Gary

When you’re a self-contained, elementary teacher each year is a new panorama of people and personalities.   You have students who walk in confident and students who walk in unsure.  You have students who walk in dressed to the nines and students who walk in wearing rags.  You have students who walk in happy to be there and students who walk in angry that summer went too fast.  However, on the first day, almost everyone walks in quiet and a little reserved.

Not so for Gary.

Gary began the year in the class next door, but after an exceptionally difficult first day (a day I won’t go into the details about) he spent the next six weeks in the district’s alternative school.  Suffice it to say, you don’t go to alternative school for being tardy, or throwing French fries at lunch.  It’s for serious offenders, and it’s not a very fun place to be. 

When Gary returned he was, for several reasons, placed in my class.  He walked in loud and mad at the world, a fact that instinctively caused me to spring into drill sergeant mode and I never looked back. 

“Son!  You are NOT going to walk in my class like that ever again…is that clear?”

“Yea…”

“I said, is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“What was that?”

“Yes sir.”

“Now, get in your seat, get to work and I’d better not hear a peep out of you!  If you feel like you have something you just gotta’ say you had better raise your hand young man.  Do you understand me?”

“Yea…”

“I said, do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“What was that?”

“Yes sir.”

And that was how our mornings began for the next 12 weeks.

Now I feel the need to go on record here and say that for me, “drill sergeant mode” is not a role that I enjoy.  Don’t get me wrong, I play it well, but it’s very out of character for me.  And as you may already know, prolonged exposure to anything can have a detrimental effect.  Just like spending too much time around things like the sun, radiation, or asbestos, if a teacher spends too much time in drill sergeant mode sooner or later it takes its toll.  Drill sergeant mode can keep you tired and make you cranky. 

However, my biggest drill sergeant fear is getting lost.

If you get lost, you get off of your normal path then you can’t find your way back to an area that’s familiar and comfortable.  You wander around and survive as best you can.  The cast of Gilligan’s Island got lost their lives were never the same, but they always seemed to have fun.

Getting lost in drill sergeant mode works much the same way, only without all the comical endings to the trials and tribulations life throws at you.  If you get stuck in drill sergeant mode your teaching effectiveness and your teaching joy fly right out the window. 

Because it was all Drill Sergeant Hugh could do to keep Gary in line, I started getting lost. 

Luckily I had enough students who didn’t need Drill Sergeant Hugh to help me see what was happening.  I made a conscious effort to turn my back on the drill sergeant and fight anger with kindness and acceptance. 

It wasn’t easy…

My emotions, thanks to a closed head injury, are right at the surface, so keeping my cool when I was being ignored and yelled at didn’t always happen.  I took each day one at a time and went home happy if I hadn’t barked at Gary.

It was sometime in late November or early December when I got my first peek into Gary’s personality.  He had been in my class about 10 weeks and I had never seen anything resembling a smile on his face.  I don’t even know what we were doing, but I walked up behind him, patted him on the back and made some kind of goofy remark.  A huge grin spread across his face and he even laughed a little.  I think he could see the surprise in my eyes, and his smile quickly bounced back to a frown.

But it was too late. 

You see, by smiling at my dumb joke he showed me that he wanted to laugh and be happy, but maybe he just didn’t have the courage. 

Over the next several months Gary and I bonded.  Don’t get me wrong, Drill Sergeant Hugh was never far away, and he came out of hiding when he was needed.  However, he normally would pop in and be gone in a matter of minutes.  You see I learned that if I simply talked with Gary using a calm voice and expressed my disappointment with his behavior, then drill sergeant Hugh usually wasn’t needed.

Positive changes were happening.  Gary is smart…really smart.  However, his behavior usually got in the way of his learning so I don’t believe his teachers in the past had been able to see it.  Nothing against them, but with some students it can be hard to focus on anything other than their behavior.  Fortunately, for some reason, Gary started to let me peek behind his iron curtain and I got to see how smart he really is. 

But changes were happening in me too.  This boy who took every ounce of my strength, every ounce of my patience was chipping away at my heart.  What I learned is that you can’t fight anger with kindness and acceptance without opening up your heart.  When your heart is open, I mean wide open, you don’t get to pick and choose the people you’re going to let in.  If the door is open all kinds of people, good and bad alike, come shuffling in. 

One day, after a problem in the hallway, I pulled Gary aside and said, “What’s happening?” and “Who are you?  Pal, I thought we had gotten past this kind of behavior.  When you first came to my class this is how you acted, but all this had changed.  I want the New Gary back.  New Gary has become one of my favorite students…please bring him back.”

I was speaking from the heart and even as the words left my lips I knew they were true.  I don’t think Gary had every heard anything like that come out of a teacher’s mouth.  He sat down in the hallway and cried.

He tried to talk, but his blubbering lips couldn’t form words.  I put my arm around him and told him to walk to the restroom and pull himself together. 

I walked back to class wiping tears from my eyes. 

I knew that this fourth grade boy had been bouncing from school to school since kindergarten.  He was actually an overflow student from another school in my district.  A few days later, when the principal told me his mother had written a letter requesting a transfer for his fifth grade year I was shocked.  She talked about all the positive changes she had seen in Gary and how happy both she and Gary are about finally having a good school year.  I told the principal that it would be a mistake not to give Gary a transfer. 

Yep, when you’re a self-contained, elementary teacher each year is a new panorama of people and personalities.   You have students who walk in confident and students who walk in unsure.  You have students who walk in dressed to the nines and students who walk in wearing rags. 

And sometimes you have a student who walks in and changes your life forever…