When I started at my first school, my class—those kids were considered the delinquents (…)—‘We just need them to get through the class. We need them to literally get these last three credits of science so we can graduate them effectively.’ And I had kids on their phone constantly—headphones, air pods, head down with the hood over. They're trying to sleep, but their phone is going haywire underneath them.”
“But then I just figured, I'm going to talk to them. Let me treat them like an adult. Let me give them the responsibility and tell them, ‘I'm gonna let you figure it out. If you don't want to be here—Okay, you've made your decision, but I'm going to keep doing my job and I'll let you join the party whenever you want. And slowly I got those kids to get involved. And that's the approach I have—‘You've made your decision (….) You're an adult. You're close enough to one at this point. (…) You get to make the choices. If you don't want to participate, I'm not going to force you. But understand what that means for yourself. Are you going to be happy with that decision in a week, in a month, at the end of the year? Are you be happy with what you decided to do?’ So I like putting that autonomy on them, and I think that brings them to rise to an occasion where then the behavior starts to fall out.”
“Last year, I had so many students who were talking through my class. One class I had (...), we had to have a discussion about what's appropriate behavior in the classroom. These kids were very nice. They were just very distracted or very excited about things (…) When they got excited about class, they got excited about it, but when they didn't want to do class, my class was not having it. We had to have those talks and eventually I got through to enough of them. But there's some of them that I realize I don't know how to get through to without involving a higher power in the school, and that's the last thing I want to involve if I really can avoid it. I'll involve that if it involves danger with the kid, if somebody's starting to be disruptive and it's starting to cause violence in the room. Okay, that's a different discussion. Causing a kid to just tune out and disregard the class—Yeah, I put it on them.”
“I think the kids start to understand that he wants to teach, and he's going to teach us. We just have to listen to him. And the kids who do thrive.”
“I'm always saying, ‘I'm right here. When you want to join me, I'll catch you right back up.’”