Sunday, June 24, 2007

Bad boy gone good

I wanted to blog some time ago about an incident that happened while I was teaching Sunday School at church. I think it was last month, and I was teaching the 8 to 10 year old kids at church... which are quite a tough bunch of kids to teach as they are the largest among all the children age groups, and all of them have super short attention spans. Either they don't want to join the activities I ask them to do, OR they talk among themselves while I'm teaching, OR they run around the class (and sometimes out of the class). Not to say I don't love the kids... I mean since I joined the church ( I think about 5 years now), I got to know these kids and I've seen them grow up a bit. But good grief, their behavior in the class is so exasperating (it even made another teacher so fed up, she asked to teach the younger age group instead. How unfortunate for her replacement!), the only way I know how to keep them under control until it's time to release them back to their parents is by making them do art and crafts every time I teach them...which does a pretty good job of occupying them (but requires a lot of preparation. Bleh!).

Even though the kids in general drive me nuts, I don't quite believe in scaring children into submission, so I have never whacked a kid or scolded any kid very badly.... Not just in this class but anywhere else where I teach kids (and in my job, I deal with some pretty exasperating kids whom I feel like strangling sometimes too. :P) . The most I do is raise my voice, or tell a kid off for their behavior, or threaten to send them to the principal's office (which even that, I've never done). As such, I have come across kids who wrestle with other kids in class, kids who climb all over tables and chairs, kids who argue over who gets to play with what, kids who scream for no reason except to bug others, kids who bug me with nonsensical questions every 10 seconds and kids with all sorts of other various annoying behaviors.... and still I have managed to be patient with them.

But in this particular Sunday School class last month, one of the boys did something that finally made me snap.

In previous classes, this boy, whose name is Jonathan, was one of the more frustrating kids to deal with. He would always ask for things or ask me to do something and if I didn't do what he wanted, he would continue to ask me for it. And when I told him off for bugging me, he would sit down and sulk, and then refuse to do anything I asked him to do. Then on the Sunday of Mother's Day, when I was teaching them again, I got the kids to make a pretty cute mini flower vase thingy for their mums, using flowers made of coloured craft foam stuck inside a green cup which acted as a vase. And I also gave them little round chocolates to stick on top of the flowers, so their mums could eat the chocolates. So every kid was supposed to get 5 flowers with 5 chocolates. But before the class started, I told them that if any of them misbehaved, I would deduct from the number of chocolates I'd give them until they behaved themselves. So this particular boy, started bugging me again, and when the time came for the art and craft, I had deducted his number of flowers down to only 3.

Of course, he wasn't too happy about it, but no matter how much he pleaded with me for more chocolates, I refused to give it and told him to behave next time. But he kept bugging me for them right until the end of the class when all the kids were done and were leaving the class. One of the other boys had left his flowers in the class for a while, so Jonathan left his vase with 3 flowers behind and took the other boy's vase which had 5 flowers. So when the other boy came back, they started fighting over whose flowers it was, and when I intervened, I knew that vase belonged to the other boy. So I made Jonathan give it back to him, and I gave Jonathan his own vase back. Then he threw a tantrum, and literally threw his flowers on the floor and turned to skulk off. So that's when I snapped.

I didn't even care that the door was open and the teacher and students in the next class could hear me. I yelled at the boy to come back, and as he stood there, I gave him the biggest and loudest scolding I had ever given anybody in my life. I was just so... well, there's no better way to put it.... pissed off at him throwing the flowers, after all the time I had spent buying and preparing all the materials for it. I told him that he was very disrespectful for doing that and that if he was going to treat the things I gave him like that, I wasn't going to give him anything anymore in future classes. I threatened to tell his parents what a naughty boy he was and I told him he wasn't going to get his flowers back. AND I made him give back to me the points that I gave to the kids when the class ended (kids get points in Sunday School for good behavior, bringing their Bible, worshipping, etc... and they can redeem their points for gifts after some time). All the time, he was dead quiet (and sulky) as I scolded him, but at least he didn't try to run away (God knows what I would have done if he had tried!). Basically, he got one heckuva earful from me and would have nothing to take home from that day's class.

After that, I let him go, and began packing up my stuff. At one point, as I was kept busy with some other kids, Jonathan came back to the class and also helped me to clean up. I guess he felt bad about what he did, and so I cooled down too and felt kind of sorry for him. I then took him aside, sat down with him and explained to him gently about what he did wrong and why I didn't like it. I told him to imagine if he gave a gift to someone, and that person just threw it on the floor like he did, how would he feel? And how would he like it if someone kept pestering him for things all the time? I basically told him to imagine how he would feel if he had to deal with someone who behaved like him, and asked whether he would like it or not. Well, he was pretty quiet throughout, so I didn't know whether anything was actually getting through to that little head of his. But after I was done with my lecture, I gave him back his flowers and half of his points, for helping me out with the cleaning. And he went off after that.

Now, one month after that incident, I go into class and find that Jonathan had become a very different boy. He no longer pesters me for things and no longer sulks at everything. He wants to be involved in the activities.... and in my class today, he surprised me by asking me if he could be my helper for the next class. So I was like, whoa! That's a pretty big change. And I'm glad for him, and relieved that my earful didn't totally demoralize him or make him even more naughty. Instead, he actually listened to me and changed his attitude. I can say he even behaves better than most of the other kids in the class now. Woohoo! That's much more than what I expected to happen.

Now I'm thinking next time I have a troublesome kid in my class, I could just scold him til his ears bleed, then give him a nice pep talk and hopefully the kid will change. :P Haha, juz kidding. I didn't enjoy scolding the poor kid, but I do think he went too far in what he did. Fortunately, he went 180 degrees and changed his behaviour, so thank God for that. Who knows, maybe years from now when he's grown up, he might still remember that day, and actually appreciate the advice I gave him. Haha. Wishful thinking! But then again, isn't that what every teacher hopes for? :)

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