behavior

The Worst School Class in The USA

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Throw off your labels – by Richard Jones

There was a school in south central Los Angeles. It was the worst school district in the nation in terms of performance, violence, behavioral problems.

In this school there was a class in that was the worst. The kids were “out of control”. They were “learning disabled” and “emotionally disturbed”.

The principal could not keep a teacher in that classroom. Several teachers just quit on the spot because the kids were so difficult to manage.

As January approached there was “NO TEACHER” assigned to that classroom and it was very unlikely they would find one. The principal was desperate.

In the meantime, an enthusiastic and motivated young teacher just graduated from a local university.

She graduated in December making it more difficult to find a teaching job. As fate would have it she came in contact with this job in the worst classroom in the worst school in Los Angeles.

The principal took her to the classroom. Introduced her to the class, told her to do the best she could, and quickly left. He did NOT tell her about the problems of the class and its ranking as the worst in the school… It was January.

He would simply hope for the best and pray for summer.

Amazing Results

Around June he began to get testing scores back and he was stunned to see the problematic classroom ranked number one. He also began to hear rumors that the kids in that class were “incredibly well behaved and had great attitudes”.

He went to the classroom and witnessed this himself. A highly engaged and intelligent group of kids. He was stunned.

After class ended he approached the teacher.

-She said playfully, “Sir, I know what you did”.

He thought she had found out that his secret plan of throwing her to the wolves.

He responded: “I’m sorry, what do you mean?”

She said “You gave me the gifted class and I am forever grateful”.

The principal was stunned again: “What do you mean?”

Locker Numbers

At that point the teacher brought him over to her desk and opened a desk drawer that had a roster of kids with numbers next to them:

• Jones: 123
• Smith: 145
• Allison: 126
• Lane: 122

She said: “… these are their IQ’s”

To which he responded: “I gave you the worst class…. THOSE ARE THEIR LOCKER NUMBERS”.

The teacher thought the kids were gifted so she interpreted their disengagement, rambunctiousness, challenging behaviors as boredom. So she went home every night and put in extra time to engage them.

SHE TREATED THEM AS IF THEY WERE GIFTED AND THEY RESPONDED AS IF THEY WERE GIFTED.

Labels and Behavior

When we label someone: learning disabled, anxious, depressed,emotionally disturbed, hopeless, chronic relapser, etc…” They respond and act accordingly.

If “experts” tell people they are constitutionally incapable of anything… these people believe it.

We set people with substance use disorder up for failure when we tell they can’t recover because they didn’t do recovery exactly the way they were instructed.

When we tell people with serious and persistent mental illness the best they can hope for is to take their medication and not cause problems we set them up for failure.

When we put kids in arbitrary categories they live up to those categories.

***The above is based on a true story