Lost at School (41 page)

“Well, when you’re here you’re in trouble a lot, and from what I can tell, you’ve always gotten in trouble a lot in school. I can’t imagine that you think of school as a place where you’re especially successful. Like you said, you hate this place, and when you’re not here, you have fun and you have your friends. So, no, I can’t think of why you’d want to be here.”

“Then what am I doing here?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk about.” Mr. Middleton thought for a moment. “Crystal, can you remember a time when you ever felt good about school?”

Surprisingly, Crystal answered quickly. “Mrs. Morin … second grade. She was nice to me. I was living with my mom then. But my mom was drinking a lot, and Mrs. Morin …” Crystal’s face had softened but then she caught herself. “Why are we talking about this?!”

“I’d like to help you feel good about school again.”

Crystal crossed her arms. “Too late.”

“I understand.”

“You don’t understand. You’re not me.”

“No, I’m not you.”

“So you can’t help me.”

“I can’t help you because I’m not you?”

“No one can help me. Help someone else. Look, what did Armstrong say I did?”

“He said he overheard you talking about drugs.”

Crystal scowled. “Did anyone else get sent down here for that?”

“No. Just you.”

“This is bullshit.”

“What is?”

“A bunch of people in our class talk about drugs. How come I’m the only one getting crap for it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You wanna know why you haven’t seen me at school much lately? Now you know.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Why would I wanna come to a place where I get treated like crap?”

“Let’s talk about that.”

“Look, uh, Mr. Middleton, you’re trying to be nice and everything, but I really don’t want to do this.”

“Crystal, are you still seeing that counselor from the mental health clinic?”

Crystal scowled. “No.”

“How come?”

“’Cuz how often can you talk about how you feel about the father you never met and your mother’s an alcoholic and she couldn’t take care of you and dumped you on your grandma and she can’t take care of you, either? It doesn’t change anything! I’m done talking!” Crystal stood up. “Can I go?”

“Yes, you can go, in a second. I do have to give you three days of in-school suspension for the drug talk, Crystal, even though I know it’s not going to help. But I also want to do something that will help.”

“Like what?”

“I want to have a meeting between you, me, and Mr. Armstrong. To talk about how we can make things better for you here.”

“No way!”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t want to make things better for me here!”

“I understand you feeling that way. And I know you won’t believe this, but Mr. Armstrong is actually trying to do the right thing for you. But I know you don’t think what he’s trying to do is helping, so I think we should meet to talk about it.”

“It’s a waste of my time.”

“Well, it might end up being a waste of my time, too. But I want to do it anyway. I’m afraid we’re losing you, and I hate to see that happen.”

“You lost me a long time ago.”

“I want to find a way to get you back.”

Early the next morning Mr. Middleton poked his head into Mrs. Galvin’s office. “Got a minute?” he asked.

Mrs. Galvin looked up. “Of course.”

“I’ve been thinking about something and I wanted to get your take on it.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“No big deal. Well, maybe it is a big deal. I don’t mean to alarm you, but it’s suddenly dawned on me that we have a double standard in our school.”

Mrs. Galvin chuckled. “We probably have many double standards in our school. Probably a bunch we haven’t even noticed yet.”

Mr. Middleton pressed on. “I think this is one we haven’t noticed yet. You know how we’ve been putting a lot of energy into our Response to Intervention and Professional Learning Community work? I’ve noticed that all that energy, all that time spent on developing a vision, thinking about our mission, establishing goals, gathering data, collaborating, it’s all being devoted entirely to academics.”

“What else would we be devoting ourselves to?”

“We’re putting no energy whatsoever into applying the same principles to school discipline. If there was ever an aspect of our school that needed a new vision, and new goals, and better assessment and collaboration, it’s how we deal with our challenging kids.”

“Tell me more.”

“We’ve put a lot of effort into examining whether our actions in this building are consistent with our stated vision for academics. We don’t really even have a stated vision when it comes to how we handle our challenging students.”

Mrs. Galvin pondered this observation. “Well, I suppose that’s true. I guess we’ve been leaving it all up to you.”

“That’s exactly right! We’ve been leaving it all up to me!”

“So you don’t think we should be leaving it all up to you?”

“No, the people the challenging kids are having trouble with are sending them to me to fix problems that have nothing to do with me. Take Crystal Caldwell. Mr. Armstrong is convinced she just needs him to be firm and consistent, and in the meantime, she’s getting punished by me so often that she’s spending more time out of school than in it. I mean, it’s clearly not working.”

Before Mrs. Galvin could respond, Mrs. Westbrook poked her head in the door. “Sorry to interrupt. Mr. Middleton, they’re waiting for you down at Mrs. Woods’ room.”

“Oh, right, thank you,” Mr. Middleton said. He looked back at Mrs. Galvin.

“Let’s finish this conversation later,” said Mrs. Galvin. “What’s going on in Mrs. Woods’ class?”

“A meeting with Joey’s mom.”

“Oh, no, did he—?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” reassured Mr. Middleton. “Joey’s doing great. His mother meets with Mrs. Woods every so often so she can learn more about what we’re doing with him here at school. His mom’s doing it at home now, too.”

“You don’t say.”

Mr. Middleton got out of his chair. “Mrs. Woods has done an amazing job with that kid. She’s a real trailblazer. I asked if I could sit in on the meeting today.”

“I wonder …” Mrs. Galvin hesitated. “Do you think they’d mind if I sat in, too? You know, just for a few minutes. I don’t want to intrude, but I’d like to hear about what they’re doing.”

“I don’t see why not. Come on, I’m late already.”

Mrs. Woods and Ms. Lowell were talking when Mr. Middleton and Mrs. Galvin entered the classroom.

“Oh, uh, hello, Mrs. Galvin,” said Ms. Lowell, caught off guard. “Hello, Mr. Middleton.”

“I hope it’s OK if I sit in on part of your meeting,” said Mrs. Galvin. “I’ve heard about how well things are going with Joey. I’d like to hear what you all are doing.”

“Oh, sure,” said Ms. Lowell, looking at Mrs. Woods.

“You’re sure I’m not intruding?” asked Mrs. Galvin.

“If it’s fine with Ms. Lowell, it’s fine with me,” said Mrs. Woods.

“Um, absolutely,” said Ms. Lowell. “Mrs. Woods is doing some amazing things with Joey. She has me doing it at home, too.”

“We’re not meeting to talk about me,” said Mrs. Woods. “Let’s focus on Joey. He’s working very hard. He’s a great kid.”

“Joey doesn’t come to these meetings?” asked Mr. Middleton.

“No, he likes his mom to come alone,” said Mrs. Woods. “Ms. Lowell was in the middle of telling me about some of the Plan B she’s been doing with Joey.”

“I’m not very good at it yet,” said Ms. Lowell. “Although he and his brother are getting along a little better.” The puzzled looks on the faces of Mr. Middleton and Mrs. Galvin suggested the need for further explanation. “See, Mrs. Woods found out that Joey was having some pretty negative thoughts about himself, and his older brother wasn’t helping matters, so we’ve been doing double-barreled Plan B on that problem.”

“So you’ve been doing Plan B at home and Mrs. Woods has been doing Plan B at school?” asked Mrs. Galvin.

“Yes, exactly,” said Ms. Lowell. “Mrs. Woods had already made some headway on the problem before I started.”

“That’s wonderful,” said Mrs. Galvin.

“And it’s not just Joey,” said Mr. Middleton. “Mrs. Woods is doing it with other kids, too.”

“How do you find the time? How do you keep track of all this, I mean, with all the students you have?” asked Mrs. Galvin.

“Well, of course, I do have to find the time to do Plan B with individual kids,” responded Mrs. Woods. “That’s the hardest part—planning ahead for the discussions. But once a problem is solved, I don’t really have to keep track of it or put time into it anymore. I just move on to the next problem. A lot of problems affect the entire class, so we’ve started trying to resolve those problems as a group.”

“No one’s ever reached Joey like Mrs. Woods has,” said Ms. Lowell. “And believe me, many have tried. I can’t tell you what we’ve been through.”

Mrs. Galvin was genuinely moved by what she was hearing. “I’m very sorry for what you and Joey have been through. But it’s wonderful to see you and Mrs. Woods working together on this. I’m so pleased that Joey is doing better. Everyone around here tries to do right by kids, but we don’t always have all the tools we need.” She looked at Mr. Middleton. “And sometimes we aren’t even aware that we need new tools until we take a close look at what we’re doing. I think Mr. Middleton and I will be talking some more about how some of the other kids in our school might benefit from what you’ve been doing with Joey.”

Mrs. Galvin sat down in Mr. Middleton’s office at the end of the school day. “Should we get back to our discussion?”

Mr. Middleton quickly picked up where he’d left off. “You know, our academic vision statement says we believe all students can learn and that every student has a right to access the learning opportunities we provide. But every day I still have an assembly line of challenging kids flowing in and out of my office and a mountain of discipline referrals. We’re still sending kids home or to in-school suspension when they mess up around here. It’s the same kids every week. Because of how we’re dealing with them, we’re actually making it
harder
for them to access learning. When it comes to school discipline, I think our vision and our actions are completely out of whack.”

“That’s probably because we don’t have to report our disciplinary data the way we have to report our academic data with No Child Left Behind,” said Mrs. Galvin. “No one knows how we’re doing—or what we’re doing—with discipline. Apparently no one cares. Imagine what would happen if we had to file annual yearly progress reports on discipline referrals!”

“These are the kids we’re still losing,” said Mr. Middleton. “I think we need to change how discipline is handled in our school. We need to think about what it would look like if we were really trying to do the right thing for challenging kids around here. Of course, if my ideas were ever realized, I might be out of a job. But my vision is that teachers will know how to handle discipline issues with a lot less assistance from me. Like
what Mrs. Woods is doing. Do you know I haven’t seen a discipline referral on a kid from her classroom in about ten weeks?”

Mrs. Galvin sighed. “Not everyone is Mrs. Woods.”

“Well, maybe Mrs. Woods is special, but maybe she’s special mostly because she was willing to try something new. I do know Mrs. Franco’s trying Plan B, too. Mrs. Woods is coaching her.”

“Interesting.”

“The reality is that we don’t know how everyone else would respond, but I think we need to find out.”

“Maybe in our next faculty meeting we should start talking about this,” suggested Mrs. Galvin. “Disruptive behavior is certainly one of the things people complain about the most. And maybe Mrs. Woods could tell everyone what she’s doing with her kids, let other teachers hear about it. So now we need to figure out how to do this. I mean, how will we present this to our teachers?”

“Well, I don’t want to tell you how to run a faculty meeting,” said Mr. Middleton, “but it seems to me that, just like we’ve been doing with academics, we should stay focused on what we say we’re going to do and what the data tell us we are actually doing. I’d be happy to present the data on referrals to my office—they really tell the tale. We have a lot of kids who are not getting full ‘access to learning opportunities,’ and I think we have many teachers who don’t seem to think it’s their job, or don’t know how, to help kids make progress socially and behaviorally. Those areas are more important for some of these kids than academics.”

“Should be an interesting discussion,” said Mrs. Galvin. “I guess we should be ready for some fireworks.”

Early one morning a few days later, Mr. Middleton stopped by Mr. Armstrong’s classroom. This is not going to be fun, he thought. “Jerry, can we talk a minute?”

Mr. Armstrong looked up from some paperwork he was completing. “Sure, what about?”

“Crystal again.”

Mr. Armstrong rolled his eyes. “If I put half the time I spend dealing with Crystal into the kids who actually want to learn, they’d all be going to Harvard.”

Mr. Middleton walked into the classroom. “We’ve both been putting a lot of time into Crystal. Problem is, we don’t have much to show for it.”

“A kid’s got to want to be helped. Some kids don’t.”

“I’m beginning to think that the help we’ve been giving Crystal isn’t what she needs from us. In fact, I think it’s pushing her further away from us. And I’m starting to think that’s the case with a lot of the kids in this school who come my way.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“I want to start thinking about taking a different approach with Crystal. And I need your help.”

“Look, if you’re here to try to talk me into doing that Plan B nonsense, it’s not going to happen. When Crystal learns that in the real world there are rules that need to be followed and certain ways you need to treat people, and that there’s such a word as ‘no,’ she and the rest of us will be a lot better off.”

“Jerry, how many times has someone told you ‘no’ in the last week?”

Mr. Armstrong looked puzzled and then considered the question. “None.”

“How many times have you had to solve a problem in the last week?”