I wrote before the end of last semester about the two hell-raisers in my class, the Terrible Twosome of Bobby and Johnny. Since I wrote that blog a lot has happened, and so I thought I'd give readers an update.
First of all I decided to take action and talk to Bobby's guidance counselor. The guidance counselor actually had heard numerous complaints about Bobby and Johnny. So I suggested changing Bobby's schedule, and moving him to another class. Say, the class where everyone is hard-working and respectful and he has no room to cause trouble. The guidance counselor agreed that it was the best solution, so voila! Bobby and Johnny are now separated.
Last semester I didn't really even know what they were capable of as they wasted all their time causing trouble. Now that they're not sitting in class making racist and sexually crude comments, I've had a chance to evaluate them as individuals and students and have found some surprising things. One is that Bobby, the one whose mother thought it was adorable that he called Asians monkeys and used a four letter word to describe women, is the smarter, more "creative" troublemaker of the two. The upside to this is that he's also the more academically capable student. He's a better room-reader. He walked into his new class, saw everyone seated and quiet, and then saw how students naturally paired up and helped each other. He quickly knew that if he started with his schtick, he'd likely be ostracized by the entire class, and so he sat down quietly and has been doing his work without trouble since the new semester began. I think passing the January Regents also gave him a boost of confidence, and he's now telling me he wants to take home a "really good report card, just once. With good comments from the teachers."
He of course also has a more colorful explanation for why he's behaving. "There's some seriously cute girls in the class, I don't want to look stupid in front of them," he told me. I chuckled. We get along in this new environment. We even have a goodbye ritual: he tells me to give him a "high four" which is our version of the "high five" except with the thumb locked into the palms, so it's a "high four."
Johnny, as I suspected, is the more malleable and inert of the two characters. The good thing about this is a phone call home straightened him out quick, and that away from Bobby, Johnny is quite dull and inoffensive. The bad thing is that the class he's in is now pin drop quiet, but he's still struggling academically. His "street" vocabulary might be top-notch but his academic vocabulary is practically non-existent -- he asks me the definition for simple words like "levels" and "decreased." And now that Bobby's no longer there, I see how Johnny's social skills are lacking -- he's awkward in group work, his attempts at jokes fall flat. He looks frustrated, I feel frustrated, as he's one of those kids that just don't seem to Get It.
I'm not that worried about Bobby anymore. As long as he's away from Johnny he's quite capable and he has enough smarts to adapt to new environments. Johnny however I'm quite worried about. It's great that he's no longer acting disrespectful, but his reading, writing, and comprehension levels are all very low. He's a poor test taker.
Anyway, that's the latest on Johnny and Bobby.
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