Form Post:
Troubles Student
This past Semester, I had a student that has been in and out of
the juvenile detention center. He has been in and out of there for the past two
years and due to this, has missed a lot of school. He does not have much of a
home life due to a lack of a home. He sleeps on the couch at his grandmother’s
house with a number of other family members. He is not allow to be around his mother,
and his father, so I hear, is a big drug dealer in our city. The school
computer system told me he has ADHD and this is apparent when he entered the
classroom. When he did come to school, he came to class whenever he wanted to,
even if it was twenty to forty minutes late. He would arrive with no pass and
he would throw the class off kilter. When he arrived, he would tell me
something that he did not like about me, on that given day. He then would take
a while to settle down and to get his class material out. I would continue on
with the day’s lesson, when we would disrupt me to ask for all of his missing
work. I would tell him to wait until later and I would get it for him.
I would always get this missing work for him, but he would never
do it. He would start it and tell me he would finish it at home, but would
never do it. He had some really good days (2) where he would sit and finish the
day’s activity and he would have really bad days where I just wanted him gone.
He did not have his own cellphone, but would borrow his
girlfriend’s cellphone and would be on this more in class than he would do his
work. I would tell him to put it away and he would say OK, but would have it
out a few minutes later. This battle went on until I stopped caring. I was not
going to take his phone away and have him blow up at me. He would already get
mad at me for calling security to take him everywhere he wanted to go (this was
his administrators idea). He needed constant supervision because he was a
constant loiterer and would always spend time with his multiple girlfriends in
the hall.
In class, he would sit there on his phone and try to tell the
class about all the trouble he has gotten in and how it was fun. The class
would look at him like he was completely nuts. One day, when we were waiting
for security to arrive, he told me he was voice recording me and was going to
use this in court to get him off many infractions. This made me very upset.
All in all, this student would come to class and do whatever he
wanted. Most of the time he would opt to leave and go to his guidance
counselor, or he would stay in class and disrupt everyone to the point that
they would all roll their eyes when he arrived. He would rarely get his work
done and would choose to sit on this cellphone. There was no controlling him.
One trick that worked for him, sometimes, was to allow him to
leave when he got an assignment done. He was understanding of that and would
sometimes try to finish his work before he left, but this was rare. I would ask
him how his day was going after he would arrive late and tell me something he
did not like about me; he would sweeten up and say a truthful answer, which was
mostly negative. I felt really bad for this kid and he would soak in all the
negative energy and feed off it. He had way too much on his plate outside of
school to deal with life inside school. He is caught in the cycle of jail and
most likely will be going back. I personally think that he needs a charter
school that is formed around kids with intense behavior issues so that he can
get the treatment he needs to have a successful school life.
I believe this kid is in need to PBIS. PBIS is a Positive Behavior
Intervention Supports and is a system put in place to decrease the infractions
of those students with behavior, and safety issues to keep the school
environment and culture a safe one. This system gives students tools to keep
safe and to not act out through a number of positive strategies. When the
students can learn how to handle themselves, it makes everything much easier.
For the case of my previous student, this would be great for him because I am
certain that he is caught in a bad cycle and cannot learn his way out.
