A warning: today is going to be unusually long, even by my standards. 

Today’s adventures in public miseducation today bring you “PBIS”: a concept so strange and nonsensical that, instead of the usual three-letter acronym that the Industrial-Educratic Complex is so fond of, it requires four. 

PBIS stands for “Positive Behavior Initiatives and Supports.” In English, that basically means that if you feed kids only positive messages, they will respond with positive behavior. Consequently, there are few if any consequences for negative behavior (since instead we are supposed to “reinforce” positive behaviors that we see), that any negative comment is supposed to be counterbalanced by at least three positive comments, and that students are quite cozy with administrators, who play the role of mediators more than disciplinarians. If students are not behaving, the assumption is that it is the teacher’s fault in not clearly enough communicating expectations, because if expectations were clearly communicated, then students would naturally be eager to please. 

This sounds like a good idea. (Much in the same way that Marx’s Communism sounds like a good idea). If people were completely different–if students genuinely were intrinsically motivated to please their teachers and learn the material–then it would work great. 

Yesterday was the worst day I’ve had this year. It started decently (first period is almost always decent), but then went steadily downhill. Second period, I got numerous complaints that I was “not teaching” the material, since we have quizzes coming up and they did not feel prepared. (One fat Russian girl, the key complainant, makes a point of telling me what a bad job I’m doing at least twice a day). There may be some justice to this: I have been doing less direct teaching since I started making packets. However, I’m just not sure what options I haven’t tried. I started out with a more lecture-heavy approach and then independent work afterwards. I found that they were bored and didn’t pay attention during the lectures, they didn’t complete the work, and they were generally unable to complete the assessments at the end. I stopped doing that and switched to a more game/activity-heavy approach. However, besides the sheer difficulty of essentially having to make up a curriculum from scratch, I also found that, if the activities were challenging enough to force students to use concepts that they didn’t already know, they just wouldn’t engage. So more recently, I have started making weekly “packets” of all the formative work that we will be doing, to be turned in at the end of the following week. Each day, I try to explain some concept, then give some general guidance on the activities in the packet, and then float around to answer individual questions. At first, students responded positively to this, but now, they are feeling that I am not providing adequate instruction. I know that I cannot judge my success as a teacher solely on the feedback of students, but since this year, I’ve generally felt at a loss to get ANY positive feedback from ANY source, at this point, I’m honestly not sure what else (if anything) to try. 

The day went downhill from there. I had the usual behavior issues in third and fourth periods. Then, in fifth period, I actually broke down and started crying. The immediate cause was a large black girl named Ravi [not real name].   Ravi is a 200 pound black girl built like a linebacker with a prominent lip ring and an attitude to match. Everyone’s scared of Ravi. At the beginning of the year, a fellow teacher advised me to “pick my battles” with her. One of the principals even told me that he made it a point to avoid her. Now, the funny thing is, she generally does decent work in my class. She completes her work on time (which puts her in a decided minority), usually gets the concepts, and even helps out her tablemates. But the thing with Ravi is that she does what she wants, how she wants, when she wants, and there ain’t nothing you can do to make her act or think differently. And she knows it. 

Last week, two days after I had started enforcing my “leave cell phones in the lock box while you’re taking bathroom breaks” policy in order to try to limit the duration and frequency of bathroom and nurse breaks (which were getting more frequent and disruptive), both my cell phone and the pass disappeared. (And yes, I did check the lockbox to see if my cell phone had been placed there). It may be coincidence; that’s part of the problem. I honestly can’t tell any more if I’m going crazy, or it’s just certain students who are trying their hardest to make me think that I’m going crazy. However, since I have no way of knowing who (if anybody) is responsible, it seemed to me (rightly or wrongly) that simply ignoring the disappearance and rescinding the policy would be tantamount to capitulation. Consequently, I announced that until the pass reappeared, students would need to do their business before or after class. That policy was unpopular (of course), but I held through until 5th period. As soon as I announced it to fifth period, four students all discovered that they desperately had to go to the bathroom, and could not possibly wait until the end of the period. Then, when I didn’t move, Ravi took it one step further and walked over to the trashcan, grabbed a roll of paper towels, and made clear her intention to go then and there. I did my best to ignore here. At that moment, the phone rang, and since she was closest to it, Ravi grabbed it.  She answered the request and then requested to be transferred to the principal. (Whether she actually was or whether this was simply a theatrical display for my benefit, I’m not sure). She then loudly announced into the phone that we were having “issues” with me not allowing students to use the bathroom. I told her to hang up the phone and that if she wanted to bitch about me to the administration, she needed to do it on her own time. She assured me that she would. I went back to the front of the classroom and attempted to continue, but Ravi made it clear that she would not allow this to happen until she had received what she wanted. 

At that point, I paused and quickly weighed my options, which as far as I could tell were four: 

(1) Get administration involved. This is probably the officially advisable course of action, and the one I would normally default to. However, as far as I can recall, the administration has seldom if ever publicly taken my side in any past issues that have come up. At best, they play the role of impartial arbiter, letting me settle scores with students on my own with an administrative “mediator” and then rubber-stamping whatever agreement results. (In a cage fight with Ravi, I’m afraid that she’ll win.) Generally, though, they’ve taken the student’s side. Consequently, it feels to me like “getting sent to the principal’s office” is now a more effective threat against the teacher than the student, and my students know it (which is why a number of them who dislike some request that I am making have actually asked to go to the principal’s office or call down. Further, if administration wouldn’t back me up four months ago when they had some vested interest in my success, it seemed highly unlikely that they would be willing to now, after they have given me the vote of no confidence. 

(2) Bluff or attempt to physically intimidate Ravi into submission. Not going to happen. 

(3) Continue my standoff until she caved. Again, it seemed that the odds were decidedly not in my favor. What’s more, Ravi could (and probably would) escalate the situation until she got what she wanted. Suddenly, I could envision headlines: “White Male Teacher Sued after Denying Bathroom Breaks to Black Female Student!” 

(4) Cave in, and be exposed for the paper tiger that I am. 

Of my universally bad options, (4) seemed to me the most feasible. So, after several moments of hesitation, I opened the lockbox, took out my blue pass, and told her to go. Very shortly thereafter, as I recall it, another black student demanded the office pass so that she too could go to the bathroom, then get an early release so that she could “get the fuck out of this class.” I told her to go. I didn’t have any fight left in me. I went back to the front of the classroom and attempted to continue the listening test that we were supposed to be doing. There were loud rumblings of disturbance and complaint. 

I paused and looked out over the class. “Look,” I told them. “I am not going to be here again next year. Congratulations. I know that this has not been a great year for many of you, and it has sure as hell not been a great year for me. That said, we have a month and a half left. For your sake, and for my sake, let’s please try to make this time as painless as possible. Okay?” 

For the first time all period, there was silence. Then, I started to cry. I tried to hold back and turn away so that students wouldn’t see me, but without success. I grabbed a tissue and stepped outside the classroom, trying to keep as quiet as I could. Four students (interesting, all black) came out afterwards to try to comfort me, which was very sweet. After a minute or two, I returned and we finished the period without incident. Still, I took today off in an attempt to avoid a repeat performance of yesterday. 

I’m sure I’ve made multiple errors in professional judgment  here, and you can feel free to point them out. However, that’s kind of redundant. I already know I have failed. What I could use is any suggestions going forward. With PBIS, I basically feel like a hostage to the “emotional terrorists” in the classroom, and without anyone backing me up, I honestly don’t know what else I can do. 

In conclusion, over the past month or so, I’ve started referring to my place of employment (for the next little bit, at least) as “Washington Hell School.” It was admittedly just a touch of self-pitying melodrama, as well as a reflection of my serious temptation to paint “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter” above the doorway. However, after yesterday, I wonder if maybe there’s something more substantive to the comparison. The question of how a loving God could condemn anyone to eternal torment in Hell is one of the most vexing ones of the Christian faith. But what if people condemn themselves? CS Lewis wrote that, “If the gates of hell are locked, they are locked from the inside,” and that, in the end, “There are only two types of people: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God eventually says, with dreadful finality, ‘Thy will be done.’” PBIS, by largely deconstructing any notion of beneficent power maintaining order or sense of duty or obligation, creates an environment in which, to some tiny extent, students find that their will can be done. The result is not pretty.