On Being Liked

He's the most beautiful child I've ever seen. Thick, long lashes, a round face with a perfectly formed nose and full lips, a sculpted hairline bordering his short, thick cut. He isn't very tall, but that's not enough to explain why, at the fall dance, I kept finding him in corners of the darkened gym, alone. With his looks, he should be fending the girls off, juggling middle-school kisses and stayover invitations.

But he admitted, to the social worker, that people don't like him. His language arts teacher says that he can get a class 'going' with his sarcastic comments, but he roams the halls alone. The other teachers just turn their eyes heavenward and shrug. 'He hasn't got a clue' is the most charitable comment.

With me, he's been pure hell. We started out testing, generally a situation in which kids behave themselves - it's a hassle, but the better everyone cooperates, the faster they're out of there. So even the kids that like to chat, sit quietly, listen raptly to the instructions, do their writing and math and reading for the 3 or 4 minute intervals, and smile when it's time to leave.

This kid couldn't stop making noise, and when I reminded him he needed to give others a chance to concentrate, turned nose skyward and tapped his chin with a forefinger, face a strict-teacher mask that would be hilarious if it weren't so irritating, and disruptive.

Disruptive to the soul.

It turned out that he needed a lot of help. Turned out he'd had problematic behaviors everywhere he'd gone. I wanted to keep him, along with another needy kid, in the upper-level English class he'd been placed in by mistake. My thinking was, they'll have sterling role models, and I'll be there if they need me. Worked great for the other kid, who looks at me with his own set of soulful eyes and THANKS me for my help.

Not his kid. He scrunches down over his work, trying to keep me from seeing his scrawl. He tells me to go away. When pushed, he tells me he doesn't like me - just like that - and I back off to save him from self-embarrassment.

Today I couldn't let it go. There was a substitute, and his scrawl was illegible but, even so, clearly not adhering to the specifications his teacher had left behind. Four or five times I suggested, as gently as I could, the changes he needed to make.

Finally I said, 'let's go to the resource room.'
'No,' he responded. And 'you can't make me!'
'Resource room or the office,' I said.
'Oooooooohhhhh, I'm sooo scared now!' he trilled and smiled. But came along anyway.

It didn't help.

This is a sample of the conversation in the resource room:

Me: So, you need to read this one more time, and figure out the main idea, and write it down.
Him: That's what I did!
Me: No, sweetie, you didn't. You need to follow the format Ms. G left, and you didn't do that.
Him: I don't know how to do it. You pulled me so I didn't get a chance to listen to her explain!
Me: You were there during the entire explanation. I didn't pull you until you were supposed to work on your own.
Him: I didn't hear it.
Me: Here's what you do..
Him: Go away! I don't like you!
Me: Sweetie, I don't care whether you like me or not. It isn't my job to make me like you. It's my job to make sure you understand the work and get it done.
Him: Well, you can't, because I want you to go away! I don't like you!

And more of the same from that angelic face twisted in hatred, and pain, and anger. People, coworkers and parents, going in and out of the room.

My colleague is a behavior specialist. 'Any ideas you have, I'm all ears..' I said.

The kid's got me over a barrel though. Somewhere he's figured out that even when we teachers say, 'I don't care if you like me,' we do, desperately. After all, the half hour before lunch, when the kids in my language class and I talked about expressions like 'at the drop of a hat,' and my morning class, when I (thanks Jake!) familiarized the kids with the concept of evaluation by discussing Pokemon Sapphire at Game Stop, were by far the best moments of my day.

My work day, that is. The best moment of the whole day may have been when I pushed with my whole self into the pedals of my bike, straining up the big Garden of the Gods hill in the darkening afternoon.

It doesn't matter if my bike likes me.