White Teacher Fails: Part 3- Discipline Hurts

During my first year teaching, I was assaulted by a student. For the last thirteen years, since I started teaching at twenty-one, this is how I have worded it.

But the word “assault” is a shortcut. It is a knife meant to neatly separate me, the innocent victim, from my student, the scary perpetrator. But what happened was not clean and simple.

My training prior to becoming a full-time teacher consisted of one summer of classes, often taught by teachers with only a couple years of experience. I learned the importance of “holding all students to high standards.” But I didn’t have guidance as to what that meant.

I thought that I would have power in my classroom by enforcing rules. In truth, I became an antagonist. I was enforcing countless rules that had nothing to do with the safety or learning of my students such as banning gum chewing, hats and loud speaking volume. I learned to use the “three strikes” method of discipline: to allow students three mistakes before involving the administration. I had over a hundred-twenty students, so it was difficult to remember the strikes I’d already given out. This strategy made me focus exclusively on the mistakes and flaws of my students.

Casper was having a difficult time in school. Because of a family conflict, he had come to the Bronx from Texas to live with a relative. His credits did not transfer for some reason. So, although he was sixteen years old, he was stuck in my ninth-grade environmental science class. On top of that, the other students made fun of his cartoonish name and his Southern drawl.

I learned these facts not from talking to him, but from my colleagues. I don’t think I ever had a conversation with him where I was trying to get to know him as a person or as a learner. All of my interactions with him were corrective. He was not the most disruptive student, but he was the loudest, and at over six feet tall, one of the biggest.

The moments of the encounter are fuzzy. Was he sitting in the wrong seat? Was he facing away from me and talking loudly? Did he talk back to me?

I know that I wanted to pretend I wasn’t scared. I know that I yelled at him in front of the entire class. When that wasn’t effective, I picked on him for a different rule he was breaking: wearing a hat. He refused to comply.

Did I take his hat off? Did I really touch a student’s property?

He shoved me, and I slammed back against a desk and fell to the floor. I pushed myself back up.

Students yelled, “fight, fight,” urging us on as though the classroom had become a boxing ring. For a moment, my hands curled into fists. For a moment, Casper became the reason I couldn’t control my class, the reason all my lessons had been jokes for the previous two months, the reason my naïve dream of becoming a savior teacher like all those in the movies was crashing apart.

I felt angry. I felt out of control. I wanted to hurt him back. I wanted to force him to comply. My feelings in that moment scare me more than anything he did to me.

But I didn’t hit back. Instead, I walked out of the classroom. When I realized that Casper was following me, I began to run. He ran too. He yelled threats. I made it to the main office. The secretary locked the door. I crawled under a desk out of view of the glass window and tried not to throw up as he continued to pound on the door and shout.

The word “assault” doesn’t cover the whole story. For weeks I had been bullying all my students, picking on them for small things that didn’t have anything to do with learning. I was expecting them to follow rules that I hadn’t even explained were rules. And swiping off someone’s hat was a clear sign of wanting a fight. Casper was not justified in threatening me or hurting me. But his behavior was understandable. I had been pushing him to the edge for weeks.

How differently would things have turned out if, instead of being angry at him, I was angry for him? I should have been angry about the million ways that he, as a young black male, was told that he was worth less than everyone else. The way his school was falling apart and was staffed with inexperienced and incompetent teachers like myself. The way cops could stop and frisk him anytime he happened to be guilty of walking on the sidewalk. The way racist enforcement of drug laws made it more likely he would go to prison than college. But I should have been most angry at how I myself had taken in all these injustices and digested them. How I had unconsciously judged Casper from day one as a criminal to persecute and prosecute instead of a kid to respect and support.

The next day, I was nervous as I walked to school from my subway stop. But I didn’t get jumped. There was none of the promised retaliation. My classes were calm. Maybe my students were surprised that I came back. That I didn’t quit mid-year like so many of their other first-year teachers.

After a one-day suspension, Casper was back in my classroom. He was quiet. He had been chastened by his peers for going “too far.” I was a woman, after all. There were no more threats of violence. That wasn’t who Casper was.

I am so ashamed. Not just of my interaction with Casper, but of my punitive behavior that whole year. I still worry about how my constant criticism of all students that year eroded their academic confidence, their interest in science, and their ability to trust teachers in the future. Calling this “assault” communicates my trauma, but what was most traumatic was not the violence but rather a realization of my own brutality and my own failure.

The following year, I left the classroom to work for NYC Outward Bound, helping to lead week-long camping trips for public school kids. In the woods, I had the gift of time and relief from academic pressure. I saw black and brown kids delight in their very first campfires, cheer their peers up the climbing wall, and laugh at countless jokes. I saw my black and brown colleagues work hard to provide our students with the very best experience. I saw a million positive counterexamples to the racial bias I hadn’t even acknowledged was in my head. By the time I returned to the classroom years later, I was not the same teacher.

I wish I could go back in time and redo my first year teaching. I would treat my students with respect. I would get to know them, check in with them about their learning, and provide encouragement. Before rushing to discipline, I would ask myself questions. Is the student endangering anyone? Is the student disrupting the class? If the answer to these questions is “no,” then maybe I would let the infraction go. Most rules are less important than our relationship.

This is a fundamental reframing of discipline. We, students and teachers, are on the same side. We share common enemies of ignorance, low expectations, and racism. Every correction should be aimed at helping the students. Not control. Not dominance. Not compliance. We are all on the same team.