It's not just a job......well, you've heard that one before. There is something adventurous about teaching in an American high school. For me, the adventure is found in the classroom moving student X from point A to point B. Call it trite, but it's the journey that counts.
Inherent in the journey, however, is frustration because it's not happening fast enough, because student X is not "into" the journey, or because, quite frankly, for student X school "sucks." As teachers, our response to the "suck" factor is the frustration factor. In fact, our version of the "suck" factor is the frustration factor. So here we are in a spiral of negativity and, eventually, benign neglect.
You see, deep down we teachers are attracted to those who are eager to learn, or to those who present the pretense of being eager to learn. The eager ones begin to enchant and thrill us with their insight. The other ones, you know, the ones doing seat time, they repulse us. We repulse them, and their self worth and self-esteem are diminished by the repulsion. Though as professionals we are obligated to educate all fairly and equally, we lose interest, after an initial blast, in the students who are set to eject but who can't quite find the button.
This is when we gripe about being underpaid and underappreciated, and, gosh darnit, maybe it's time for a career move. My suggestion to those who are frustrated by their contact with students is to get out of the profession now. Nothing good can come of terminal frustration.
There are some solutions. First, reevaluate your motivation for becoming a teacher. To empower? To enrich? To learn? To teach? Hopefully, you are not a teacher because you enjoy attracting large crowds of kids who hang on your every word. It will not happen. If you think it's happening then you are delusional. Listen to your students and then try to hear what they are saying. Almost every disenfranchised youth has a story to tell. It's usually fascinating. Start with that story as a baseline and establish some attainable, fair performance expectations with them. Tell them you are disinterested in working against them. You are also not interested in their using the classroom for their show. The time is now to learn. Invite them to.
Second, resolve yourself to frustration and then challenge it with another emotion. Turn the frustration into positive energy. When you see student X, look them in the eye, shake their hand, challenge them to sit in front, ask them to do classroom favors like erasing or timing group work. Call them "scholars" in the hallway. Everytime they get a mediocre grade, let them know it hurts you! You can and should measure your success by their success.
Finally, reevaluate your expectations for your students, your pedagogy, and your grading policy. For the student X's, your way or the highway lost its impact in seventh grade. Let's not enable them to cash in their chips. Maybe you can do something drastically different to empower him or her and, for pete's sake, be bold enough to bend that one time. Nothing else has worked. Recording an F in your book is a lot easier than the future student X is looking at.