Christmas morning. Over the years, it has meant many different things to me. Nowadays, it is all about reflection. Where am I and where am I going? Where is my head? More importantly, where is my heart?

On this holiday morning, everything is in my 6-year-old grandson. For the moment, I am inside him and watching him, at the same time. He is me and I am him. I want to be the someone I needed when I was young.

What does he need from me? He needs me to be the best man I can be. He needs a guide. But, more than anything, he needs me to clear a path so he can be the man the Universe intended him to be.

How can I, with my given talents, clear the path for him? The best way I know is to do all I can make our public school system the best it can be. And we have a long way to go. It is, as many of Southern colleagues say, “A hot mess.”

Where do we start? I don’t believe anybody is going to let me change things from the top. Administrators seem scared of my ideas. Mainstream teachers seem to be scared to step aside to see what they are really doing. Many are more concerned with “surviving” until retirement. Some others just see it as a job and don’t want to make any waves. For whatever reasons, there doesn’t seem to be many educators who willing to make a change for the better.

That’s why I want to take my little corner of education and transform it as a model of the right way to education. Maybe someone will notice my ways and want to duplicate it. Maybe someone powerful will pay attention to my research and essays. Maybe I will get the opportunity to teach teachers my unusual but effective ways. I don’t care how it happens, as long as positive change happens. Admittedly, I am always looking for my own educational and teaching freedom.

I see kids on the verge of dropping out. I see kids getting pushed out the door. I see kids transferring to home schooling. I write letters to help kids get into private schools. I understand their motives. But I can’t understand why we can’t fix public schools so they don’t want to leave. It seems we are too busy acting like a government agency instead of a service for the general population, paid by the general population, to improve the general population.

Of course, I am off to a rough start; I teach in a 12 foot by 24 foot trailer called a few “portable classroom.” I rather refer to it as a “Learning Chateau.” And I feel a little scared to do anything different because I was recently suspended for protecting some students. Despite these factors, I want public schools safe and productive by the time my dear grandson, and kids his age, get to public high schools. I want to do that for all kids of his age. (Ones like little Hudson, Travis?!)

I do this because I love and care for my grandson and I love and care about all the students I have taught over the years. For many of them, I felt like I was the only one that cared deeply about their success. A few even referred to me as “Dad.” I guess I am just doing what is expected by my “family.”

The following blog was written a couple of years ago. I published it and removed it. I removed it because I felt unsafe publishing it. I feared that it was too close to my suspension and it would lead to another suspension. I feel better about that now. The student has not had contact with me since then and, honestly, not much has changed. Hopefully, we are paying better attention to incidents like this. maybe we are not. Anyway, it is a story that needs to be shared.

I have been working on my dissertation for several years now. I am pursuing a PhD in psychology and my dissertation focuses on using psychology to teach high school mathematics. Through my research, I constantly see arguments for a connection between education and psychology. It has been mostly theoretical…until recently.

Brittney (a pseudonym) has been a student in my class for most of this academic year. She is a very intense and smart girl. She often announces how immature some of her classmates are. She calls out classmates when they play their iPods too loud in class.

Many times in class, Brittney would get worked up about something and I would try to calm her down. I was usually successful. Some other days I would notice her agitation when she arrived in class. I would pull her aside and ask her what was going on. She would start to tell me that she was having trouble with another teacher. After a few of these conversations, she asked if she could talk to me during her next class. After finding out that it was gym class, I agreed that she could come talk to me. (Of course, I checked with her gym teacher and he assured me that it was okay.)

It started as a tutorial of the mathematics she had missed from being absent in a class or two. It soon morphed into a venting session for her. It was all about a disagreeable teacher of hers. She then reported the details of her negative interaction of her and this unnamed teacher. My sense of the situation was that this teacher was a “my way or the highway” type of teacher. I recognize this type of teacher because I have sometimes been that type of teacher. It was obvious to me that this didn’t ride well with little Britt. Her response was to shut up and do it the teacher’s way. The result was having her teacher calling her parents. According to Britt, she did some things that were not within class rules. However, when the teacher called home, the small violations were fabricated (Brittney’s thoughts) into bigger violations than they were. According to Brittney, they were lies. So now she had to explain herself to her mother. I got the sense that her mother was just as intense as she was. Brittney felt trapped between two angry adults. As a result, she often would vent in my classroom, with no one else around except me, her and occasionally her sister. I would just let her say everything on her mind until she ran out of steam. I would occasionally give her advice or encouragement. At the end, I would ask, “Is it all out?” She would smile and say, “Yeah. I feel better now. Thank you, Mr. Guynn.” I would then walk her to class in the gym.

Things seemed to be getting better. Then one day it didn’t. I saw her one day as I passed through the gym. She was quite agitated. I tapped her on the shoulder and motioned her to try to calm down. She never indicated she felt my presence. She was deeply involved in some drama. I haven’t seen her since. She contacted me, via email, about some make up work but nothing else. She was soon dropped from my class.

Are you thinking what I am thinking? My conclusion was, and is, that Brittney was pushed to the edge of her anger. Whether her stories were true, doesn’t matter. Her anger was real and I am convinced of that. She could not lash out towards them so released all that anger on a student who, in Brittney’s mind, was antagonizing her.

That I was not able to talk to her about this, kinda breaks my heart. I have felt this heartbreak before as a high school teacher. It doesn’t make it easier. I hope for the best and worry about the worst for her.

Yesterday, I had the following conversation with a trusted colleague;

Colleague: …I just lost two kids to the nastiness of small town drama. Ugh.

Me: So sorry! I recently lost one because she took out her rage for a teacher by beating the crap out of another student. (The other student was hospitalized.)

C: Wow. What the hell are we doing?

M: The bad part is that I may be the only one that made that connection. Not a counselor, not the offending teacher, not the parent. I don’t think it’s what we are doing but what we’re not doing; paying attention and communicating!

C: Amen my friend.

 

Amen, indeed!