Potential
For Growth
Submitted
by
Dennis Donoghue
Salisbury
Elementary School
Salisbury,
Massachusetts
Subjects
taught currently: Grade
Six
Subjects
taught previously: Special
Education and Grade Four
It
drives my principal nuts when I arrive a few minutes after the 8:10 bell.
“I won’t go to bat for you when one of your sixth graders breaks
his neck and you’re not in your classroom,” he warns me.
A half dozen of us joust for the last spaces in the parking lot then
race walk to the side door of the building, clutching our book bags and
drive-thru coffee cups. We’re
the same people ¾
the 8:14 club we call ourselves ¾
and we tell one another in a tone of exasperation we can’t go on like this.
Tomorrow we’ll leave earlier. No
more bursting into the classroom and peeling off our coats while the PA pipes
in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Before I leave the house I drive my wife crazy, too, as I crash around
the kitchen hunting for my wallet, my keys, the Tupperware container in the
refrigerator with the leftovers I’ll have for lunch.
Right out of the driveway I tailgate, shake a fist at the people who
pull out in front of me for the single purpose of slowing me down.
Near school I beat a yellow, spot a school bus idling at the red, see
kids faces plastered in the windows watching me.
I’m chastened. What’s the matter with me?
This whole ordeal of tardiness makes me think I oughtn’t be a role
model for anyone, never mind dispensing strategies for when other people
decide to be less than ideal inspirations for the children around them. Often
when I see the less-than-savory side of one of my students’ parents,
I’m reminded of how their actions, like the actions of all of us,
ripple outward, and those ripples often lap into my classroom.
“That bumper sticker on Eddie’s father’s car has the b word in
it,” announces Robbie after we finish saluting the flag. .
“It’s not even a swear,” downplays Anthony.
“It’s like piss and suck.”
“My bus driver uses it,” Melissa adds.
“That’s what she calls lady drivers.”
“My father’s a loser,” says Eddie.
I know the word, the bumper sticker (If
I’d Wanted a Bitch I’d Have Married a Dog), the car ¾
a dinged-up Delta 88 with mismatched doors I swung around minutes earlier when
he signaled into a gas station.
I know Eddie’s father too. A
mechanic and a single father, he’s sometimes referred to in the teachers’
room as “The Dirtiest Man Alive.” He’s
soft-spoken, reed thin, and wears clothes covered with grease and grime from
working under cars all day. He
drops in to see me about Eddie’s progress (which is pretty much nil) and
confesses how he doesn’t want Eddie to end up like him, sentenced to life in
a grease pit and having to take orders from a boss who knows he has few other
options.
“Your father’s not a loser,” I remind Eddie.
“He is too,” Eddie
retorts. “This past weekend
“Okay,” I say. “We
don’t need to hear it.”
“Yes, we do,” answers Amanda.
“I know anyways.”
“Let’s get back to the b word,” I redirect.
“You’ve all heard it, you've seen it, you may have even used it.
But it’s a low-class word. If
you want people to think highly of you, you won’t say it.
Using it shows a lack of manners.”
“What did I tell you?” replies Eddie.
“He’s a loser.”
I exhale. There I go,
talking in circles again, reminding them not to use offensive language while
inadvertently offending a kid’s father.
This moral dilemma ¾
whether it’s okay to use this “b” word
ever, or just sometimes, like when you’re IMing your friends, is what
we’re attempting to sort out ¾
except they want none of it, which makes me
think the mention of it was to get a rise out of me.
I nod to Melissa who I hope has something substantive to offer.
“Mr.
Donoghue,” she says. “My
mother says you drive too fast.”
Later that morning Eddie is gone, hauled out of the classroom by his
mother, who gets custody again after his father’s live-in girlfriend swears
out a restraining order against him. Eddie
and his father, it seems, have been living in the Delta 88 since the weekend.
Now Eddie’s moving to a city twenty miles away where he lived before
he lived with his father. Eddie
shrugs, used to this sort of thing. I
stand by him as he empties his desk, not knowing what to do or say.
The rest of them look at me: What’s up?
A minute later he trails his mother down the hallway, gone without so
much as a goodbye, as if he’d been swept out of the classroom by a riptide,
pulled into the turbulent wash of humanity from right under my nose.
I’m speechless. While I could say whatever I wanted and make my
students listen, grant or deny bathroom privileges, insist that they say
please and thank you and speak one at a time, tell them how great they look in
their new sneakers/haircuts/outfits, encourage them to emancipate insects and
recycle paper, dole out responsibilities like lunch counter, attendance taker,
paper distributor, and plant waterer, build up morale
I explain to the kids what I know about Eddie’s situation.
There’s not much to say. We
write letters to him when he hasn’t been gone five minutes.
I shove them in a manila envelope with his new address.
The kids still want to talk about what happened.
They care about Eddie, plus they don’t want to do social studies.
So we talk. Mostly I talk,
about change, about how you have little control over what your parents can
make you do, you just plain have to live with circumstances you can’t do
anything about.
“That’s life,” I say, unconvincingly.
“Then you hit a certain age and you can do what you want, within
limits, although sometimes that’s no bargain either because you can’t
blame anyone for where you end up.”
It feels as if I’m chasing my tail again, so I wrap things up.
“There’s only one person you can do anything about anyway, only one
person you can change, and I’ll let you guess who I’m talking about.”
“He means us.” Lindsay sweeps her arm around the classroom.
“So stop acting like a bunch of jerks you guys.”
“Don’t badmouth people who are ugly,” Alex tells everyone.
“And don’t beat up little kids just because you can.”
“Don’t trash the bathroom when you’re the only one in there and
there’s no eye witnesses,” contributes Paul. “Then we all lose
recess.”
“Say please and thank you,” Melinda says, “so people won’t
think you was brought up in a barn.”
I stand there nodding, telling myself to shut up and let them talk.
We’re moving in the right direction, I think, and it seems to have
sprung out of Eddie’s departure, this stirring to do good and act civilized,
to put your best foot forward even when everyone else is shirking
responsibilities. I’m starting
to feel a spark of hope as the kids toss out more ideas, concrete doable ways
of becoming better people. I
consider drawing up a chart, getting out the markers and poster board, but
I’m tired and it seems to defeat the purpose anyhow.
I don’t want to beat their enthusiasm to death.
“Okay,” I say, “a few more and then it’s time for social
studies.”
Tracy throws up an arm.
“Yeah?” I say.
“I thought of something for you,” she says, barely able to contain
herself. “Why don’t you drive
slower?”
That’s how it goes sometimes in my classroom.
Right in the middle of my discussion about proper behavior and
etiquette, getting them to see how they ought to act, they stop me cold by
pointing out a not-so-nice thing about me, their teacher.
I’m on the hook and they want the truth, or at least something that
approximates the truth.
“The reason I don’t,” I start. “What I mean is...”
“He jogs,” interrupts Josh, “but first he has to feed his two
dogs before his kids get up.”
I hesitate; look down at my shoes.
I’m sick of myself. There’s
no reason for me to drive the way I do.
“All right. I’ll slow
down.”
They cheer, they whoop, they slam their desktops. They make noise for
the sake of making noise. And
it’s in that moment that I understand I can’t make Eddie’s parents do
what I think they ought to do, that I can’t get my students to do what I
tell them to do half the time, or even my own three young daughters ¾
I point them in one direction and they run in the other ¾
and though this makes me feel inadequate somehow, a bumbler at life ¾
at least I can do something about myself.
I look out at their expectant faces and I think about Eddie who started
this whole mess and whose seat is still warm and I pray he’ll carry with him
his cheerful disposition no matter what the odds are against him losing it.
For now the rest of them are safe and sound in front of me.
I know I can’t shield them from the dragons lurking down the road, or
even warn them of the size and number, can’t do much more than say Watch Out
and
RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS
Question
1
Coles suggests that we ought to permit children to be “ethically
introspective citizens” and suggest we not disregard what they have to say
about the dilemmas and contradictions of being human.
As a sixth grade teacher, I’ve found that kids enjoy moral and
philosophical discussions. It
seems that this type of expression is not allowed for much in schools and we
ought to give children more time to express themselves this way.
Insight, as Coles points out, comes at an early age.
The six-year-old boy has a mature understanding of God as a force which
lets us use our free will. He
already seems to have a solid moral foundation.
Question
2
I’ve found that children have a large capacity for ethical
introspection. My students are
busy all the time sorting out right from wrong, especially during recess and
other less structured times when they have opportunities to join in or stand
away from unruly behavior. Every
day after lunch they want to talk about who did what to whom, how they
brokered peace, how they distinguished themselves in case I hear otherwise
from one of the recess mothers. The
pull and sway of right and wrong, wanting to follow the correct path even if
it means being talked about by their peers, seems at certain times an urgent
priority for six graders.
Question
3
One way I work morality in my daily schedule is to have students write
a page in their journals about a moral dilemma I’ve written on the board.
I have them read aloud what they’ve written.
They rest of us sit still and listen.
Sometimes we ask questions or engage in a discussion prompted by what
we’ve heard. Some topics I’ve
presented: Would you rat on your best friend if you saw him/her stealing a CD?
What kinds of things do you do to assist other people without being
asked? How can you make our
school a more welcoming place? What
do you need to do so your parents will trust you alone in the house?
Question
4
As a moral witness, I’ve found that there is often no clean response
to difficult situations. Nothing
is cut and dry. The parents of my
students are not bad people simple because their behaviors frustrate me.
When I meet with them, sit down and talk, I can see in their faces and
hear in their voices the love they have for their children.
It is a day-to-day struggle for me to understand how people who don’t
do right by their kids can still love them.
Question
5
One day I asked one of my students why she wasn’t herself.
She seemed preoccupied and unable to focus.
She told me her mother’s ex-boyfriend had been making threatening
phone calls. Her mother had gone
to the police, yet the boyfriend continued to call.
Still, Marilyn came to school every day despite her fear for her
mother’s safety. She called her
mother during the school day to check in with her.
Each morning she left behind the person she loved most in the world to
come to school. That to me is a
definition of courage.
Question
6
The fourth graders discussing the Pilgrims’ decision to come to the
New World concluded that the definition of courage was a broad one.
The kids had many ideas about what would push them toward showing
courage. The little prompting they needed suggests they’d already given the
idea of courage plenty of thought.
In my social studies class we read how archeologists who had found the
bones of an elderly Neanderthal theorized that members of his group cared for
him even though he suffered from disease and could not hunt.
This
led to a discussion about why people under harsh circumstances look out for
one another, even when a person can’t contribute as well as other group
members. How far will people go
to help one another survive? Why
does this seem to be part of who we are as human beings?
Question
7
A good person is able to see that the people around him are not one
dimensional, that we all have many sides, both good and bad.
A good person distills the positive from his experiences, forgives
himself for messing up, and tries to do better.
To be a good person requires reflection which leads to insight which in
turn leads to action. This opens
us up to possibilities we would not have considered previously, based on our
experiences with others in our daily lives.
The bottom line is that a good person doesn’t hurt people and tries
to make sure his actions, whether popular or unpopular, contribute to a better
world.
Question
8
Eyeball the student first, and if that doesn’t work, walk over to his
desk, crouch down beside him and whisper something completely beside the point
(“Do you have last night’s homework?”) to disarm the situation, then
mention how his behavior is hurting the other student or interring with what
we’re trying to accomplish as a community.
Point out the kid’s strengths, what you expect of him.
If the behavior persists, move him into the hallway, let him explain
himself, then offer suggestions and point out consequences (loss of recess,
phone call home, trip to office).
Question
9
The Brownlee articles tells us that even though the teenage brain
undergoes enormous changes, those teens who find a way “to marshal their
thoughts, to measure their impulses, and to understand abstract concepts”
are on the road to becoming healthy contributing adults.
Our role is to guide them by providing brain-nurturing experiences.
For the past three years I’ve taken a dozen of my sixth graders to
our town’s assisted living center one afternoon a week.
The kids play checkers and Monopoly with the residents and it’s easy
to observe the connection and compassion these 12-year-olds exhibit.
From my experience it seems that the Foundation is on the right track.
Question
10
I believe my students are capable of taking on one of your pilot
projects and I would like to hear more about what you have to offer.