Mr. Norman

Recently, I’ve been having some behavior issues with one of my students; for the sake of anonymity I will call him K. He is a nice little boy who has been through some tough things in his life. Sometimes when it comes to schoolwork K will completely shut down when he is frustrated. As in put his head down on a desk and just sit there until he comes out of this state. His dedication and extreme stubbornness ceases to amaze me.

Day after day I try different approaches as to how I can be productive in my time with him and yet keep him from becoming frustrated or defeated.  Last week, two of my students were absent for a majority of the week, which meant that K was my only student in his level of math. He did really well when it was just the two of us working together and I was impressed by his turn-around in terms of behavior and work ethic.

At this point, I quickly decided to try a new approach at the beginning of this week. On Monday, when my other two students were back, I made K the teacher. Not only did I tell the other students that he was in charge, but I made sure to correct them when they called him by his first name instead of introducing him as Mr. K.  I was honestly just winging it and hoping that this would work to build his confidence and willingness to learn. Thankfully, it worked and I think I’ve found the key to working with him.

As I began to work with my upper level math students, K did his best to explain to the other two boys in his level what we’d gone over the week before. He did very well with trying to word it so they would understand. He even used base-10 blocks to try to demonstrate for them, just as I had with him. He might have been a little off in what he was explaining and it might have been 10 minutes of time that I could have spent instructing them. However, I’ve learned in the village, it truly is more important to make connections with the kids before anything. Their way of life is extremely different, and I have to remind myself what is more important is not just the education. It is more important for me to let K teach for 10 minutes or even an hour than it is to try to fight him on getting through a lesson. As long as I’m getting them motivated and interested it is a successful day.

As a result of this one spur of the moment decision, K has been doing much better in math this week. During independent work, I have even let him sit at my desk. Today, I gave him the special privilege of using my computer during an activity. Seeing him sit at my desk trying to be official was the funniest thing. Then, he made my day when he started saying “call me Mr. Norman”; the other students got a kick out of this as well. One day at a time I’m learning new ways to reach these kids, and to hear K say that just let me know that I’m starting to gain his trust. It’s the little things that matter out here.