He Hit Me Back First! -- The Search for a Better Way

The Search for a Better Way

From He Hit Be Back First!: Development of the Will in Children for Making Choices*, Revised Edition, printed by Jalmar Press, (800) 662-9662, blwjalmar@att.net, reprinted with permission.

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The children came running into the room, jumping on chairs, walking across desks, yelling and laughing, totally disregarding me and the teacher's aide. Upon seeing me, one little boy shouted, "A substitute!" He ran outside and proceeded to run around and around the portable all morning, yelling and throwing orange and banana peels through the windows. Whenever the aide or I would try to stop him, he would run out a nearby gate and down the sidewalk.

The aide walked quietly around the room. Stopping and putting her arm around a child, she would whisper, "Now, you'll be good, won't you? For me, please?" Although the children simply shrugged and ignored her, she continued to sweetly love them.

I, on the other hand, had become the strong-willed, external authoritarian, yelling and demanding cooperation. These were seven-year-olds, almost at the end of second grade! One expects children to have learned some form of discipline by this time. I physically placed some children in their seats and dared them to move.

The class was "way out in the south forty" of an elementary school in the ghetto of a metropolitan city. On arriving that morning, I found no lesson plans and the room in a total chaos of unorganized papers and materials. The only thing on the bulletin board was an old spelling test dated September. I thought to myself, "What is this teacher doing? There is no caring here!"

By the time the ten o'clock recess came, I was closer to walking out than I ever had been in my entire teaching career. I was not an inexperienced teacher; I had taught school in the affluent suburbs, in the "poor white" section of east Los Angeles, and on an Indian reservation. I went to the office and asked for help. This was an extremely large school with a large support staff. The principal was away at a conference and the rest of the staff were at "an important meeting downtown." The secretary said, "That's the way all the kids are here. There's nothing much you can do about it."

I returned to the room with a great sense of anger at the administration for not providing help and of frustration with myself for not having greater skills. I also felt impatient with the sweet little assistant (I later discovered she was not an aide but a credentialed teacher), who kept saying, "Just love them, the poor dears. You have to remember where they come from." I simply could not accept that. To me, it was plain do-gooder prejudice.

I had yard duty at the eleven o'clock recess. Boys were swinging empty pop bottles over their heads and throwing them, splattering broken glass on the blacktop. The other teacher on yard duty shrugged and said, "You'll get used to it. They really aren't bad."

By then I was determined that my class would learn at least one thing before they went home. By lunch time they were actually staying in their seats, had completed one math assignment, and had listened to a story. The assistant teacher told me later that they had been "so good today, much better than usual!"

I was exhausted. I knew there had to be a better way than the strong, externally imposed authority I had used or the weak, misdirected love of the assistant teacher. These children deserved good teaching! But what was that "better way"?