Nate the Non-Negotionist

My toughest kids have been my greatest teachers.

For the purpose of this post and all others that involve anecdotes about students, I have changed the names to protect my students' privacy.

I first met Nate in a summer speech and debate camp I was running my second year of teaching. The Chinese after-school had scheduled me with 25 4th and 5th graders, and I had no backup. 1 adult versus 25 squirrely kids in the summer - there I can definitely say I learned more than any of the kids did.

Nate was going to start 5th grade in the fall. He talked loudly - to the point of shrieking and yelling with his friends - and would not even look at me when I tried to talk to him. However, I could see that he had some natural talent for public speaking even at 10 years old.

I had no idea that Nate's mother would ask me to tutor both Nate and his older sister Candace during the school year. Candace was a 9th grader in Honors English, with the legendary fiend of an English teacher at one of the local high schools. Working with her is worth its own post, however.

Every other Saturday morning, Nate would meet me in my Saturday classroom at 9am for his private writing class. From the first he was a challenge. He did not want to work on writing or anything else. He made it perfectly clear that, given his way, he wouldn't be sitting there with me on a Saturday morning. That made two of us. He circumvented all my attempts to get us going in some curricular direction. The most notable tactic was his tendency to disregard my questions and talk about something completely different. Now that I think about it, at least I was lucky when he chose to answer.

Those classes did not last long. I thought I was safe. Then Nate's mother requested that I come to their house for his private classes. You might be wondering why I said yes. I was wondering, too. But I was clawing my way out of the slimy pit of monetary necessity, and wasn't about to turn down an opportunity to make five times the minimum wage for a long hour of frustration.

Nate's nuclear family, like many of my students', is made up of siblings, parents, and grandparents. Many grandparents spend 6 months in the States at a time, so their progeny buy large homes with plenty of extra space. In the off-months when maybe 3 or 4 people live in a house that can sleep 8 comfortably, it feels like walking into an eerie chasm of stillness.

What I noticed right away - besides the opportunity to take my shoes off at the door - was the tension in the family. The yelling, especially. Nate spent the beginning of a lot of our classes assembling a snack or taking his time over some concoction in the kitchen. His grandparents and mother didn't seem to have much control when it came to getting him to sit down and focus. They were forever telling him to be polite, I think - I quickly learned the word for "teacher" in Chinese because they said it so often while Nate was ignoring me.

Nate would often take a very long time to answer a simple question or would ignore the question altogether. He was brilliant, though. There was no question. The rare moments of communication where we shared some appreciation for a weird short story or article I had brought were priceless, albeit short.

Later on, we started meeting online for classes instead of in-person. In some ways it was an improvement, but there were some heavy drawbacks. For a long time, the session would start with me calling on FaceTime and finally getting through, only to witness a shouting match between Nate and his mom.

I spent a lot of time waiting in silence for him to answer some question I had asked. It didn't really matter whether we were working on something for his Language Arts class or something I thought might interest him. We clearly met on his terms, even if it wasn't his choice to meet.

Sometimes I wanted to reach through the internet and throttle him.

Then a therapist gave me something to think about that has changed the way I approach "difficult" kids. She said that, when a kid can't protest again his parents, he will push back against anyone else that he can.

It was exciting to realize that maybe I wasn't a horrible, smelly person after all -- that Nate's passive-aggressive attitude was really displaced anger at his parents. Then the realization that I had to try to make something productive out of a situation where Nate might be projecting negative perceptions onto me took over. Knowing the "why" didn't give me the "how".

To summarize 4 years in a blog post, Nate is going to high school next year. We do online sessions if he needs help with something for school. Last year, we started discussing debate topics and philosophical dilemmas. That was one of our breakthroughs where we actually had a good time.

Nate has taught me the value of silence and waiting, holding space for someone even if they are ignoring you or trying to be rude. He has taught me that my job is not really anything academic, sometimes. It can really just be about being that person who can accept someone whom everyone else labels "difficult" or "disruptive" or "problematic".

Nate has taught me a lot about unconditional love, but he also showed me my egotistical weaknesses. When I found myself getting frustrated, I asked myself why. Well, because if he didn't learn the material or get good grades, that would reflect badly on me. Then his parents would think - know - I was a waste of their money and find someone else. Maybe even tell their friends (everyone knows each other in that community). So really, it was about me. Once I wrapped my head around that, I practiced letting it go and replacing that fear with love.

Nate also taught me about patience. The biggest thing, though: how much it can mean when a student says thank you or goodbye at the end of a lesson. Every time I meet with Nate now, he seems so different I can't believe he is the same person. The other week we had a rational discussion about his homework assignment and choices that he thought were possibly better than my suggestions or ideas I'd proffered that he liked. It was very different, and it was wonderful.