baby steps...

Today went much better. Actually, to be more specific, it felt much better.

My student who posed the biggest challenge on day one proceeded to test, but I just kept using strategies that I've learned over the past two years to thwart his efforts. I'll call him Matthew from here forward.

For example, I gave the class an extra 15 minute break in the morning (we don't have lunch until 1pm), and Matthew was on a 6-person teeter totter when he decided to start cursing. As I was standing right there, I couldn't ignore it. I gave him an "excuse you..." type of check, but his response was simply to list off every curse he could think of. I asked him to get off of the teeter totter, knowing that this wouldn't work, but not able to just let him play without consequence.

Can't get the kid to do what you want? Call upon the other children to do what you want. I turned to the rest of the group that was either sitting or leaning on the teeter totter. I asked them to stop and go to a different part of the playground. Thankfully, they did. So, there was my buddy, still where he wanted to be - but all alone and without anyone to make his seat teeter. I calmly walked away and gave him time to process what happened.

Before recess was over, I approached Matthew and set a time for us to meet later in the day. I told him that I wanted to work with him to make a plan to help him have the best year possible. I was candid in saying that clearly sometimes he made great choices and other times it was difficult to do so -- but that together we could devise a plan to help us both have the most successful year we could.

That afternoon, I brought Matthew to the Principal's office to pick up his ipod (he'd been trying to listen to it in math class and I'd succeeded in obtaining it by promising it would be returned at the end of the day). Following the "Next time we see this, your Nana will have to pick this up," speech from the principal, I suggested we have our "plan for the year" talk.

We let Matthew know that we were going to meet with him and his Nana next week to make a full plan for this year. Before doing so, we wanted to talk a bit with him about some of his choices, what he likes, what's hard, etc., to help us out. Then, we talked about the importance of doing well in school. Matthew is a very bright child -- so bright, in fact, that he seamlessly tried to fake his birth year to convince us that he's a 12 year-old 5th grader. While Matthew is, in fact a year older than his peers because of repeating a grade, he is not two years older as he claims. I had to call Nana to make sure - that's how convincing he was.

To help Matthew see the importance of education in a way that might mean something to him, we showed him a chart of how education and salary are related. On the first day, in the midst of trash-talking just about everything having to do with school, Matthew had asserted that money was just about the only thing he liked. While this may or may not be true, he was very intrigued by the bar chart illustrating average salaries based on education.

He asked how much the "some high school" adult would make. When he heard, he thought this was a fantastic amount of money. My Principal asked, "What kind of car would you like to drive when you grow up?" When Matthew realized that it would take about 10 years to earn enough money to buy this car, let alone pay for housing and food, he started to look up the chart.

"So if I get a professional degree, do I need to give Ms. H half of it?" He asked. We agreed that no, that wouldn't be necessary. Invitations to his graduations would be plenty sufficient.