The teacher I am substituting for is coming back early! I am elated. I feel a little guilty, but I see my current teaching position as a bit oif a trap for teachers and students. The DISD Special Education program is a catch-all program designed to be a repository for students performing well below grade level. For the most part these children are bright and have no apparent mental defects that keep them from performing well (I have no access to their grades and IQ scores so even the brightest and sharpest looking students could possible severely deficient according to the recorded evidence). They do have significant behavioral defects. When scattered among relatively well-behaved students they are innocuous and easily managed. When gathered together with other students with similar problems, keeping them in line is a major feat of classroom management.
I failed miserably at classroom management today. Nearly every student in my third period class was out of my control and most of the boys received referrals for playing a schoolyard game called "Licks" at the back of the class. (Combatants in "Licks" roll up their sleeves and take turns pounding each other's upper arms. The winner is the one who can still move his arms when the game is finished.) The rest were lucky to have been seated when an exasperated teacher walked in on the classroom. I could only look on, helpless to control them. The teacher visited again to demand another referral for a young girl in my fourth period. I hate writing referrals and especially for these kids because they exist on the very fringes of educabilty (I have no idea whether "educability" is actually a word or not but I like it). New referrals for many of these kids put them in alternative schools and if alternative school is anything like Special Ed then they are doomed. The only glimmer of hope I see for college success for any of these children is that they are relatively far away from college. They have five or six years to change their ways. The problem is they are operating on fourth grade learning levels and are in the seventh and eigth grade. How they are to recover from that I don't know. Even with extremely intelligent children (and I know these kids are smart), I don't see how there would be enough time to learn all the things they are missing by not being in regular classrooms.
My mistake today was in not keeping them busy enough. Busy students don't act up and the ones who give me the least trouble are the ones who work through the period. Paradoxically, these are also the least remarkable kids. They struggle to finish the assignments in the time alloted but work steadily to get all the work done. The other kids who breezes through the work or just refuse to do the work are the more troublesome ones, even though they usually seem to have the most mental potential.
My mental block with classroom discipline is that threats don't seem to have any effects on these kids. They respond to action, drastic action. In past assignments I have responded to this by randomly choosing a sacrifical lamb from the many offenders so that the others would beware. I felt this was unjust and a deterrent born from anger - an uncharitable emotion that I don't like to give in to around the kids. However, It does yield fewer referrals overall. Tomorrow I am giving a test and I'll attempt to keep the kids busy for the rest of the class period. Maybe I'll avoid handing out referrals tomorrow. I hate Special Ed.