Gaslighting a Student (AKA The Best Lesson I Ever Taught)

I have a student, we’ll name him John. For the past few months, John has been the bane of my existence. Talking nonstop, never seated, needs to be redirected constantly, submits almost no work, on his phone constantly, and when confronted about his test performance, blames me for “not teaching that” (spoiler: I did teach that).

The lesson: Teach John what it’s like to teach John. So that he didn’t fail the quarter, upon the request of his mother (and admin forcing my hand), I gave an extra credit project. At first I wasn’t too happy about this, but I quickly realized it was a wonderful opportunity. I made him present his project to me and a group of other teachers. During this presentation, my colleague was on his phone the whole time. Myself and another colleague talked over John multiple times. The fourth interrupted with “sorry John, I just need to run to the bathroom really quickly,” just to come back in and interrupt with more questions. To his credit, John powered through the presentation. At the end, I turned to him and asked, “How can I give you credit for this when you didn’t mention X, Y, or Z?” (All things he did, in fact, mention.) “You weren’t very clear about X” (There was a whole slide about X.) We went back and forth, with John getting increasingly frustrated defending himself and complaining about how we weren’t a very good audience. He was turning red explaining that if we just listened and let him present, we would’ve seen these things. Interesting. After a few minutes, the realization hit. While he didn’t say anything, the lightbulb that went off in his head said everything I needed to hear.

Of course, I’ll grade John on the actual work he turned in, not the presentation. (And I did tell him this, I’m not evil.) But, something tells me next quarter will be a lot smoother, for both me and John. Here’s to hoping.

FOLLOW UP: Here’s the long awaited follow up. In hindsight, I probably should’ve waited a little more than a month to update. We’ve had quite a few snow days, so it doesn’t feel like I’ve had a good amount of actual class time to accurately assess. With that being said, I have to give John a good amount of credit. There has been a fair amount of measurable change. He certainly has not become the perfect student overnight, he still interrupts from time to time, and definitely isn’t seated throughout the whole class period.

What has changed though, is John’s ability to read the room, show empathy to his teachers, and self correct. Just this week alone, I can’t count the number of times he has started to behave like John, and without me saying anything, self-corrected. He’ll usually do this will a comment like “I’m driving you insane, aren’t I Ms. MagesticAvocado? My bad. I’ll lock in.” After that point, he’s generally been able to do as he says he will. Considering the fact that these interactions used to derail him for an entire block, I’m happy with this result. He hasn’t received a single write up since his presentation for me, and he’s only been late on one assignment, which was eventually completed to the best of his ability. While we still have work to do, he’d leaps and bounds ahead of where he was when I met him. And I’m optimistic moving forward. My only hope is things stay this way.