John is a Secondary 1 student who comes from Pakistan, a minority group. He was placed in the same class with other students from Nepalese, India, Pakistan, Philippine and China. After talking to some of his colleagues, I found out that he came from a single parent family, where he lived with his mother and a younger brother. Moreover, I found out that they relied on social welfare for their living.
He is very talkative and mischievous, and at times he may spin out of control. He likes shouting loudly during classes. For instance, when he wants the air-conditioner switched on, he may shout, “Madam, it is very hot”. He does this regardless of my emphasis to the class regulation which states that a student should raise up his/her hand and wait until permitted to talk by the teacher. Moreover, he is the only one who voices whatever he has in his mind in class.
Whenever he is scolded for such behavior, he comes up with many pointless excuses such as “I am really feeling hot, Madam!” Very often, I have instructed him to raise up his hand whenever he has anything to say, not unless it is an emergency. However, on occasion when he becomes too much, as teachers, we punish him through detentions, light demerits, demerits and copying. Nonetheless, his behavior never changes. He continues being mischievous even if it brings him more punishments.
Initially, I used to scold him with the aim of stopping him from misbehaving during classes while other teachers gave him light demerit. However, he never seemed to care about the light demerit forms or the scolding. He was often overheard asserting, “No matter how many light demerit forms you give me, I don’t really care!”
Since scolding never worked, I tried calling his mother so that we could discuss the complaints lodged against her son. To our surprise, his mother never seemed to care so much about her son. Whenever I called her on phone, it seemed as if my call had waked her up from sleep. She responded to my call with words like, “Errrrr”“Yes”“Ok”. Nonetheless, I managed to meet her once and I observed that she was rather quiet when we were talking about her son’s problems. Moreover, when we inquired whether she wanted to say anything, her answer was “No”.
Since talking to his mother had not provided the desired outcome, I decided to take a different approach towards him. I tried not to punish him for his mischief but praised him for any small good thing he did. For example, I commended him whenever he placed the course booklet on his desk just before the lesson began. Through this approach, his attitude changed a little by becoming a bit friendlier although he still misbehaved at times. I acknowledge the fact that I did not comprehensively solve his problem but it at least helped change his behavior.
Last Monday, I was the teacher- in-charge of the morning assembly. I had been instructed to talk about washroom hygiene problems to students. In my speech, I was to describe how one could make a paper towel smaller before putting it into the rubbish bin. This was in a bid to prevent the rubbish bin from getting filled with paper before the end of the recess. I sought help from John. I had spoken to him about my intention of inviting him for the morning assembly to show other students how they would make a paper towel smaller. This was to be done in front of all Secondary 1 students. I had also promised him that I would give him a “service hour” (a pink form for recording students’ services to the teacher). He had shown his willingness to help immediately. I knew that if he did anything naughty on the podium, I would be blamed by senior teachers. Nonetheless, I wanted to give it a try.
While on the stage, I said, “Class 1A, John, please come forward”, and everyone burst into laughter. After the assembly, I inquired why the students had laughed and they told me that they thought I wanted to punish or scold John in front of other Secondary 1 students. However, as agreed, John did everything by following all my instructions while on the stage. He did nothing naughty. At the end of the assembly, I showed my gratitude to John by acclaiming, “As you have seen, John did very well on stage today. He is one of the smartest boys in our school. Well done, John”.
Afterwards, I gave him the “service hour” and he was happy. Furthermore, I asked him, “Would you like to help me in other classroom matters like board decoration later?” He replied by asking, “Would you give me light merits, Madam? I have many light demerits you know?” I replied by saying,” Yes, light merits indeed”.
Today, however, he was up again disrupting the lesson by talking loudly to another student. To draw his attention, I wanted to ask him a question. So I said, “John”. He replied immediately, “Miss, I didn’t talk to him, he……” I cut in by saying, “I want to ask you to give me the answer to this question” He was quiet for sometime as he did not know what to do. I went ahead and asked, “Do you think I want to scold you?” He replied, “Yes, all teachers are like that, giving me light demerits all the time. Mr. Wong (the discipline master), Ms Chan and Mr. Yu gave me a lot of light demerits.”
I asked, “Have I given you any light demerits so far?” He thought for a while and said, “No. But other teachers did. They gave me many light demerits”. I then replied by saying, “John, if I wanted to give you light demerits, I could give them to you very easily. Do you remember I once invited you to help me during a morning assembly? To be honest with you, I risked calling you on stage because if you misbehaved, the principal would have clearly seen it. Consequently, my working performance would have been worsened and I would have also been blamed and ridiculed by some of the senior teachers. Regardless of that, I still invited you because I knew you were a smart boy and you exhibited good leadership skill. That morning on the stage, all eyes were directed to you, not even me. John, I know you can perform well….” He ended up crying. After this lecture, he paid attention in class and the lesson ended smoothly.
In conclusion, I still acknowledge the fact that I may not have extensively solved John’s problem but at least I impacted in his social life. It is my hope that he could behave himself, by not making noises and funny sounds during classes. However, I am glad that he managed to change his attitude.
