BEDM Day 4: What’s the problem?

Every problem is an opportunity.  This is what we are told. This is how things are spun.

It’s not exactly true. Most problems are just problems. Something you need to fix. Or correct. Or address. Or redress.

But there is a part of me that sort of likes problems. Probably more in a work sense than in my personal life, though in some situations, even then. There is, if I’m honest, a great deal of satisfaction in facing a problem, thinking on it, tackling it, and making it right.

I find this at school quite a lot. I find myself, on something of a regular basis, telling people:

“But I like it when they rack ‘em up and I keep shooting ‘em down.”

The population with whom I work are, for want of a better word, troubled. They get angry, they get anxious, they get confused, they get abusive, they can get quite violent. It’s a pretty stressful job in many ways. People always use the word ‘challenging’, probably to be nice, but actually, they’re spot on. It is a challenge. It’s sort of exciting in a weird sort of way. They’ll explode with some crazy, semi-delusional axe to grind, and I have to find a way of manoeuvring them so

a) they don’t hurt anyone

b) they don’t hurt themselves

c) they don’t get their own way. We have to win, you see. If they lash out, cause a scene, throw a major tantrum, smash the place up and you placate them, they just learn that lashing out, throwing tantrums and smashing stuff up is a pretty easy way of getting what you want.

Or maybe it’ll be something like:

“Right, it’s time to go in now.”

“I’m not going to fucking science. I fucking hate science. It’s boring.” <pushes bin over>

After which they will remind you that ‘you can’t fucking make them’ which is technically true. Physically moving them and making them sit in a lesson and work?  Pretty tricky - they’re like... 15 and bigger than me.

So you unbuckle your bag of tricks; persuasion, consequences, rewards for good choices (like doing the fuck as you’re fucking well told for five fucking minutes), or sometimes even appealing to their better nature, if they have one; and after a few minutes they’ll be sat in science working like a lamb.

It’s very satisfying.

Especially when, once the moment has passed and they’re calm and think you’re wonderful again (because you’re not making them go to science anymore), you slip in the consequences like a knife between the ribs:

“Well done. I’m really pleased you went to science so sensibly. Now, I don’t need to remind you that you’ve lost your reward time today for swearing at me, do I?”

“No.” <glaring at floor>

“But you understand why, yes?”

“Yes!”

“Good. So all we need to do to put it behind us is go and pick up that bin, okay?”

“Okay! Okay!”

And like magic, the bin is reinstalled in its proper place, science work is completed - however begrudgingly, and most important of all, my honour is restored and he has to sit and be bored whilst everyone else gets to play computer games.

And replay this once or twice a week for a few months and by the end of the year you have a pupil who, most of the time, just does as he’s told without throwing bins, calling you a prick or punching you in the face.

He has LEARNED CONSEQUENCES.

Problems are okay. Without problems there would be no solutions...