finding a strong enough "Why"

We often encounter people who we label (in secret of course, behind the mind's closed doors and spoken only to our closest friends) as "belligerent," "lazy," "good-for-nothing." They don't do any work, they don't study, they'll never amount to anything. Followed by, "I just understand them." A shrug of the shoulders, a flippant upward cast of the eyes, and oh well, so it goes.

It's in situations like these that we should really engage the other person and hear and see and feel what it's like for them to not want to do something that we think they should want to do. There just might be a postage stamp of insight, something small enough to hold and study and appreciate, that will allow us to shift our approach.

I mentioned in my first post about a student who refused to write his reading comprehension test. When I approached him I did something that he might not normally have been used to. Instead of standing over him and talking down, I kneeled down and asked him what was going on with the test. "Why do I have to write this test anyway?" He was wearing plastic glasses from a 3-D movie he had probably recently seen, whose lenses were missing. Looking like the class clown. It was an excellent question - why was he being forced to write a test about a subject he didn't care about?

"Well...it allows us to understand what you know and understand when you read this text", I answered, though I could tell that didn't satisfy him.

"It doesn't even matter because I don't like to write."

I looked down at his test and noticed that it was at a reading level four grades lower than everyone else. I looked him in the eyes, smiled, and asked: "What kind of work would you want to do if I could snap my fingers?" He thought about it for less than two seconds and easily answered:

"I'd be a cop."

Quite ironic that this boy, who didn't respect authority and didn't do as he was told wanted to be someone who told others what to do for a living.

"You realize that cops have to write reports. They have to be able to take in information and make sense of it and write about it."

He thought about that for a second. I continued: "These test are given so that you can practice reading information and answering questions and writing those answers down so that other people can understand it as well."

What I was doing was tying together the test that he was writing with the reports that he will be writing as a cop. Up until now it was only a test that teachers gave that had tremendously boring articles and even more painful questions. At least now writing the test was linked to his future as a cop, to something that he wanted to do. There was a purpose to his writing the test where before there wasn't one at all.

"Let's try one of the easier questions first," I offered. I read it to him, rephrased it a bit after, and prompted him. He gave me an answer that was great. My eyes widened at his answer, I smiled, and eagerly told him to write that answer down. He looked at me strangely and I just continued to encourage him. "I'm not kidding," I said, "that was a good answer. Write that down." I was genunely showing him my enthusiasm with how well he answered (his supply teacher for the day, no less). I didn't say "Good work" in a dry, spiritless monotone - I showed it with my body, with my face, with my eyes, and the pitch and tone of my voice. And if he looked at me like an alien...well, so what?

And so he started to write. I half-expected his printing to be illegible but it was quite neat.

"Your writing is actually really neat. Neater than most adults." He looked at me with his eyebrows knotted; I smiled, and then I told him I'd check on him in five minutes. And I walked away.

I noticed that he lowered his head and continued to write.