CJ’s Story: The Power and Failure of Modern Classroom Management

The type of story I am about to tell is one of the frequent occurrences when, as a teacher, you know what you’re seeing isn’t right — for anybody — but you’re not only forced to go along with what admin says but pretend to agree with them also. Ideas about education are always growing and changing, but teachers are always expected to agree with the current conventional wisdom. If you asked many Gen Z teachers and even some Millennials about their classroom rules and consequences, you will be met with vague statements about “logical consequences” and “building relationships.” It’s fascinating how they all parrot the exact same line “If you have a good relationship with the students, they’ll want to please you.” Sometimes whole schools take this approach. It sort of works with some students, I guess. And I still can’t be sure exactly what “CJ” needs, even now. But he sure isn’t getting it.

Like many low-income, low-performing schools, my current school gets extra funding for an after-school tutoring program. I signed up to tutor twice a week as I had at previous schools. It’s tough to continue teaching for an hour and a half after a full day, but at least I got my own grade level and subject area this time — 5th grade Reading. I didn’t know most of the students on my roster that first day; only two of them were in my regular class. I knew about CJ, though.

My first interaction with CJ happened before I even had him in class. The first two tutoring sessions of the year were math, and both the math and the reading sessions took place in my classroom. At the second math session, I worked in my classroom as Ms. Bailey, the math tutor, taught her lesson. I realized I needed something from one of my students’ desks, one which CJ currently occupied.

I approached the student’s desk. CJ’s head was down, resting on his folded arms. I knew from Mrs. Sykes, his regular classroom teacher that he generally spent half the class sleeping. I hoped in this case that he was just putting his head down.

“CJ!” I leaned down and called to him. Ms. Bailey was holding a class discussion and the room was not quiet. “CJ!” I called again and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. He groaned and stirred. “Hey, CJ, I need you to get up for a sec, all right? I need something from this desk.”

“Nooooo,” he groaned without looking up.

I didn’t reprimand CJ for sleeping as this was Ms. Bailey’s class, and I knew she had already tried. I still needed him to get up, however.

“Come on, CJ, just for a second,” I urged. He ignored me.

“CJ always sleeps, Mrs. Kirkman! He’s up all night playing video games!” yelled Manuel, another student from CJ’s class.

I ignored Manuel and tried to decide what to do. My usual M.O. for defiant students was to use a “conscious discipline” approach.

“CJ, I really need you to get up for a second. Your other option is to come outside for a talk with me. Those are your choices. I’ll give you a minute to decide.” I walked away.

This approach usually works. Giving a defiant student the illusion of a choice allows them to follow your direction without losing face. After a minute, I approached CJ again. “What is your decision, CJ?” I asked. In response, he shifted his head.

I locked eyes with Ms. Bailey who shrugged. I took a breath and started to slowly push the desk out from in front of him. One of the desk legs grazed his leg as I pushed. “Owwwww, that hurt!” CJ moaned. He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“I’m sorry, CJ, but I really did need this folder,” I said. I held up a red folder containing work that needed to be graded.

CJ grunted, dragged the desk back in front of him and put his head down again. I dropped the folder on my desk, grabbed a gift bag containing a selection of Marvel character bibs, and headed to the ESOL room for Mrs. Rodriguez’s baby shower.

After the gifts, I waved over Mrs. Hoffman, the assistant principal and explained the situation with CJ, performing a little CYA before she potentially heard from a parent.

“I would contact his mother, just explain what happened,” she said. “And maybe talk to him to clear the air a bit. But I have to say, CJ has been here since 3rd grade, and he has always been like this. His mom lets him stay up all night playing video games, and he ends up sleeping in class. We have communicated with her many times, but she refuses to come in for conferences or to do much of anything about it.”

I nodded, went back to my classroom, and sat at my desk. The tutoring group was packing up to leave. I waved CJ over to my desk. He lumbered over and stood in front of me.

CJ was tall and broad for a 5th grader, and he towered over me, seated in my desk chair. His eyes had the glazed look of a zombie.

“I’m sorry about what happened earlier,” I said. “I didn’t mean to bump you with the desk. I’m going to be your reading tutor, so I really hope we can have a good relationship and learn well together.”

CJ nodded vaguely. His dark eyes were on some point behind me.

The dismissal bell rang, and the other tutoring students began to file into the hall. “Have a good rest of your day,” I said to CJ.

“My nose hurts,” he said, rubbing it.

To this day, I am not sure he even remembers this incident. He never mentioned it again, and his mother never responded to my email.

Over the next few weeks, I got to know CJ better. I liked him well enough as a person — we could totally geek out together about comic books and superheroes and Dragonball Super. As a student, however, he was difficult. During our daily class meeting, he would make snide comments while others were sharing. I learned quickly not to let him work with a partner — his partner would end up doing all the work. If the other students were working well on their own, I could work with CJ one-on-one and prod and prompt him into finishing his assignment. Still, more often than not, CJ’s time in my tutoring class was not productive. If asked to work on his own, he would stall, outright refuse, or just put his head down and become unresponsive. Often enough, his mother would pick him up early causing him to miss his practice assignment entirely. His mother would respond politely to my messages about his behavior, but I can’t be sure if she actually had those “talks” with him. His behavior did not improve.

At my previous schools, admission into the tutoring program was based on academic need; only students with low benchmark scores would be invited. Perhaps foolishly, my current school has no such prerequisites; anyone can sign up. We have many high achieving students in the tutoring program whose parents want them to achieve even higher. There are also many parents who use the tutoring program as a free baby-sitting service. I was not made privy to CJ’s test scores, but it was apparent that his main problem was effort, not ability. I couldn’t help but feel there were students on our very long waiting list with good work habits and low ability — students who would benefit from the program more than CJ would.

Despite these feelings of mine, the behavior I’ve described was not serious enough to expel him from the tutoring program. Mrs. Woods, the tutoring coordinator, even observed a lesson of mine and complimented me on how well I worked with him. I only wish I could have “worked with him” on his bullying issues.

After a few weeks, Mrs. Woods, told me that one of my students, Jason, was being moved to another tutoring class.

“Why?” I asked. I couldn’t think what problems Jason could be having. Frankly, I barely knew him; it had only been a few weeks, and he was frequently absent from tutoring.

“Well, Ms. Bailey reported to me that CJ has been picking on him a lot,” Mrs. Woods replied. “About his weight and I guess just the fact that Jason is a socially awkward type. That’s why he’s been absent so much; his parents have a hard time getting him to come.”

I was sorry to see a student go. I always hated to think that a student was unhappy or not succeeding in my class. However, we were only a few weeks into the program, and Jason had been absent so much that I didn’t think the switch would cause any harm to his learning. Unfortunately, he was not the first.

Amanda was one of the two tutoring students who was also in my regular class. She was a sweet kid, friendly, hard-working, a people-pleasing sort. Hers and CJ’s friendship seemed an unlikely one; they were such different people. But they frequently chatted together, stood together in line, and sat together at car-riders. When Mrs. Woods told me a month after Jason’s departure that Amanda would be switching too, I was surprised that CJ was again the cause.

Mrs. Woods explained an incident that Ms. Payne, the new math tutor who had replaced Ms. Bailey, had reported to her, a story she had also confirmed through security camera footage. The students had been lined up outside the classroom door after a bathroom break. CJ stood behind Amanda and tapped her on the shoulder. Amanda ignored him. CJ turned to the student behind him, shrugged and held out his hands in a gesture that said What’s up with her? CJ then turned back to Amanda and punched her hard in the back.

“Amanda also said that CJ has been harassing her about being short?” Mrs. Woods said quizzically.

“That’s not something I ever saw — I mean yes, he teased her sometimes, but I thought they were friends. She never seemed bothered by it,” I said.

“Well, Amanda doesn’t seem like the type who would necessarily report something like that.” Mrs. Woods was also the art teacher and knew every student in the school.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I admitted, racked with guilt that I hadn’t realized what was happening.

“But I think she’ll be fine in the other class,” Mrs. Woods said, brightening slightly. “I mean, she likes you as a teacher and she really didn’t want to move, but I told her ‘you see Mrs. Kirkman every day in school,’ you’ll be fine.”

“What about CJ?” I said.

“I wrote him up and called his mom,” Mrs. Woods replied. She didn’t offer any more.

For the first time, I actually felt angry with CJ. The feeling passed quickly because, of course, it wasn’t his fault that he received no consequences and that victims of his bullying needed to “change” because of him. Jason “changed.” Amanda was punished.

I need to be straight for a second about bullying in schools. It’s a more complicated issue than many people on the outside think. As unjust as it seems and is, sometimes moving a bullying victim away from the bully is the best solution. Was it here? At this point, CJ wasn’t just not benefitting from the program; he was driving others away. Ms. Bailey had been replaced by Ms. Payne as the math tutor because she couldn’t handle the class’s behavior. Maybe Ms. Payne and I couldn’t either. The waiting list for tutoring wasn’t getting any shorter.

You just need to try harder.

Build a better relationship with him.

You can’t do anything about his mother…then how…?

You can’t change the fact that your school won’t allow consequences, not even taking away Dojo points…then what…?

I don’t know…just…understand! Be compassionate and understanding!

These thoughts echoed in my head time and again over the next few weeks — I dared not say anything to admin; no teacher would in my situation for fear of being labeled “not understanding” and “not compassionate” or, even worse, “not in it for the kids.”

I spent the past three years in a private school before starting at my current one. I didn’t quite understand when setting clear rules with clear and consistent consequences had been replaced with “building relationships” and nothing more, at least not anything specific. I managed my classroom with procedures, rules, and consistent rewards and consequences at the public schools I taught at in Florida — but, then again, those schools were high-performing. My current one is not. I hope I’m making the difference I came to this school to make — I do have good relationships with the students, even CJ, I believe. According to modern consensus among teachers, he should be thriving.

The last week before winter break is always a tough one. Teachers and students alike are both exhausted and excited and yet there is always a great amount of work to get done this week as well. Tensions always run high, perhaps especially in the year 2021 with the pandemic going on. It was only Tuesday of that week when CJ’s latest beat-down of another student happened. The victim was a student from another class, and the incident occurred while all the tutoring students were in transit to the cafeteria.

CJ will be eating lunch with me for the next two days, the email from Mrs. Hoffman, the assistant principal, read. She sent this email to Mrs. Woods and me. And we will need to have an adult always next to him in line since this kind of behavior generally occurs when a teacher isn’t looking. Unfortunately, CJ needs extra support since he has trouble controlling himself when he feels disrespected.

Over the years I’ve had students with ADHD or volatile tempers who did indeed need “extra support.” They couldn’t control their impulses, and it mattered little who was watching. I admit, this email made me angry, and I followed a rage impulse myself. The strongly worded reply I wrote was:

I do agree that CJ needs extra support. However, with all due respect, I feel he needs support in areas like following the golden rule. I think he also needs to be taught that feelings aren’t facts and just because he feels ‘disrespected,’ it doesn’t mean he was, nor does it justify hitting. I feel CJ is a little on the ego-centric side even for a 5th grade child and needs to learn to be sensitive to others.

Mrs. Hoffman’s curt reply thanked me for my input and said that CJ has the right to feel disrespected whenever he feels so. She ended her reply with a vague statement about “coming together to support him to make better choices.”

Mrs. Woods’s reply was similar, though she included a request that I be patient and understanding because “a lot is going on with CJ’s home life.” When I asked her what was going on in hopes of understanding CJ better, she dodged the question. Mrs. Sykes, his regular teacher, seemed unaware of anything “going on” in CJ’s home either.

It is currently the year 2022, and tutoring will start up again this week. I’m looking forward to it; I miss my tutoring students, including CJ. But I can’t say I want him in my class.

It’s not because I don’t like the kid; I’m just worried about him driving off more of my students with his bullying. There’s nothing we can do about his permissive mother — and perhaps he genuinely is going through things at home. But what about the other kids who may also have difficult home lives but are not similarly disruptive?

I never suggested that CJ be removed from the tutoring program; it would hardly be fair if he wasn’t given a lesser consequence first, a detention or suspension or study hall during recess. He and I are stuck with each other for now. I’ll continue to prod, prompt, and cajole work from him. We’ll continue to share things like a love of comic books and theories about the upcoming Dr. Strange movie. We’ll continue to “build our relationship.” I just hope I don’t lose anymore relationships with other students.