to spend some time in faculty meetings learning more about it and talking about other ways in which we might not be ‘walking the talk.’”

“I’d like to talk about how we get parents more involved around here,” said Mrs. Franco. “There are some kids, well, we just can’t do it all by ourselves.”

“There are some parents you don’t want to have involved around here,” said Mr. Armstrong, prompting scattered nods of agreement.

“I wonder if we can really make headway with our challenging kids without getting input from parents,” said Mrs. Franco. “I mean, these are
their
kids … why are we doing this all by ourselves? I don’t think we do a very good job of communicating with parents or involving them.”

“We’ve never tried to address this problem together before,” said Mr. Middleton. “Not just together meaning us, but together meaning them. Maybe we need to get a group of parents together to help us out with this.”

“I know a few who’d love to help out,” said Mrs. Franco. “By the way, I don’t think we do a very good job of communicating about our challenging kids among ourselves, either.”

“Sounds like we have some things to work on,” said Mrs. Galvin. “And sounds like there is a general consensus that we are willing to examine our discipline practices, yes?”

“You’re assuming that all of us are unhappy with the present setup,” said Mr. Armstrong. “And that we’re all in agreement with what you’re calling our stated mission and vision when it comes to behavior problems.”

“What do you mean?” said Mr. Middleton.

“You’re using your data to argue that what we’re doing now isn’t working,” continued Mr. Armstrong. “How do you know that these kids
are going to do any better using some other system? At least with the current setup we may not be helping the kids with problems, but at least they’re not disrupting the learning of the kids who come to school to learn. I think there’s something to be said for that. So I’m not all gung-ho about doing something that’s going to take more time, detract from the learning of the other kids, and has no guarantee of being successful. It’s hard enough teaching what we need to teach without having to put time into the kids who don’t want to be here in the first place and probably never will.”

Several others nodded vigorously.

Mrs. Woods reluctantly raised her hand. “I understand your concerns, Jerry. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m betting lots of people in here are concerned about the same things. And you know I’m no rabble-rouser. But I just want to let you know that what I’ve been doing in my classroom isn’t taking more time, it’s taking less. I’m finally understanding and solving problems that have been getting in the way for these kids—and taking up a lot of time—for a long time. So it’s not detracting from the learning of anybody. And you’re right, there’s no guarantee of success. These are our toughest kids. But I’ve come to agree with the perspective that they need something from us that our school discipline program doesn’t give them. I don’t see the down side to thinking about how to change things. That’s all I had to say.”