“Shut the hell up; this is a school, not a fokking ball game!” I shouted to the boisterous class on the first day of my new teaching job, “The reason you’re in this school rather than a state institution is because a judge was lenient with you. The least you can do is obey the rules and behave in a civilized manner. If you chose not to, this school has the option to send you to a government-run facility, and trust me, you don’t want to go there.”
The room went silent. They’d never heard a teacher swear before, but I knew that if you wanted to get their attention, you had to use their language. By doing so, I’d laid down the ground rules, the repercussions for breaking them, and more importantly, established my position as the alpha dog.
This was my first job out of college. I was hired half-way through the school year to teach science at a juvenile correctional facility for boys operated by the Salvation Army. I had visited the school beforehand and noticed that anytime a teacher left the classroom, it broke out in pandemonium. I suspected the school was having difficulty retaining teachers.
“Many of the kids I grew up with ended up in places like this,” I told the principal during my interview. “They don’t play by the rules, so don’t expect me to use traditional teaching methods.” He hired me anyway, perhaps because he thought a psych major might better control the unruly.
Now that I had their attention, I was ready to develop some rapport. “Who wants to study science?” No hands went up. “All right, who wants to sit under the maple tree outside and tell dirty jokes?” The room went wild with approval. Nothing secures a leadership role like giving them what they want.
I moved the class outside and told the first joke. They followed-up with ruder ones. I laughed as heartily as the rest. We bonded over dirty jokes, so I was accepted as a member of their tribe on my first day.
Predictably, some kids tried to interrupt the stories of others.
“Excuse me, mate, you’re being disruptive. Do you think your joke is better?”
“Yah,” he responded defiantly.
“OK, finish your story,” I said, pointing at the first student. “Then you can tell your joke, and the class will decide which one is funnier.”
After the first guy finished his joke, everyone broke out in wild laughter. It was a great joke. When I called on the disruptor to relate his story, he declined, probably fearing it wouldn’t be as well received.
Every time after that, if someone tried to hog the air time, I’d put them on the spot in a similar manner. Once they learned there were embarrassing repercussions, the interrupting ceased. There's nothing like harnessing peer pressure to maintain order.
The principal called me into his office at the end of the week to tell me that taking a class outside was “unacceptable" at this school. I explained that if conventional methods don’t work, "I have to try something unconventional.” That was my first and last reprimand.
I’d start every class with a few laughs by asking for a new joke. There were always volunteers eager to share their gems. That gave them a chance to shine without interrupting the class. After a few, I’d tell the others to save them till tomorrow “’cause we got science to do.” By then, they were ready to listen.
Usually I'd commence with a demonstration to secure their interest. For instance, a little potassium in a beaker of water produces a violet flame and the release of hydrogen gas, which ignites with a bright light. That sort of thing always got their attention.
“So, what happened here?” I’d ask. First I’d get some humorous answers, then more informed ones, then discussion broke out. Now they were engaged in a moderated dialog rather than an endless lecture. Everyone got the chance to participate. When I was ready to explain the chemical reactions, they were ready to listen.
One time, a new kid came into class in a really foul mood, but I didn’t know that. When I asked him if he’d brought his books, he grabbed them out of his bag and defiantly threw them onto the floor next to my desk.
I swept my arm across my desk, violently flinging all my books and papers all over the floor. He stood there gobsmacked.
“Anybody else want to throw their stuff down?” The whole class threw their books onto the floor while laughing hysterically. The new kid broke into a smile and picked up his books. I asked him to pick up my books also, which he did.
He didn’t know it, but he’d just been inducted into the tribe. Not only that, he perceived the other kids as my confederates, leaving no doubt as to who was in charge.
They were intrigued when I brought in my Dynaco A25XL speakers, a Sansui amp, and a Dual turntable. “Today we’re going to learn wave theory, ” I announced. I set the speakers on a pair of stools in front of my desk, played “Cecilia” by Simon and Garfunkel, and asked them to make notes on the quality of the sound.
Then I took the speakers off the stools and set them in the room’s corners on the floor behind my desk, and asked them to make more notes.
Predictably, when we compared notes, most everyone preferred the vocals when the speakers were on the stools, but the bass when they were in the corners.
“Can we relocate the speakers to get both decent vocals and bass?” I asked. That resulted in a lively discussion with all kinds of suggestions.
“All right, let’s do this the scientific way, by trial and error.” I chose two boys to move the speakers around the room to the suggested locations, and insisted everyone make notes.
The final consensus was that the speakers sounded best when placed on the stools against the wall behind my desk, and about a third of the way from the room's corners.
In the next class, we delved into the physics of wave theory and they were fascinated.
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Every Wednesday evening after dinner, I’d pick up three different students who volunteered to take a tour of my alma matter. Most had never been to a university. I always interviewed a few willing graduate students in the common room, and prompted my students make inquiries of them.
On the way home, I’d survey them to see if they were impressed by the intelligence of the graduate students.
The typical response was, “I don’t think they’re any smarter than me.”
“You’re right,” I’d counter. “So why are you in a juvenile facility instead of a university?”
Silence.
In my year-end review, the principal classified me as an “nontraditional” teacher and added, “As our students aren’t necessarily the easiest types to teach, Jan’s results are commendable.” He reclassified me from “neophyte” to “seasoned” with a concomitant raise in pay, so I stayed another year.
At a teachers conference in Toronto, I related some of my experiences to the group at my table during lunch. One of them was an editor who gave me her card and asked me to write them up for her teachers’ magazine.
Shortly after it was printed, I got a letter asking me to apply for a position as a psych counselor in a federal correctional facility for over twice the salary.
That job marked the end of my teaching career.
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