by Jane Morris
• Inability to understand common social cues: I may not comprehend common “social cues” such as facial expressions, body language or gestures. If you do something physically to show that you are upset, I won’t know.
Rigid range of interests for social interaction: I will only engage in a narrow range of activities or talk about certain subjects, like wizardry. I also avoid eye contact.
• Inappropriate responses: I may behave or respond to social situations in an unusual or inappropriate manner. For example, I once laughed really hard when another student said that she had an abortion.
I hope that I’ll get an A in your class.
Sincerely,
Vlad
While I commend Vlad for being a self-advocate, I wasn’t exactly excited to teach a kid who might laugh at someone for getting an abortion. Another student I’ll call “Chouie” had A.D.D. and never followed directions. Regardless of the task (an essay, a multiple choice quiz, a journal), he would do something completely different. Sometimes he would just make up an assignment instead of doing the one I assigned. His parents were very upset that he was failing the class. We all had a meeting and his counselor and case worker told me to grade whatever he gave me. I explained that he wasn’t doing what he was supposed to do, so I had no way to grade him. “Grade him based on whatever assignment he is doing then,” they said. “How do I do that?” I asked. “I didn’t create the assignment, so I do not have a basis for assessment.”
“Grade his work as if you did assign it,” they replied. “It’s not his fault that he can’t follow the directions. He has A.D.D.”
Apparently A.D.D. makes it difficult to even see parts of the test. On more than one occasion, I have had students who missed entire parts of a test and blamed it on their A.D.D. One student emailed me to ask why he ended up with a D on the final exam, and I informed him that he did not complete one of the essays. “That’s not fair,” he wrote. “I didn't even see it! You took off thirty points but it wasn't my fault.” After a parent got involved, I had to let the student write the essay weeks later and adjust his grade.
A.D.D. is also exacerbated by anxiety, so I am told to avoid certain situations which might cause uneasiness for certain students. For example, I received a notice from the Special Education Department that I could not, under any circumstances, grade a specific student’s work with red ink. Red ink made the student very nervous and added to her A.D.D. I made sure to always grade that student’s work in purple or green ink.
According to several online sources such as WebMD.com, the symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder are: careless mistakes and lack of attention to details; lack of persistent attention; poor listening skills; failure to always follow through on tasks; poor organizational skills; avoidance of tasks requiring sustained mental effort; losing things; and being easily distracted and forgetful in daily activities.
For the hyperactive/impulsive type the symptoms are fidgeting and squirming; need to leave seat; difficulty with silent activities; too much talking; blurting out responses; unable to wait turn, and being invasive. If you recall being a teenager or have recently lived or worked with one, you would probably agree that these descriptions are generally indicative of simply being a teenager, which is a tad confusing. Do they all have this disorder or are some more teenager-like than others?
Another disorder that seems to encompass general teenage behavior is referred to as “Oppositional Defiant Disorder.” This is defined as “a condition in which a child displays an ongoing pattern of uncooperative, defiant, hostile, and annoying behavior toward people in authority.” If you have ever lived with a teenager, you will probably recognize this behavior as normal. I have had students with this classification who require special allowances for generally disrespectful and outrageous behavior.
For example, I had a student who turned in the following essay during the first week of school:
I have been asked to write about the message behind the book I read this summer but I cannot and will not do that because the message is right there in the title. The book is an autobiography. It is about someone’s life. Somehow the people who came up with this prompt expect me to write a 4-5 paragraph essay analyzing the meaning of an autobiography. Since there were only three options for books to read this summer, you should have looked at the prompt and realized that it is dumb and does not work. The story teaches about the life and work of the author AND NOTHING ELSE.
The book talks about the author’s childhood, having his family broken up, racism, a love for dance, avoiding the draft, being a traveling salesman and going to prison. It talks about Islam. There is no message.
You know what? I cannot keep up with this charade. Forget which person I am supposed to be talking in, I am now talking directly to YOU, the teacher. Why did you choose this prompt? Seriously. This book does not work for this fucking prompt but you went ahead and gave it the all clear. Nevermind the fact that it calls itself an autobiography when it isn’t even written by the author. That is stupid but still doesn’t make the prompt you chose work. Did you even read the book we had to read? How hard would it have been to make a prompt that works for this book? You could have easily made a writing prompt that works for all three books.
I am willing to accept that I may be murdering my grade by breaking “standard essay-writing procedures” and not talking in the correct “person” and getting “off topic,” but I literally managed to write nothing about this topic. I am yelling at you on this paper essentially to fill up space and have enough paragraphs.
Maybe I have missed some deep, hidden meaning in the book but I find that hard to believe. Maybe other people who read this book are able to pull an answer out of their ass but I cannot. I would like to see where this honest response gets me. I may be ruining my grade and becoming a problem child but I have stood by and will always stand by the fact that this is the dumbest writing prompt that I have ever been asked to complete.
I was inclined to give this student a zero for making no attempt to answer the prompt and being rude and disrespectful. But I was told that I must allow him a second chance to rewrite it and I must also help him rewrite it because he did not fully understand the prompt. All of these accommodations had to be made due to his Oppositional Defiant Disorder and A.D.D.
Another student once made a racist remark to another student. When I spoke to him about it after class his only response was, “Well, you know I have been diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder.” I didn’t realize that included racism.
CAN I ASK YOU A QUESTION?
Reader, can I ask you a question?
Do you have any idea what it’s like to have to continually repeat yourself? It can drive a person mad. Can I ask you a question? Do you have any idea what it’s like to have to constantly repeat yourself? It makes you question reality. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have to repeat yourself? You start to wonder, is this really happening? Do you have any idea what it’s like to always have to repeat yourself? It makes anger boil up in every part of your body. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have to constantly repeat yourself?
IT CAN MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ARE LOSING YOUR MIND.
Especially when everyone reacts to your reaction as though it is a massive overreaction, because they have not been listening either, and do not understand that this is the tenth time you have had to repeat a simple command.
Take, for example, this modest request: “Please open your books to page 57.” It is understandable that a few students may not have heard you. They ask, “What page?” and you repeat, “Page 57.”
But then another student asks what page we are on and then another. You have now repeated the page number four separate times. So you write the number on the board along with the words, “We are on page…” to alleviate any confusion in the future. The class starts reading. Another student, who has been busy texting on his phone, yells out, “Yo! What page!” You point to the board. The student opens to page 57 and exami
nes it and interrupts the person reading with, “No we ain’t!” You take a deep breath and respond, “We began on page 57 and now we have moved on to page 58.”
You continue reading. Another student awakens from his drool-soaked desk. He does not think to ask a neighbor what page we are on, or to open the book and find out for himself. He does not look at the board. Instead, he calls out, “What page are we on!” You drop your book and exclaim, “Are you kidding me! You have got to be kidding me! Why don’t you ask someone else instead of interrupting the whole class?” The students look at you like you are an escaped mental patient. One responds with, “Yo Miss, you got no chill.”
Another adds, “Yeah, he was just asking what page we’re on so he can read along.”
Do you have any idea what it’s like to have to constantly repeat yourself? If not, be thankful.
THOUGHTFUL GIFTS
I asked a group of teachers for a list of the strangest gifts they have ever received from students. Here are my personal favorites:
• A Dollar Store mug and candy combo with “World’s Greatest Lover” on it
• A gift card for a bikini wax
• A pair of fur-covered handcuffs for the teacher to use with her “Beyoncé” (fiancé)
• #1 Lover mug
• Used hair gel
• A foil rose that was actually a red lace thong (Students mistakenly buy this gift for teachers a lot.)
• A kindergartener gave her teacher a perfume called “Sexy Thang”
• A pack of hangers
• A sympathy card… for the holidays
• 3 razors, a chapstick, a toothbrush and a pencil wrapped in a rubber band
• Karma Sutra cologne
• Perfume and sexy underwear so the teacher can “Make her own baby!”
• Pink lace panties from a 3rd grader
• Chocolates that a student admitted her dad stole from the Dollar Tree
• A copy of American Psycho wrapped in newspaper
• A gift card to a liquor store
• A gift bag with grapefruit and appetite suppressants
• A box of panty liners
• Cellulite cream
THE SPAWN OF HELICOPTER PARENTS
While there is a primary focus on students who bully in schools right now, there are few published studies on parents and students who bully teachers. Research shows that a fifth of teachers have been abused online by students or their parents.[1] In most of these cases absolutely nothing was done, even the incidents that were reported to police were ignored. It is almost like teachers are expected to accept a bit of bullying as part of their job description.
When people wonder why the retention rate for teachers is so poor, they rarely consider bullying. A major survey of teachers conducted by the American Psychological Association revealed that 7% of teachers in the U.S. are threatened with physical violence from parents or students and 3% are actually physically attacked. Females are actually harassed more than twice as much as male teachers.[2]
More than one in three teachers has been on the receiving end of online/cyberbullying from both students and parents in the U.K. Hundreds of teachers were surveyed nationwide and 35% said that either they, or their colleagues, had been subjected to some form of online abuse, ranging from postings on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. While most of the abuse came from students, in more than a quarter of cases parents were the abusers.
When parents bully teachers their kids learn that it is okay to treat teachers with disrespect. In 2008, Katherine Evans, a Florida high school student, was disciplined for cyberbullying a teacher on Facebook. She created a group called “Ms. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I’ve ever met!” and featured a picture of the teacher, and a request for other students to “express your feelings of hatred.” The school suspended the student for three days for “disruptive behavior” and for “Bullying/Cyberbullying Harassment towards a staff member.” In response, the student filed a lawsuit against the principal for violating her right to free speech. The suit went to the Florida Supreme Court and the student won, which translated to awarding of financial damages for lawyer fees and the suspension being wiped from her permanent record.[3]
A 12th-grade student in Pennsylvania named Justin Layshock was suspended for 10 days after creating a fake Myspace profile of his principal. The profile listed the principal’s birthday as “too drunk to remember.” For the physical description, he wrote “big,” as the principal is a rather large man. It also said that he smokes “big cigs” and thinks the words “too damn big” when he first wakes up. The profile, along with many nasty comments added by other students quickly went viral. The school traced the profile to 17-year-old Layshock, who confessed and apologized. They suspended him for 10 days and then transferred him to an alternative education program. The punishment led to an ACLU lawsuit. The school eventually let Layshock return to school. On July 10, 2007, a federal judge ruled that the school's suspension had been unconstitutional and ordered a trial to decide whether the student was permitted to compensatory damages for the school district's violation of his First Amendment rights. In February 2010, a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit of Appeals ruled that the school district had violated Layshock's First Amendment free speech rights. The school district appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court but they declined to hear the case.[4]
Justin Swidler, a 14-year-old from Pennsylvania, created a website called “Teacher Sux” in which he ridiculed Principal Thomas Kartsotis and math teacher Kathleen Fulmer. The site included animated images of the principal getting hit by a slow-moving bullet, and an image of the math teacher morphing into a picture of Adolf Hitler. One part of the website called, “Why should she die?” gave several reasons the math teacher should be killed, followed by a request for money. “Take a good look at the diagram and the reasons I give, then give me $20 to help pay for the hit man,” the website said. The school district contacted the local police and the F.B.I. Both declined to press criminal charges against the student although there was clearly a threat made against the teacher.[5]
At a high school near my home, a group of kids recently edited a Wikipedia entry so that it falsely stated that a teacher had been arrested for possession of crystal meth and child pornography. The entry was up for about three weeks, during which time many students, parents and local people of influence were directed to read its content. While the content was removed, there was no investigation into who wrote the slanderous material. The teacher still suffers a public backlash from parents who are now suspicious of his character.
In another case, a teacher reported receiving a large number of phone calls and emails from gay men soliciting him for sex. It turned out that a student had posted the teacher's name and contact information on a gay sex website. There was no way of tracing who had done this.
Another incident involved a parent filming a teacher's ass during a class show after which he put the clip online with Van Halen's song “Hot for Teacher” playing in the background. No charges were filed against the parent.
In my school, a student photoshopped a young female teacher’s head onto the body of a naked model. It looked quite real. He passed out hundreds of copies in the hallway at school. The teacher was so devastated that she left the teaching profession for a few years but eventually came back.
I am not saying that students are not entitled to free speech. I just want people to be aware of the levels of disrespect that teachers endure and the lack of consequences.
Just like adults, kids have a very public forum online to express their opinions about whatever they choose. Yet unlike many adults, they lack the tact and ability to think critically about the impact their comments can have. Take for example the website called ratemyteachers.com. This is a very popular site where anyone in the world can look up a teacher by name or by school and see what people have posted anonymously about them. It not only rates their performance but it rates their popularity. Until recently
it actually rated their “hotness” as well. The site also gives anyone the chance to comment on a teacher’s performance with absolutely no filter. You are not required to log in or enter your name or email address to post a comment. Ratemyteachers.com has over 15 million ratings for more than 11 million teachers.
According to the site, all comments are reviewed and approved by volunteer moderators to ensure they are consistent with the site's rules or guidelines before they are posted on the website. I’m not sure who is moderating and what they are removing because it seems that you can pretty much write whatever you like and it will appear shortly after. This site and websites like it give young people, who lack the maturity and discretion to be able to properly rate their educators, a place to be angry and inappropriate. Thankfully, I have only been rated a few times and they are mostly positive comments. But I have very hardworking and dedicated co-workers who have been decimated on this website.
For example, a very devoted teacher who typically stays at school until 8 o’clock at night grading papers and working on lesson plans has gotten several nasty comments because she is a “hard grader.” Kids have written the following remarks: “She is rude and picks on students just to satisfy her horrible heart; she is useless as a teacher; worst teacher I've ever had, our whole class hates her; she manages to say nothing understandable in an hour; I have no respect for her; the work is stupid and she is stupid; a terrible teacher and a terrible person; should be in a mental asylum.” Whether or not these statements are true, it is unfair for students to be able to say such abusive things and have it stay on the internet forever. When you Google a teacher’s name you are almost sure to find quotes from ratemyteachers.com on the front page, which can impact a person’s career and life forever. Many students write absolutely nothing productive and merely express their emotions towards the teacher as an individual such as, “I dislike you highly; I hate her with a fiery passion; total female dog;” or just “I hate you.” Some teachers are called morons, idiots, senile or simply told to shut up. But even worse are the violent threats that are made. In 2010, a student commented that “at the end of the year, I’m setting her (teacher) on fire,” while another student said, “I would take so much pleasure in killing this woman.”[6]
