A Touchy Subject

Schoolteaching is a Hands-on Profession

This is a Michelangelo.

The Wednesday on my last week of teaching, the office secretary handed me an unmarked envelope as I walked into the main office.

I could tell by both the blankness of her expression and the off-white envelope itself, it was far from a paycheck. I had received such envelopes before in my career. Sometimes they would be sitting on my computer’s keyboard like a love letter left by a secret admirer, other times they lay deceptively inconspicuous in my staff mailbox.

Inside was a memo scheduling a conference with the principal the following Monday—the very last day of school. I had already submitted my resignation, and I was counting the delicious minutes, the scrumptious seconds, until ultimate freedom. Now, here was the administration trying to prolong my obligated time by tacking on a semi-disciplinary meeting to my very last day of work. Conferences are the lowest form of reprimands in our district. They are simply meetings where the principal talks to you. There had been a complaint lodged against me for how I physically handled a student the week prior.

I knew this memo was imminent only because the principal had accidentally left his investigation notes on the playground. He had been furtively interviewing some of my students about the incident and forgot his notepad on the lunch benches. A yard lady who did not read English recognized my Spanish surname written on the pad and figured it belonged to me. She knocked on my classroom door and handed me the principal’s investigative notes. I read the documented testimonies of my kindergarteners about what had occurred outside at recess last week with a well-known terror of a student named Kayley. I wasn’t unnerved though. I was already quitting and this investigation wasn’t unusual. LAUSD’s MO is to sneak attack its employees with surreptitious investigations and secret testimonies gathered by officials who seem to indulge in cloak-and-dagger pretensions.

The week prior, a second grader with undiagnosed needs was on a speeding tricycle gunning for my kindergartners. Recess was over and my kids were dutifully lined up ready to re-enter class to resume our school day. The Jaws themed played in my mind as she headed toward us.

Kayley, the girl on the tricycle, was infamous at our school.

She had a well-known violent history and reputation as Trouble. She was universally feared across the school, most particularly by some of my sweeter, more passive students. Kayley had recently attacked my student Ashley, punching her in her back. Ashley’s mother was, of course, very upset at this, and I had promised to keep a special eye out for her daughter’s safety. Ashley’s passivity made her a target for Kayley’s rampaging.

Kayley had become so problematic she was assigned a round-the-clock TA accompaniment—a young man who basically shadowed her like a personal Secret Service agent. Ashley, however, wasn’t assigned any individual personal protective detail other than me. In modern schooling, the one who commits the violence receives the most resources and individualized attention. Everyone else must fend for themselves.

I knew Kayley a bit, but I knew her sibling better.

Her brother Kyle was my student, and had been for two straight years. They were both members of a notorious family of seven who found themselves in a constant state of need and crisis at our school. In fact, a few months earlier, all five children in the family had been fostered into other homes and dis-enrolled from our school. After a couple of months away, the mother regained custody, and the children returned to our campus. Even the second youngest of the brood, preschooler Kevin, had now been enrolled so the school could preemptively begin acclimating him to schooling sooner rather than later. Kevin, I might add, was the cutest munchkin this side of the rainbow.

In the past two years, Kayley had hit, punched, and thrown objects at my students and me. She once aimed a clod of dirt at my face, but I ducked in time and simply had dirt granules rain down on my back. The fifth graders who witnessed this act ooow-ed in surprise. She often ran around the school ripping up posts and tearing at bushes, sometimes being pursued by administrators when they had enough energy and time to give chase. She had already been taken away and hospitalized short-term at a psychiatric facility more than once. As far as I knew her parents were testing out new medications, but I’m not sure how successful that pharmaceutical regimen was working out.

Regardless of all these issues, or maybe because of them, Kayley basically got to do whatever the fuck she wanted at our school. There were no boundaries because there was no way to enforce them. She had no fear and rarely received consequences for her violence. She’d kick your ass whether you were 5’11 or three feet tall. She got to play whenever she wanted, wherever she wanted, with whatever she wanted because otherwise there’d be either a struggle or a chase. I’m sure it was exhausting to those in charge. The honest truth was that she wasn’t the only student on campus allowed to roam freely. There were a handful of similarly troubled students who kind of just haunted the school’s campus going on unsupervised walkabouts, hiding in the native garden, turning the bathrooms into disgusting waterparks, and terrorizing all the other students.

I could understand the administration’s strategy of letting her do whatever she wanted because the only way to de-escalate was to give her free reign. This meant she was hardly ever in class and simply wandered the schoolyard shadowed by that T.A. who hovered nearby.

Sometimes, if my classroom door happened to be open, she would run in, knowing her brother was inside. I’d accommodate her presence for a bit. There really was no choice, on my part. Other times, I’d locked my doors if I saw her approaching or I’d escort her out by tricking her, making it seem like we were all leaving to go outside and when she exited first, I quickly closed the door behind her. I was rarely in the mood to accommodate her interruptions or as willing as the administration to put up with her explosive nature.

I had twenty-eight other kiddos on my roster to worry about, including her brother. Let the administrators deal with her.

Kyle, on the other hand, had made an amazing turnaround since he was in preschool with me. It took me two years of tough, difficult, Annie-Sullivan-meets-Helen-Keller type of work to teach her brother not to run out of class, throw puzzles, hit students, or bite me. I cared for Kyle with so much individualized attention that even if I, at first, resented his disruptions, I couldn’t help but grow to like him and admire his advancement. He had made so much progress over the course of two years I was actually happy he was my student again.

When first enrolled, Kyle would throw impressive tantrums that included wailing and growling and erupting in volcanic displays throughout our preschool day. He had never been anywhere besides his family’s small apartment and acted as feral as a rabid squirrel with his first introduction to schooling.

In my class, I was using the same simple system of happy faces and stickers I had always used to organize classroom behavior. A preschool expert once came in and critiqued my use of such behavioral system as ineffective and age-inappropriate. I simply nodded at her, said “yes, I know,” and then silently added in my mind, “but, bitch, first of all you’re not here every day taking care of Kyle when he starts throwing all the toys, hitting kids, and trying to bite me so back off unless you are going to get down and dirty with actual teaching instead of backseat driving.” I had learned to bite my tongue and keep such comments in my mind by this point of my career.

Of course, at first, Kyle did not give a fuck about the behavioral chart. He had never been in any structured environment or exposed to explicit systems of rewards and consequences. He didn’t know better. For a couple months or so, he didn’t participate in the class; he just played with puzzles at his pleasure. And I let him. He didn’t get rewarded for playing with puzzles, but he didn’t get punished either.

Then so very slowly, bit by tortuous bit, he acclimated to the classroom’s program because I was consistent and unfailing in my efforts to fold him into our community. I would never reward him for bad behavior. He would not get a sticker or jellybean or a prize or even praise for throwing his shit fits—not even to get him to cease such tantrums would I give him prizes.

But my administrators were not of much help. Not only were they overwhelmed with 1,001 other daily problems that arise when running a school, but they have been brainwashed by their superiors into solely relying on positive behavior support methods of discipline. I would send Kyle to the principal’s office for escaping the class or hurting other students and he would return with a toy in hand that an administrator had given him to calm him down or shut him up. They were rewarding his bad behavior with small gifts. In turn, I would confiscate the prize and throw it away. You don’t get to bite someone and then sit in the office as if on some break and return to class with a trophy in your hand. What are these adults thinking?

I realized sending the children to the administrators often exacerbates the problem. The principals and vice principals calm the kids down with bribes and then send them back to class with awards. I recognized soon enough I had to stop relying on them. I was on my own. Teachers are mostly always on their own.

And so, for two years straight I did the slow, excruciating, everyday work of doling out consequences for bad behavior, praising good behavior, building his academic capacities, playing with him individually, teaching him how to clean up and put toys away, teaching him how to express his needs, making him listen to the word “no,” sit, and attend to an activity for five minutes. I was not putting up with any bullshit. This was simply some basic-ass skill building that every child needs but not every child gets. And it requires tremendous amounts of patience and freedom to execute as a plan.

His older sister Kayley, however, was something wholly different. She was ten times worse and her issues ten times more severe.

That last week of school, she sped toward my class on a tricycle turned torpedo. Before she could reach my line of students, I stopped the tricycle with my shoe. I then lifted her up and off the trike and away from my students. She lashed out. She started flailing around, grasping for anything and, of course, the closest bystander to her was Ashley. Jesus Christ, why is it always Ashley?! I thought. She grabbed a fistful of Ashley’s vest and held on tight. The look of terrorized prey in Ashley’s eyes was both heartbreaking and kind of funny, in retrospect. I’m sure the little girl felt like she was in a kindergarten horror flick and the antagonist, literally, had her in her clutches. But it was a typical Kayley move; when the bigger person comes for her, she had learned to strike out at the nearest, weakest person instead. She had developed this tactic after years of being pursued by us adults. Sometimes, she even went after her siblings as a way to distract all the negative attention focused on her.

I unlatched her hand away from Ashley and pushed her up against the fence as I demanded in loud voice à la Bruce Willis in Die Hard for everyone to get inside. I did this in full view of everyone, including the aides who were supposed to be monitoring Kayley but of course, were chit-chatting at the other end of the yard.

They didn’t like the way I handled the situation so they had complained to the administration. I was then set to be conferenced on my last day of my career.

But I had other plans.

Give the Violent More Violets

The situation of violent students in school has become nearly untenable.

The week prior to my incident, I had rushed into a conference room in the main office en route to the staff refrigerator to pick up my Thai chicken salad wrap. There was a student slamming a wooden pointer onto the meeting table in angry whacks. A tickertape mess of “white tickets” designed to be given out to students for good behavior were littered all over the floor, apparently thrown (They were called “Get Caught Being Good” Tickets). The twenty-something instructional aide delegated to the task of supervising this obviously troubled kid stood safely at a distance half-frustrated, half-bored by what was probably typical behavior. Calmly she said they were going to have to call his mom or the police if he didn’t stop. “NOOOO!!!” he screamed to her and banged the table for emphasis like some unhinged judge.

I had obviously walked into a situation where a child was having a moment. My initial feelings were of gladness and gratitude that I was not involved and even happier that I would not have to put up with any of these shitty tantrums anymore.

I wished the young woman good luck and grabbed my chicken wrap to return to my room to get ready for my kiddos to come in from recess, sweaty and full of tattletales, like it was just another day, which it was. There was no administrator in sight. They were either away on a training or swamped by a multitude of other problems.

Over the course of twenty years, I have observed the schoolhouse become more and more of a madhouse with some children realizing that violence is the most effective way they can assert their personal sovereignty. Teachers are ill-trained and ill-equipped (and underpaid) to handle these violent children and their deep-seated sociological, economic, and psychological problems. Administrators and the central district office offer ridiculous out-of-context admonishments and reprimands for the teachers who become physically entangled in these situations. Whenever a teacher or aide files an incident or work injury report after a student has struck out against them, often it’s the staff member who gets an extra pair of eyes supervising their behavior to see what they are doing wrong.

Teachers are more often given the reprimands and admonishments instead of the trainings and protection they need. This lopsided, punitive approach only exacerbates the resentment of the teaching force who are on the frontlines every day facing the blows and bites of children in crisis.

Son of a Vice Principal

Over the course of my career, I taught a handful of my colleagues’ children. They would enroll their children in my class mostly because it was convenient to have their kids attend school at their own worksite. Sometimes the children weren’t officially placed on my roster and basically audited my preschool or kindergarten class as a favor.

I enjoyed very much teaching my colleagues’ children. It not only fostered community amongst our staff and school, but I also felt pride in the trust my co-workers placed in me as a caretaker of their kids.

The last year I taught in kindergarten, I had the vice-principal’s son enrolled in my class.

She was initially going to place him in my preschool class the year prior with the warning that he was quite a rambunctious child who needed the structure of schooling as soon as possible. I was open to his attending my class, even off-roster, but the principal didn’t want to get in trouble with the district so he disallowed it.

The following year, the child was able to enroll in kindergarten at our school, but the vice-principal didn’t select me to be his teacher and instead choose a very strict, in-control colleague. I’m supposing her “rambunctious” boy needed a heavier hand and stricter program than she thought I could administer.

I admit I was initially a little offended that I wasn’t her first choice. Probably because I didn’t “look” or “act” like an in-charge teacher. I was both too authoritarian and too playful at the same time, if that makes any sense. She had seen me scold kids before. In fact, she had talked to me about how I reproached a fifth grader much too harshly after he flipped me off. She had also, I’m sure, witnessed some of my more lackadaisical moments with my previous classes.

Well, things did not initially go well for her. Her child did not fit in with the class that he was enrolled in, and he began acting up. He became increasingly violent and more disrespectful as school weeks went on. Every day, she received negative reports of his behavior from the teacher, from other staff, and from his classmates. Everyone knew he was the vice principal’s son, and he was becoming a target for recriminations. People were piling on. She was at her wit’s ends and becoming quite embarrassed by her son’s misbehavior. She, of course, correctly suspected, the chismosa kindergarten teachers were talking about how out of control her son was and how that reflected poorly on her as a mother and a professional. She was both an educator and administrator after all. Couldn’t she control her own child?

After feeling a little rejected by her initially, I was then actually relived. I had dodged a bullet by having such a troublesome student placed in another class. I had my own handful of high-spirited boys. I didn’t need an extra.

Well, the situation got to a point where her son had to be transferred out of his original classroom. The relationship between him and the teacher had completely broken down.

Guess who was the lucky teacher he was then transferred to?

The boy, whom I had not met, already had a reputation as being out of control and mean. So I knew I shouldn’t try to control him, at least, not in an obvious and immediately adversarial way. I said up front to my vice-principal, “I don’t tell the kids this, but there are really are only two rules in my class they need to obey: don’t physically hurt anyone and don’t interrupt my teaching. All the other rules are just superficial cover.”

When her son first arrived to my class, all he did for the first two weeks was sweep the room. He didn’t want to sit down and attend to our lessons, so he just meandered around the class like he was a very diligent OSHA inspector. He found the classroom’s broom and started sweeping because there was nothing else he wanted to do. He wasn’t hurting anybody and he wasn’t interrupting me, so I let him be. And his mother knew of the circumstance. He wasn’t getting much work done, but the hurtful and destructive behavior he had been engaged in was being mitigated.

Slowly he acclimated and began to join in the larger group—probably because he realized it was just better to sit down and learn than to practice his sweeping skills. He wasn’t the best student, he was lazy and stubborn and immature, but he was also imaginative and so very funny. If I concentrated on his best qualities, he often produced some minimal work, followed directions, and contributed amazing observations and vocabulary to the classroom. I didn’t need to control or dominate him. I just let him be as long he didn’t hurt anyone or interrupt my lessons.

Learning is a choice; I just had to wait for him to choose it.

Having cis-gendered men in an early childhood class may be categorically different than having cis-gendered women. Attributes stereotypically assigned to men in our society often can be received as inappropriate in a job that has been populated by women for most of its existence. The gruffness, the pushing of boundaries, the inappropriate banter and jokes that can often be associated with the stereotypical men can be viewed as improper and amateurish.

I often let kids, boys in particular, wrestle, roughhouse, and fight. I realize this is not something most educators would agree with or admit to. However, educator pioneer Caroline Pratt’s notes in her memoir that, “…violence is sometimes an inevitable expression of childhood, and on occasion it has been best to let two contestants fight it out on the schoolroom floor.”

When the vice-principal’s son bit a classmate, I was quite enraged. And helpless. There was no true consequence for his misbehavior. What was I going to do? Send him to the vice-principal? Keep him in for recess? There was no consequence that elicited a sorry response from him or any reflex of guilt or shame. I did my usual stomping and banging of my chest like some gay King Kong, but it didn’t create any empathetic response.

Then one day, a boy who the vice-principal’s son had targeted finally fought back, hit and bit him. I didn’t immediately stop the tussle. Neither did I exaggerate panic or concern or even try to referee much. The other boy was defending himself. I just let the drama play out a bit to see what would happen. It was over quickly.

As the vice-principal’s son cried, holding onto the teeth marks that were now on his forearm I asked him, “It doesn’t feel very good does it?”

He shook his head no.

I ended up really liking Cameron. Even if he wasn’t the most studious child, he was still a great kid. And, honestly, the stakes were low. He had an educator as a mom. He was from a middle class, intact family that surrounded him with love and language. He would eventually learn how to read and write. There was no cliff he was going to fall off if he couldn’t right this minute. It would all turn out well.

It was kindergarten, man, not medical school.

His mother may have wanted him to be a straight-A genius student who loved to read and write and follow directions like some little well-behaved robot. But he wasn’t that. I didn’t require him to be anybody but himself.

Parents don’t get to pick their children; they just get to love them.

When the vice-principal and the principal had to call the District to file the formal complaint about me and the way I physically handed Kayley, the little terror on the tricycle who tried to run down my class, the District personnel asked the vice-principal, as a way to judge my behavior, whether she would entrust the teacher (me) with her own child? 

She answered, “I do. My child is in his class.”

And maybe because of her answer the complaint against me was never escalated beyond a perfunctory conference scheduled for the very last day of school.

Last Fri-Yay! of My Career

My last day ever with students, a Friday in June, I was exhausted. I hugged many of the children goodbye, ready to end my year right then and there, on the spot. I also hugged their parents. I had known many of them for two years straight. Some cried as they bid me farewell. They knew I was not returning. I tried to say a personal farewell to each and every one of my students and their families, but the last day is always a crowded affair. Some waited in a line, others waved from afar. Bye Valentine! Good luck, Geovanni! I loved being your teacher, Victoria!

Then, of course, there came Kyle, Kayley, and their mom.

Their mom was always a whirlwind of commotion. As she glided about the world, seemingly always pushing a stroller through time and space, her five children spun in orbits around her like some private solar system.

I once spied her at the supermarket across the street from our school. Kayley had gotten away from her and was now lost somewhere in the supermarket. Her mother was trying to wrangle all her other four kids together, as well as bag her groceries, as well as search for Kayley. Her agitation and confusion rising, a hubbub arose as she spoke with the store clerks about her missing daughter while alternatingly calling out Kayley’s name and reprimanding the other kids. I had heard all this noise and looked over to see the family I knew all too well. I was deciding whether or not to intervene because she obviously needed help, but I didn’t because between her, her children, and the store clerks I would just be adding another voice to a cacophony of chaos. Soon enough Kayley was located outside the supermarket and the tumult was subdued.

It seemed so exhausting to be that mother.

She herself had grown up in the foster care system, as had her husband. In fact, I heard that they had met in a group home. They had never experienced an intact family themselves, and it seemed to us school officials they were attempting to create something they never had—a true family. They were doing the best they could, but it was rarely enough. When I once invited Kyle’s father to accompany us as a chaperone on a field trip, I was happily surprised he accepted. He showed up reeking of marijuana and stayed on his phone most of the time often walking away from our group. He didn’t know how to be a father on field trip because why would he? I wasn’t angry at him, though; I was sad for him and Kyle.

The family was poor. Like, really just poor. I don’t know how to communicate how they didn’t have money without rolling through a pitying list of characteristics that would only come off as gratuitous at this point. They just were poor.

After a recent stint in foster care, the children had been returned to their mother but their living location had changed. Our school was no longer their home school. The family had since relocated out of the neighborhood but were still making an effort to attend our school, coming a long way on buses to finish out the year where they had started.

Kyle’s mom had bought me a gift she wanted to give me. I have to admit, I was really surprised she got me a gift. I knew they didn’t have one extra dollar to spend on anything but food and clothing and yet she had bought me a gift. 

As she gave it to me, she went on to say how much she really appreciated all the work I had done with Kyle. In fact, she admitted that they had returned to our school because Kyle wanted to finish the year with me.

She said she had heard I was a writer and so had found me a brown leather-bound journal decorated with gold metallic edges. I thanked her for her thoughtfulness and hugged both her and Kyle. Kayley, as usual, was running around in circles with her other siblings. Next Monday, I was set to be conferenced on how I handled her. As the family departed, I opened the journal up to read her note:

To Mr. Villegas,

I just wanted to thank you for being such a wonderful teacher to Kyle. You were one of the reasons that I decided to bring him back to school here because Kyle really missed you. Kyle has improved so much thanks to you. Have a great summer and I hope you can use this book for some of your thoughts.

From,

Kyle’s Mom

To tell you the absolute truth, I was so very touched.