Have you ever had one of those moments when you knew that you should stop talking, yet you kept speaking anyway?
That is exactly what happened to me during one of my fourth grade classes two weeks ago. Partly due the class itself, partly due to it being on a Friday afternoon, I have struggled with this class since the beginning of the year.
I’m not sure why, but one particular student in the class has made it her goal to be as mean as possible in my classroom. I don’t know if I offended her, made her mad, bored her, or what, but she has had a terrible attitude in music class since day one, and it has made teaching the rest of the class very difficult. The eye rolls, the neck slides, the malicious smirks, the mean comments, the obvious desire to stir up trouble—all of it together equals a disrespectful attitude that gets under my skin and irritates me by its very existence. What’s worse? This student knows exactly what she’s doing and thinks it funny. Give me genuine learning or behavior difficulties all day long. I can be patient with those. But intentional disrespect and hurtful choices? That is my limit.
And so…the class walks in and her eyes start rolling and her grins start forming and her comments start flying and seven or eight students start arguing because of the trouble she is stirring up and…well…I lose it.
I look at her, open my mouth, start speaking, and all of my raw emotions toward the disrespect come flying out. In short, I remind her that she hasn’t been in my classroom for the past few weeks and tell her that the class has behaved better without her; therefore, their poor behavior must have something to do with her. While speaking, I’m thinking, “You don’t need to be saying this in front of the whole class. This could make her feel that the class is better off without her. And that’s a bad feeling. Each person is important. Even the difficult ones—even her. Each person needs to be here. Talk to her privately. Stop talking now.” And yet. Everything I had been holding in continued to come out.
The sad thing? She just looked at me, smirked, and agreed with what I was saying as if she were proud to be the source of trouble; meanwhile, the rest of the class was so loud that they didn’t even hear me.
While I knew that what I’d said wasn’t the worst thing I could have said, I felt horrible for saying it. I also felt horrible that I lost my patience so publically. All weekend, I thought about my poor behavior and wanted nothing more than to apologize to this student.
Monday was such a busy day that I didn’t think about anything but morning announcements, teaching, and Harnett Off-Broadway. But on Tuesday, after morning announcements, I saw this student in the hallway and decided that that moment was the moment. I walked up to her while she waited on her class to finish its bathroom break and calmly and repentantly said:
“Hey…Look at me, okay?”
She looked at me with her disrespectful smirk, defensive, as if she were expecting me to fuss at her.
Gently placing my hand on her shoulder and looking her in the eyes, I said, “I was really mean to you on Friday, and I’m sorry.”
Still smirking, but not as much as before, clearly not remembering the moment of my transgression, she responded, “What did you say to me on Friday?”
Not wanting to rehash the moment of shame, I ignored the question and said, “You have a really bad attitude when you come into my classroom. You know that, right?”
She said, “Yes.”
I said, “Do you think you can stop?”
A little shocked, she quietly said, “Yes.”
I said, “Good. I’m glad. But I was really mean to you on Friday, and I want you to know that I’m really sorry. Okay?”
Stunned silent and deeply confused, smirk completely faded away, she said, “Okay.”
I said, “Okay,” patted her on the shoulder, wished her a good day, and walked away.
Guess who had a slightly different attitude in music class this past Friday.
Guess who didn’t smirk at me or intentionally try to aggravate me.
Guess who didn’t cause as much trouble with her classmates.
Guess how long it will last.
Your guess is as good as mine on the latter. It may not last for more than last Friday for all I know. But for one moment, of one week, of one fairly tough year, something went right. And though the entire rest of the class period was a failure, I count that something with her a success.
I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that the student about whom I’ve been speaking had never had an adult directly and sincerely apologize to her until that moment in the hallway last week. I’m sure she’s had adults yell at her time and time again—tell her she could do better—tell her what she’s done wrong—tell her how she could improve. But I’m not sure she’d ever had an adult show genuine vulnerability after making a mistake…and sometimes vulnerability changes things. So while it was difficult—apologizing is often difficult because it means admitting some type of failure—I know that it was right. And I know, now, that sometimes shameful failure can be turned to beautiful success.
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