{"id":546,"date":"2012-05-14T01:20:59","date_gmt":"2012-05-14T01:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/?p=546"},"modified":"2013-05-08T09:54:13","modified_gmt":"2013-05-08T09:54:13","slug":"working-with-difficult-students-chuck-sandy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/2012\/05\/14\/working-with-difficult-students-chuck-sandy\/","title":{"rendered":"Working with difficult students – Chuck Sandy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I Am A Hopemonger. \u00a0Are You?\u00a0\"Chuck<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Our students arrive at school complete and perfectly human. That is to say, they arrive as people in flux. They are on a journey. Our classroom is a stop along the way. It is a privilege to be with them for the time we have been given together and we must make the most of this opportunity.<\/p>\n

Some people will have arrived from a pleasant place. Their journey has left them shining. I love these students. Others will have arrived from some place less pleasant. Their journey\u2019s been more challenging. They\u2019d like to shine but are not sure how. \u00a0I love these students, too. A few will have arrived from a place that wasn\u2019t pleasant at all. Their journey has left them tired and discouraged. They, too, would like to shine, but have forgotten how. I love them, as well. Then, there are always people who\u2019ve arrived from an awful place. Their journey\u2019s been so hard they\u2019ve come to believe they can\u2019t shine. I love these students most of all.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s my job to make everyone shine and I\u2019ll do whatever\u2019s necessary to make that happen. I don\u2019t need to worry about those people who\u2019ve arrived from pleasant places. It\u2019s the ones who\u2019ve come from awful places who are harder to love as they display the destructive strategies they\u2019ve used to get this far. It is how they have survived and they do it perfectly. They are not failures.<\/p>\n

My calling is to learn where they came come, what it is they are<\/em> good at, and who they believe themselves to be. I may have to spend some time on my knees with them. I may even need to hang out with them in the smoking areas, squatting down beside them, but I will do it. I will get them to understand that they have arrived in a good place. I will pace them, build rapport with them, and as I get them to trust me enough, I will model new strategies for them — strategies they can use to replace the ones that are no longer necessary because they have arrived in a good place. None of this is easy, but it is the real<\/em> work.<\/p>\n

The student I love most right now is into dangerous sports, dresses in a style that says I\u2019m scary, <\/em>and works hard at being an unlovable outsider. Almost all of his teachers have written him off as someone with a bad attitude. They don\u2019t care that he is one of the top BMX riders in Asia. I doubt they know how loyal he is to his crew or about his troubled relationship with his father. I know and I care.<\/p>\n

It took a year to find that out, squatting down beside him until I could get him to stand up beside me.<\/p>\n

Last semester he was told that because of his bad attitude<\/em> he wouldn\u2019t be able to join his classmates on a study abroad trip. His first reaction was to drop out of school. I was devastated, but I understood his reasons as he explained them to me. The other day I was so happy to see him on campus. He\u2019s back and when I asked him why, he shrugged and said as he touched my shoulder, \u201cI\u2019ve got friends here. Anyway, how\u2019s your heart? \u201d Better than ever, I told him.<\/p>\n

In his essay Confessions of a Hopemonger<\/em>, Herbert Kohl<\/a> writes that \u201cwithin everyone, no matter how damaged, hostile, or withdrawn, there is some unique constellation of abilities, sensitivities, and aspirations that can be discovered, uncovered, or rescued. The concept of failure has to be eliminated from the mind of the teacher\u201d.\u00a0 I believe this to be absolutely true. \u00a0At the end of the same essay, Kohl confesses: \u201cI am a hopemonger, and I have also been accused of caring too much<\/em> about students who other teachers have written off. \u201c<\/p>\n

I confess. I am a hopemonger, too. Are you?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I Am A Hopemonger. \u00a0Are You?\u00a0 Our students arrive at school complete and perfectly human. That is to say, they arrive as people in flux. They are on a journey. Our classroom is a stop along the way. It is a privilege to be with them for the time we have been given together and … Continue reading Working with difficult students – Chuck Sandy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-working-with-difficult-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}