The Tattooed Teacher

Most of the students I deal with always want to appear “hard,” tough, not taking anything from anybody.  This is never more evident then when a new student is transferred to our school.   Negative behaviors of my current students tend to spike because all the current kids want to show the new kid who’s tough or try to establish the “pecking order.”  The current students will talk back, act up, and get crazy, all the while looking straight at the new kid before doing what they do.  It gets even more interesting and sometimes funny when I call their hand and explain to the current students exactly what they are doing.  Their behavior usually gets in check after that.  But the same phenomenon will occur when the next new student arrives.

The new student usually acts in an opposite way.  It’s called the “honeymoon period.”  Usually they are quiet and compliant.  A teacher is tempted to think that this student is better than their history suggests; that they were just misunderstood to be sent to an alternative school.  I can say that no student, from my experience, has been sent to an alternative school because they were misunderstood.  A quick reading of the students’ referral behaviors or their latest psychological report will put those optimistic dreams to rest.

Sometimes a student will arrive and try to establish themselves at the top of the pecking order and promptly get into a fight, usually with unconstructive results.  On rare occasions, I’ve had new students come in and actually be at top of the pecking order and be the leader in the classroom.  This is when an adventure really begins.  The order is disrupted and all align themselves either for or against the new leader.  I’ll talk more later about how engaging the leader and followers in different ways is important…

I have finally solved the networking problem with my computers in my classroom.  The problem was so simple, but it took me forever to realize the error of my ways.  I now have all 12 computers linked together.  I consider this a triumph as it will greatly improve the efficiency of distributing, monitoring and grading my students’ assignments.  This should open a lot of things up.  Creativity and communication should abound.

He’s a gray-haired 50-year-old man.  He raps about math and positive behavior.  He can’t rap.  It’s hilarious.  Most of the kids laugh at him and say his rapping is stupid (they use better adjectives).  What’s the funniest part about it?  The students know all the lyrics. 

It doesn’t matter that the man’s rap style is better suited for Barney the dinosaur.  It doesn’t matter that the students say they hate it.  They remember what he says.  He raps about fractions and order of operations and about staying away from drugs.

The old man is trying to speak the language of today’s urban youth.  Most teachers see the hip-hop culture as a problem.  They react against it, instead of turning it into a learning tool.

At the end of the last school year, I helped produce some of his latest raps, and put them to popular rap beats.  Hopefully with a familiar beat, and a funny lyric, the content will be stick in their minds even more.