The silent kid

I have a Holden Caulfield wanna-bee in my class. He refuses to turn in anything. He goes mute. He lost his book. He has no homework. In small groups he avoids talking. When asked about his work he just covers his face with his hands and pretends he is invisible. His football coach said Holden responds well to discipline so I tried taking a hard line (getting angry takes a bit of work for me but I tried calling him into the hall for a stern talk, threatening him with an F etc.). No dice.

Then I had lunch with Dr. Ruth Fletcher, one of the deans at our school who specializes in learning differences. She role-played with me over vegetarian lasagna. I was Holden incarnate. She was me.

Ruth: "We are going to write down some themes about the book."
Me: "…"
R: "Do you know what a theme is?"
M: "Yeah…"
R: "Ok, what is it?"
M: "It's like, what the book is about."
R: "But not the whole book, just some parts of it. What is one thing that The Catcher in the Rye is about?"
M: "I don't know."
R: "Remember the first chapter about Pencey Prep? What was that chapter about."
M: "School"
R: "Good, write that down. Now, what about school?"

Baby steps. It's all about the breakdown in to questions that they can answer. He is scared. He has "always sucked at English." He doesn't want to complete assignments that will just further prove that he "can't do English." I told Ruth I never would have thought of those questions. I didn't know what to do with him. She said, "You have to be a teacher."

You have to coax him into understanding that he can succeed.

Today in class our activities moved away from sonnet analysis toward some improvisation to get ready for A Midsummer Night's Dream. Holden didn't need encouragement; he read a steamy love sonnet aloud to the whole class and leapt out of his seat to do a theater activity. He is in love. He is passionate. He is a performer. Then he came to my office in the afternoon and didn't close down on me. More evidence that you can't demand a lot of work from your students until you know them.