Rebel with a pause

 

I’m lucky that way. As a teacher, I get to meet youngsters in the middle of their stories. Sometimes, I’m fortunate enough to find my way into their stories. Sometimes I just get to listen.

So I got chatting with a youngster the other day. I don’t startle easily, but I was startled with his story. He was talking about his time in high school. While recalling his failure to pass in Grade 11, he told me breezily, “It didn’t work out for me. I didn’t work. My Maths teacher used to humiliate me all the time, it was tiring. But after the first few times, it didn’t bother me. I would get myself thrown out of class early on in order to avoid all that nagging. It was just simpler that way. So no, I didn’t clear the exam that year.”

I realised he was telling me that he had been forced to rebel to free himself from daily humiliation.

In an instant, I connected. For I remembered another young man in another city, an energetic rebel, whose friends had warned me about his defiant streak right away. “He has anger management issues,” I was told, as his class teacher, on day one. I had responded with bravery. “In that case we will get along famously, for I have the same issues,” I had replied.

And we did get along famously – after the first few months, that is. In the first few months, he tested mine and every other teacher’s tolerance limit with new ideas for disruption of class! Teenagers rebel, of course they do. No problem. The problem starts when a teenager thrives on being used as a bad example. He seemed to enjoy his notoriety.

I tried. I drew him aside and spoke to him. I scolded, requested, coaxed, cajoled. He laughed openly. I even tried the emotional pitch, begging him to think about his mother, who was called in to school every so often with complaints – I told him that surely she didn’t deserve that! Didn’t he love his mom? He scoffed. Alas, even my dramatics failed.

What finally worked was so simple, that I almost couldn’t believe it.

It happened by chance. One day, I was called urgently to class by other students because he had broken a window. Expecting a lot of blood, I ran into the class, and told him to show me his hands, ready to bundle him off to the nurse. Turns out he had been banging on the window with his ruler, his hand was fine.

And that was it. Instead of smirking at me as I had expected, he looked sheepish, and even apologised. I wouldn’t say he turned over a new leaf (that would be stretching it) but I found a shift in him after that. He was slightly more amenable to reason. He continued to fill up pages with doodling during class, but we all felt that he was sometimes listening too. I assumed that breaking the window had led him to finally realise that he should calm down…

We got the window fixed. Life moved on from classes to exams to sports to concerts. As the year drew to an end, we became friendly enough to chat amiably about various things. One of the topics was adjustment to school life. Treading carefully, I broached the topic, since I was keen to know. I asked him how he had managed to turn himself round. “Well, you helped a little bit,” he grinned his famous grin. Did he mean that all my motivating talks had actually worked?

“No! I didn’t pay attention to all those lectures of yours. I used to think of designing cars in my head when you spoke to me,” he said, honest as ever.

Ouch.

He went on, “Remember when I broke that window? I just felt nice that you asked me about my hand before going to check the window. So I tried to give you less of a hard time.”

Really?

So that was all it took? Just basic concern for a child who might have been hurt.

P.S: Who would know that rebellion is sometimes just a soft place in the heart.

 

Scars

 

“the way you speak of yourself
the way you degrade yourself
into smallness
is abuse” ― Rupi Kaur

 

I think one of the worst aspects of a teacher’s career is watching children struggle – struggle to keep up, struggle to be cool, struggle to just seem alright. Over the years I have seen too many children crying on the inside.

Sometimes the reasons for this heart-wrenching struggle seems valid – to me. Sometimes they do not – to me. But who am I to say? And this moment of revelation always comes as a shock. Why did I not understand?

There was a student, for instance, who would always sit at the back of my class, with his head down on his folded arms on the desk. If I commented on it, he would glower at me sullenly, and go back to his favoured position after a few minutes. It bothered me. I tried to liven up my classes with lots of games, lots of stories. No go! The head stubbornly remained down. I even thought for a brief moment – I am ashamed to admit – that I should ignore him and get on with it. Thankfully, I thought the better of it almost immediately. So I started lurking around the class, to see if I could catch him in a good mood (he was always kind of sullen, bordering on insolent) and have a chat.

I lurked and lurked, but could never find a good moment to talk… there were always other kids around.

Finally, I waited at the gate to find him alone. Of course, he saw me waiting and turned tail, ready for flight. But I was determined. I caught up with him and insisted that we have a chat. He stared at the floor. So I came out with it directly: “Why do you always sleep in my class?” He refused to look up. So I added, “It hurts, you know.”

He met my eye for a split second. And then his sullen answer left me reeling: “Everyone laughs at my pimples.” There it was, out in the open. Dourly matter-of-fact. It took me a moment to process that he had been literally hiding his face for fear of being laughed at, possibly teased. I searched his face and – this is absolutely true – found exactly one zit. “Where are the pimples? Have you been missing out on my classes because of one zit?” I asked, genuinely puzzled.

“You won’t understand,” he replied, and stood waiting for me to let him go.

At that moment, I didn’t understand. From the perspective of my age, I didn’t understand his 15-year-old one.

But later I did. I understood why he dragged his feet, why he looked pained (I had mistaken it for sullenness), and just how difficult each day must be for him. I understood that the mirror was probably his nemesis before the start of each day.

But most of all I understood his struggle of getting through each day, based on the appearance or disappearance of a spot on his skin.  

P.S: We all tried to help, we even roped in some of his peers to do so. And these kids were stellar in rising to the challenge. But sometimes I still wonder about him. For zits is a passing phase. I can only pray that nothing else has taken their place…

So very sheer is self esteem sometimes.

 

Blink-and-you’ll-get-it

Over the last few weeks, school life has been less about studies and more about a study of conjunctivitis. Wherever you looked (if you were one of the last few left who could still ‘look’) you saw children bearing down upon you in menacing dark glasses, looking like phoney commandos, clutching their ‘weapons’ which were so much more dangerous than any gun in the world – soggy tissues dripping with drippings of pus and germs.

In the early days of the epidemic, one did try to be polite. So one moved away from the dark glass wearers swiftly – even while trying not to give the impression of swift movement. No jerky jumps, no evidence-giving running. Just a quick about-turn (away from the depths of those deep dark glasses) and a gracefully rapid pirouette in the opposite direction, with an air of ‘Oops, I have to go get those books from out there’. But after two weeks of such graceful pirouetting, it all boiled down to simply screaming at the sight of anyone with the-disease-that-cannot-be-named and fleeing helter-skelter.

Suddenly one felt that there was no need for one to give students an occasional hug or a pat on the back. The same words of encouragement could well be hollered down the corridors, couldn’t they? As for birthdays, no harm in going up to the third floor to lean out and wish the student on the first floor, is there?

And then there were exams.

And so there was a special area (‘special’ is a more politically correct word than ‘infectious’) for those who answered their question papers from behind dark glasses. And since students suffering from conjunctivitis also need invigilation, a teacher suffering from conjunctivitis was called upon to keep an eye (oops!) on them. It was a rather heart-wrenching sight.

And then these er…‘special’ papers needed to be corrected. It meant direct contact with these papers. These papers were sealed into envelopes and handed over to the respective subject teachers. (Might as well have handed over a ticking bomb each.)

And now, to open those envelopes at home. The scene resembled an art-and-craft class.

Things needed: some old newspapers, a pair of scissors, a pair of disposable gloves, hand sanitiser, a pair of disposable glasses, a red pen, gum.

Method: Put on disposable gloves and glasses, spread the newspapers on the work area, open envelope with scissors, draw out the paper with the tip of the scissor, use disposable pen to correct paper, return paper to envelope and reseal, throw away pen, glasses, gloves, use hand sanitiser liberally, say a quick prayer.

Just a moment... One did notice that not everyone was as scared of the-disease-that-cannot-be-named. There were some who did get on with life quite normally – and accepted their lot quite cheerfully when afflicted with conjunctivitis.

So, is the rest of the world eccentric, or what?