It was my first year of teaching in a school, rather than in a language academy. He was one of my students in what was (at the time) an enormous group of twenty-seven children. The first day I was with them in class, I asked him to stop throwing a spinning top at the wall as they are outside toys not inside ones.
He gave me attitude.
So much attitude.
I was horrified. I lost my temper and seem to remember shouting and asking who he was to talk back to an adult like that. From then on he took joy in finding all the buttons that made me explode, and like a true maestro used each and every one of them every day and all the time.
It was an excercise in patience, trying not to get angry, trying to look for the positive.
I remember being out in the playground and joining in with a game he was playing with the other kids, and laughing with all of them. I helped his team win, and even tricked another boy into coming to talk to me so that he could ‘tag’ him and then run off. We had a conversation afterwards where he asked why, if I had been so serious with him in class, was I able to go and join in the games outside. My answer was that in the classroom I am not going to permit bad behaviour, which has nothing whatsoever to do with who he is as a person. He as a person had, and still has many amazing qualities. He is a source of fun, always finds something to laugh about, makes working together feel like joy, and manages to do things that are just bad enough to be described as naughty without ever crossing the line into petulance.
He looked at me strangely and then left the conversation.
Eventually I learnt to tolerate what was going on, but not push it too far as it would only escalate, until one Thursday afternoon.
We had three hours together, and there were projects to do, things to hand in and to top it all off, parents were coming in later to see what they had done and listen to thir presentations.
My good friend decided it was time to play tricks on the others and annoy them, stop them working and even break some of the things that they were working on. At the end of the day I lost it. Really lost it and properly shouted. One of those times when the voice seems to be coming from your stomach, grunted rather than spoken.
I told him I wasn’t going to forgive him, that he had been cruel and unkind, which for me is the lowest of the low. I told him to get out, go home and think about what he did.
Five minutes later he came downstairs with the head of school counselling, crying like nothing I had ever seen before. Pure emotion. A flow of feelings, repentant and sad. The counsellor told me that he had run upstairs to her office and said that he had completely destroyed the relationship with someone that cared for him and that he cared for and he didn’t know what to do.
I told him that this time it was my turn to say sorry, to say that for once I had lost my cool and that I did not want him to feel that way either. As soon as he heard the word sorry, I had him hugging me, tightly and sobbing.
After that we reached a much deeper understanding – as a teacher I learnt that their behaviour often comes from a place of wanting attention. It is not about letting them do what they want, but also not forgetting that they are people with lives as well. I found that by laughing with him, I could say that it was time to work and he would. I could speak to him and calm him down becuase he knew I was on his side. I still got angry but from a place of frustration, able to remove myself from the situation.
He taught me to stop, to listen to students, to try and understand why before deciding what to do and whether to take action. I still listen and they are well aware when they have not done thier best. Now after a good decade in the same place, a look is usually enough and telling them they have disappointed me is far more powerful than any punishment.
Anything worth doing takes time.
Stories from the Fig Tree 