On Difficult Students

Q: What do you do when you don't think you like your kids and you don't think they like you?


Douglas: I’m reminded of what John Wooden would tell his basketball players, “I may not like all of you, but I love all of you.” His players were family to him and he accepted them as such.

There will always be people that you like more than others. With some there will be an easy connection. With others you’ll have a harder time. With most people you meet, you get to choose how much time you’ll continue to spend together. But as a teacher, you’re stuck for nine months with students who you don’t necessarily like and who don’t necessarily like you. That year-long teacher-student contract means no matter what happened today, we’re both coming back and trying tomorrow.

Looking back, I consider those lessons in patience and commitment were two of teaching’s great rewards. The first rule is to be fair to all. Students have an incredibly sensitive antenna to fairness (particularly if it affects them personally) and treating a student worse because of your personaldislike of them undermines your standing with all of them.

Favoring a student, however subtly, will do the same, though to a lesser degree. I think students can at least understand teachers have favorites but can’t accept teachers that have least-favorites.

Distinguish disliking behavior from disliking the person. We usually don’t articulate why we usually “like” or “dislike” particular people but it’s usually because of how they act. As a teacher, you get to set standards of behavior and to an unprecedented degree, influence the way people act towards you. When you get upset at someone for not following them, point to the behavior and be explicit about why it displeased you. Students can correct behavior but not personhood. They learn social and educational expectations if they understand you are reacting to their not doing homework, their making snide comments, or talking out of turn. Do that consistently and even-handedly and students will respect you. In turn, you’ll find that kids you “don’t like” aren’t so bad after all.

Lastly, remember that students are developmentally immature and the relationship is not equal. You are not supposed to get back what you give. It’s great when you like your students and they like you back. But that’s not your job. In the end, teaching is service. I’ve never heard Mother Theresa complain that she didn’t like a person she served. A doctor provides the same care to patients whether he/she likes them or not. Likewise, as a teacher, you teach people that in any other context you would never choose to be friends with. Eventually you’ll likely grow to love them. That’s a great privilege.


Jack: In my first few years I think I did a pretty good job of connecting with kids and helping them understand why I was asking them to care about the subject matter. So, when I added on a section of 11th graders, it seemed fair enough to me that I would have one of the two sections that wasn’t tracked with other subjects. Essentially, although the History classes weren't tracked, other subjects were, meaning that the honors Math, Science, and English students would also be together in History; I would have one of the other groups. They also put the few behavioral issue kids in my class, figuring that I would know what to do with them.

It was funny how different that class was from all of the other classes I had ever taught. They bad-mouthed each other, they didn't do their homework, a few even honestly told me that though they liked me, they had no interest in the class. Our school had great kids and a great school culture, so the attitude problems weren't fundamentally disturbing; but relatively, they were, and I started to resent them. I dreaded going to class. I watched the clock. But somewhere deep down I believed that I would turn them. I talked with them daily about their behavior and their efforts. I encouraged them and chastised them. I gave them more fun activities than I had planned to, but never lowered my standards. I told them what I wanted from them and asked them what they wanted, and we worked towards a consensus. And, eventually, they came around. I thought I was pretty good.

But then I taught a summer program for kids who were talented but who went to the city's worst schools. And even though I had taught the program before and liked it, I had a terrible summer. My kids didn't want to do the work I assigned them, they tried to sleep in class, they read magazines instead of their assignments, they didn't do their homework. And I suffered. I didn't want to be there. I counted the days until the end of the summer, and at the end of it, I had reached some of them, but not all, not nearly all, and I felt like I had failed.

Looking back, I realize that the one thing I didn't do well that summer was foster communication about why we were there. I didn't tell them what my vision for our class was, nor did I ask them about theirs. We didn't work towards understanding each other. I assumed that because they had volunteered for the program, they wanted to fill in the gaps that were created by their weak schools. But many, if not most of the students, were there because they had been told it was the way to get to college. The result was that I came off as a tyrant and they came off as lazy, and sadder than the inaccuracy of those perceptions is the fact that it limited how much learning took place. I drove them forward, but at the expense of fostering a sense of community or a love for learning.

Ultimately, teaching can't happen without buy-in - from the teacher and the students. Sometimes I got it by being funny, sometimes by being interesting, sometimes by demanding it. But when I didn't get it, the class stopped working. If I had that summer to do over, I think I would start by sitting down with each of my students and asking them why they were there.

The student who grew the most that summer was the student who had initially been the biggest distraction. As a result, I made him go on a number of short walks with me where we talked about his behavior. We also talked about what we wanted and how we could help each other. On the last day of class he walked across the auditorium and hugged me.


Mike: During their last year in High School, students across China take the gao kao, a sort of SAT on steroids. The test has four required sections— Chinese, English, Marxism and Mao Tse Dong Thought, and Math—and a section you can choose (Biology, Physics, more Math, Chemistry, more Chinese, etc). As the gao kao scores are calculated and released during the summer, the central government and provincial governments simultaneously release tables providing that year's standards for admission at every school in China. So, for example, a student from Guizhou province needed a gao kao score of 300 to be admitted to Guizhou University last year (out of a total of 750). They needed a score of closer to 700 to be admitted to Beijing University, China's top school (fourteen people from the province made it). The gao kao score is the only criterion used for college admission (although, as in America, the rich, famous, and well connected find they have an entirely different set of standards).

After being admitted, the school will tell you your major. If a significant portion of your 300 total points came from the English section, you will be an English major. If it came from the Marxism section, you will be a politics major. If you have high math scores, you get a coveted spot in the Engineering department. If your scores are all average, maybe the school will make you a dance major.

Guizhou University, where I teach, also has what are called "second class students." These are students with gao kao scores below the required score of 300. They pay extra and are granted admission.

Last year I taught a class of 37 "second class students." These teenagers were forced to major in English, could not speak English, hated studying it, and were always being told they were "second class." They had never in their life been allowed to choose a class and never would me; there is no such thing as an "elective" in China. They come from a culture that does not encourage dating, part-time jobs, or the other extra-curricular or creative activities that bring affirmation to American teenagers. Their lives centered on classes they did not want and could not control.

These were not happy kids.

The other teachers in my department openly despised the "second-class" students. They complained when assigned to teach them, and brought an attitude of disappointment to their lessons with them. The second-class students come from either extremely poor families or extremely rich families. The poor families are so desperate to get their kids into the province's top school that they sacrifice everything to buy them a second-class slot. These kids experience a depth of guilt-induced pressure I had never before thought possible (and I'm Jewish). They know what their families have done, but they have lousy teachers who don't respect them, so their already stunted skills are given little chance to blossom. The longer they are here,the more desperate and unhinged they become.

The rich kids are here because daddy can buy them in. And daddy will buy them a job. They don't need a degree, but it's fun to go to college for four years. They certainly don't need to speak English. Of the 37 students, about half had a kindergartener's English proficiency. Six of them were at a 5th or 6th grade level. Six could understand nothing more than "hello" and "goodbye." The others were scattered in-between.

Each week I would enter class with a combination of dread, depression, and rage. I have never felt so incompetent, irrelevant, and frustrated in my life. The moment each two-hour class ended, I would feel a few minutes of elation; these would quickly fade as I began my countdown to the next week's class. Thursday mornings, 10am. T-minus one week and counting.

I tried every trick I knew. I tried using the textbook; I tried hands-on lessons; I tried singing songs; I tried taking walks outside with the class; I tried playing basketball with them; I triedpronunciation drills; I tried using movies. It all failed. It all failed…utterly. They would text-message each other, smoke, and spit on the floor during class. They would come late, leave early, and take 30 minute bathroom breaks. Forget about homework. Forget about studying for tests. Failing classes is impossible at our University—students pay a fine if they score less than a 60 and are then given a passing grade.

At times I hated them. Many of them seemed to hate me, too. They hated me for speaking English, and they hated me for being part of a system that had given them such a plate full of ass to eat for their entire life. I felt like they couldn't even see me. One of them—a girl's whose visage made me want to commit random acts of violence—would speak to me in Chinese and nothing else. When I could not understand her (which was most of the time since at that point I did not speak Chinese), or would ask her to speak English (it was, after all, an English class), she would snarl at me, open her cell phone, and call her father.

Failing her felt so good I almost laughed with delight as I entered her final score, "12." She, of course, didn't care. Daddy paid the fine, and she advanced to her junior year. The saddest thing about the "second class students" is that none of this - or at least not much of it - was their fault. They were put in an impossible situation, and were reacting as most people might in similar circumstances.

During my best moments, I remembered this. When I was feeling positive, I would be able to de-personalize all of the frustrations and failures. I would show the students I respected them, did not consider them "second class" and would do everything in my power to help them improve, if that's what they wanted. By the end of the exhausting year, they knew that I was the one teacher who would never give up on them. They knew I was working my tail off to make our time together worth-while.

They still hated English. They still hated our school. But we had reached a sort of equilibrium together.I think the cause of most classroom suffering is systematic. It has little to do with the student and teacher who find themselves at odds. They are pawns in a larger game. If they can remember that, and remind each other of that, they may form a kind of solidarity. If they can set the system aside and do what they need to do to educate each other, they win. If not, they shadow-box with an invented other who isn't really even there. The student sees authority, or the system, or another hypocritical adult. The teacher sees lazy or burn-out or another disrespectful child. In this case, a systematic labeling is taking place that has nothing to do with people actually trying to survive in a so-called "learning" environment.

The teacher's job, I think, is to advocate for the students and carve out enough space to let them do what they need to do in order to be open to learning. The teacher needs to fight off the gao kao, the SAT, the "curriculum", the labels, or whatever else is creating a poisonous environment. The students don't have the wherewithal to do so on their own. I couldn't really do that in my "second class" classroom. The system is too deeply embedded here. The "curriculum" is too rigorous. If I ever found myself in a school in America that felt similar, where despair was the norm and creativity was crushed, I would quit. I'm not made of stern enough material to survive that sort of thing.

But in some schools, there's enough wiggle room to build a bridge away from the negativity. If the teacher is given freedom to create, and if she has enough energy and time to do so, there's always a third way. Maybe my Conversational English class should have become an American and Chinese Pop Music class; maybe I should have turned it into a kung fu class; maybe I could have divided the 37 students into groups of about 9 and met the smaller groups for 30 minutes a week, instead of the large group for 2 hours; etc. If the material is changed, or if the class leaves the classroom itself, or if the grading policy is altered…if the teacher has the freedom to be radical, I think any group of students can be turned around. Most teachers, of course, don't have this freedom and are limited to the tools the system leaves at her disposal. The process of teaching in this way, and the results, are depressing, and this is one of the central flaws with schooling as we know it.

On Energy

Q: Teaching is an act of giving - mentally, physically, and spiritually. It requires not only giving in those respects in the classroom, but also engaging those parts of yourself in a way that is honest,challenging, and exhausting. Where does the energy come from?


Jack: My energy comes from feeling like I can live my life in my teaching. I can't make it through too many days feeling like I'm teaching for someone else; in many ways, it has to be for me. If I come home at the end of the day and feel like I need "me" time, it wasn't a good day. And that isn't sustainable - if the only time I'm feeling like I'm living the life I want to lead is the half of my waking day when I'm not in the classroom, I'm only living half a life. The summer isn't long enough to undo that feeling.

So what makes me feel like I'm living my life? I need to be able to engage multiple parts of myself. I can play the role of teacher, but I can't play the role of someone else. That means that I need to be able to be myself. And that's a scary thing at the beginning of the year. One of my intstincts is to be what the kids expect, to construct a stock-character who the kids will hardly even see - someone so standard that I'll be invisible.

But there's another instinct, much stronger, that drives me to take the risk of putting myself out there. Sometimes it took the kids a while to come around, but they did. And eventually they would start to be themselves, too.

I need to be able to think with my students. That means that we need to be tackling questions that are of interest to them and to me. I need to be intellectually stimulated and engaged. I need to be able to laugh with my students, to worship with them, to play with them. The day needs to be about me as much as it is about them. And if it is about me, I can go home and feel like I lived my life. I don't need anything but a good night's sleep.


Douglas: Teaching is a demanding craft; you have to be ready to perform four or five times a day, everyday. In most jobs, you can lay low on an off day, perhaps do a little less when you’re not up for it. Not with teaching. The responsibility of leading a classroom demands total attention for the time you have with your students and that responsibility gives teaching its meaning. You have to bring all of yourself to the classroom, or else it shows. To set high expectations for students means you have to model that and students sniff out hypocrisy and inconsistency like bloodhounds.

How does one stay true to giving your all? I’d say anxiety and adrenalin propelled me through my first two years. As a beginning teacher, I was just learning the material, learning how to effectively teach it, learning classroom management and the host of other skills in the craft. I think the novice’s desire and energy brought me to class, ready to give, my first two years. Once you’ve reached a manageable level of competency, you have to figure out how to remain fresh in the classroom. I think about it this way: a teacher is a conduit between students and material. My energy and my interest in the subject is a model for the students in my class. That means I have to find ways for material to be new and fresh to me. It can be new ways of teaching the same material or teaching new materials.

What’s critical is the role of professional development. Schools should be learning communities, which means necessarily, teachers should be modeling learning. A teacher that doesn’t seem interested in learning him/herself is a poor teacher and that’s why burned out teachers are poor teachers: they just don’t care anymore. Going away to conferences, taking classes, sharing with other vibrant teachers, are all ways to recharge.

Lastly, giving all of yourself requires that you have something to give. Again, the first two years are easy, ironically, because they are so hard. As your career progresses, how you take care of yourself mentally, physically, and spiritually creates the well from which you draw energy. What you’re creating in your personal life will determine how much you bring into the classroom. So keep investing in your personal relationships, stay intellectually engaged, keep running, and maintain your spiritual life. You and your students will be better off for it.


Mike: Teaching is an act of giving. In safe, caring environments, it is also an act of receiving. The teacher's relationship with her students is reciprocal; mental, physical, and spiritual energy is thus constantly burned and refreshed by each member of the learning community.

In unsafe environments, where teachers or students feel their identity is ignored or disrespected, this reciprocal relationship is impossible. Fear prevents us from sharing our energy, limiting the pool the community can draw on. The teacher therefore burns out in a rather literal way: without the help of her students, her energy is spent far faster than she can ever replace it. A few hours at home after school each day is not enough to refuel.

The teacher is running on fumes by February and crawls into the summer months a broken husk. Alternatively, the teacher simply stops giving. This strategy of self-preservation keeps her sane, but drains the job of any life. Boredom replaces burnout.

In safe environments, students and teachers learn and grow together. The teacher feels comfortable showing weakness and asking for help. In this way, she models humility. She lets the student see how the subject matter - be it literature, history, basketball, or mathematics - is part of her life. She is able to take learning seriously enough to be consistently life-altering. There is something raw and experimental in what she does, because she has not stopped learning. The students are the focus of this learning experience.

When I teach, my energy comes form my community. The more my school is integrated into my community - however I define it - the more energy I have. This means the best schools will be local and they will include the families of the teachers and students. The energy generated by the act of teaching and learning will be self-reinforcing, and will come in all shapes and sizes. At times, this immersion in community will be exhausting. But it is the only lifestyle of teaching that is ultimately sustainable.