Why I can't teach your child

Four times I asked him to take out a piece of paper. Four times I asked him to find a pencil. Each and every time we reached a new vocabulary word, I stopped reading and told him to write it down. By the time the history lesson was over, I was exhausted and so was he, I suspect. Whether the directive is to get out a book, pick up a piece of trash, or sit in a particular seat, I am met with stiff resistance, if not outright refusal to cooperate.

Ah, the life of a teacher.

Brand-new, beautiful books about Troy and Egypt and King Arthur sit on my classroom shelves begging to be read, but at this rate I can’t get through the lesson in time for us to actually read them. The whole class goes without field trips or art projects and sits twiddling their thumbs while I deal with Mr. Uncooperative. Day after day after day …

It smacks of my mother’s return to teaching after 25 years “off” to raise her own children. After finishing a grueling master’s program, my mom got a coveted position as a fifth-grade teacher at a new charter school. The summer before she started, she scoured garage sales and thrift stores for beanbags and books to fill her reading corner. She put art on the walls and decorated her room with the passion of one who loves learning and can’t wait to instill this love in her students.

Her new career lasted a whopping two years, every day a misery. Instead of reading in the corner like she had envisioned, she spent all her time writing up disciplinary forms in triplicate, calling parents, and sending kids to a principal who would just send them right back. After drawing a line in the sand with her worst-behaved kids, she was told by their parents that they wouldn’t allow detention, taking away the only real consequence she could deal out. Empty, the reading corner did nothing but gather dust.

According to Pew Research, 67 percent of “consistently conservative” people say teaching obedience to children is important, versus only 35 percent of “consistently liberal” people. But the numbers flip when the topic is “tolerance.” Here a full 88 percent of liberals exalt that trait, versus only 41 percent of conservatives.

It makes you wonder if liberals are ever teachers, because I can teach an intolerant student all day long, but I can’t instill as basic a fact as 2+2=4 in a disobedient one.

In reading through my student’s files, I see the hopes and dreams of parents who are sending their kids to our school with grandiose expectations that we will instill a love of learning and set ablaze the fire of curiosity in their children. But I tell you, no matter how hard I try, no matter how many resources I have, without obedience none of that can happen. I can teach an ADHD, dyslexic, dysgraphic child with severe anxiety issues the world, but I cannot teach a high-functioning, intellectually bright, whippersnapper of a kid who won’t obey a doggone thing.

All that to say, dear parent, I can babysit and keep your child warm and alive until 3:15 every day, but it’s not my job to teach obedience: It’s yours.

For the sake of their education, teach that so I can teach them.