By JESSE SCACCIA
As I’ve written here before, currently I teach at a home for young in Cape Town, South Africa. I use the word ‘teach’ liberally. I’m teaching one guy how to lift weights. Another I’m helping find a way to become a party promoter. One I’m helping to learn to read. Then there’s driving, making sure they do their ‘duties,’ and being there to calm them down after they get into fights. There aren’t really roles here, exactly, just a never ending buckshot of holes to fill.
Last night I decided to teach them how to make French toast. With my own money I bought the materials: eggs, milk, syrup, and white fluffy bread. It only cost a few dollars American– something like $15 in order to feed all fifteen guys– but to them it meant a lot.
After the cooking was done there were one and a half loaves of bread left over. I hid these in the cabinet to use another day… Why not? This had been fun. About an hour later the pantry was locked up for the night.
When I came into the kitchen this morning, I looked for the bread to have some toast. What did I find? Nothing. Not even the empty shopping bag. The bread was gone.
I had two very different reactions to this: a) how can someone steal my bread after I went through all the trouble to teach them and feed them and b) how can I be mad at anyone for stealing a 70 cent loaf of bread?
I went into the living room, where the guys were watching a movie. Up until the moment I opened my mouth, I wasn’t sure how I was going to react. Would I admonish them for (one of) their theivery and disregard for me, or would I let it pass?
“Someone stole the bread I bought,” I explained. “I was going to use that bread to make more French toast one day soon. Now I won’t. Whoever took it, I consider that stealing personally from me.”
There was finger pointing. Names of suspects shouted. It was suggested I search lockers. They waited for my response.
“No, that’s it,” I said. And I walked away.
Maybe I should have yelled at them, all of them, just to make a point. Did I enable their actions by not coming down on them harder? I don’t know. Probably. But– spineless liberal teacher I am– I chose empathy. These guys are from the streets or townships. They have all gone nights without bread or any other food, I know that for a fact. How can I yell at them for stealing bread?
This is an issue we all face as teachers. When a student is violent, or curses, or talks back, or quits, you can bet he or she is modeling actions they learned at home. Does this make it any better? Of course it does. Conditioning is real. But to keep that in the forefront of our minds when our students misbehave, I think, is to do them a diservice.
Next time the bread is stolen, as much as it will trouble my soul to admonish a (once) hungry teenager, I need to buck up and do the right thing.
Jesse, I have a question for you… I am wondering if you believe your students respect you… If so, do you think that you could have had a heart-to-heart conversation with them about what was wrong with their actions? I don’t know that “yelling at them” would have solved the problem of taking what did not belong to them, but I do think that talking about how their actions hurt you and has caused you to possibly not trust them or how it hurts the group, might be in order. By the way, are you sure it was a student and not someone else who has access to the locked cupboards who took your bread?
If you don’t think your students respect you, why do you think that might be? What kind of message do you think these young men get when food is locked up? Maybe that is a facility policy, but still, the message that they receive is probably the same either way: They cannot be trusted. I am just wondering what kind of community could be built amongst the boys and their caregivers if they could be trusted to, as you attempted to do, go down and get a piece of bread for toast, whenever they felt the need. In addition to how your community could grow, if they have never had the experience of having enough food, the boys could learn how to self-regulate.
I recently had a student take a CD from our class and deny it to no end, despite his best friend telling me that he took it. I did buy the CD with my own money, as I do many of my classroom materials, but that was not the issue. The issue is that by taking something that didn’t belong to him, he was denying the class the pleasure of enjoying things in the classroom that we used together as a community. I am not going to stop bringing things in to share with my students because of one student. I am going to give them many chances to prove that I CAN indeed trust them, because that is what love is all about. My students come from rough backgrounds that society has relentlessly imposed on them. I know that despite some students’ poor choices at times, they are human beings who have not had a fair chance at life. This does not make me feel sorry for them. It makes me determined to help them show their best selves at all times. When they fail to do so, it is my job not to give up on them, but to show them the moral consequences of their choices and to show them that I know they can do better. After all, with my privileged background, I get where the behavior comes from and I have no idea what it means to live in their shoes.
Also, I don’t agree with your statement that when kids demonstrate misbehavior such as stealing or violence, that they are necessarily imitating behavior that is modeled at home. In high school, I had two different friends (at different schools) who did a lot of shoplifting. Lisa’s parents were a doctor and a homemaker. The other girl’s parents were a businessman and an art teacher. Neither of my privileged friends’ parents taught them to steal. What they were doing was acting out – reacting to difficult circumstances at home (very strict parental discipline and divorce, respectively). Maybe your students have no parents and are on survival mode?
I don’t know much about your particular situation. I’ve tried to imagine different case scenarios that might make a difference in my response to what you’ve written: a home for previously incarcerated youth, a home for homeless youth, a home for orphans, a home for HIV positive orphans…. I don’t think it really makes a difference. I think that for youth to be wholly empowered, they have to have people who trust them, who truly believe in them, and who are willing to work with them despite the mistakes they might make. I leave you with a quote from the leftist Salvadoran poet, Roque Dalton, “I believe the world is beautiful/ and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.”
I think you handled it beautifully. You stated the issue – missing bread. You also showed that you are aware of what goes on and that you are not going to let things slide. You explained the result – you were personally grieved and no more french toast.
Good job. And next time… you’ll trust your gut to handle it correctly once again.