My Grey World

I have a student who really understands choice theory. In fact I believe he gets it better than most. He is bright, and totally unmotivated to do school work. His main goal seems to be to set the adults in his world off and engage them in a power struggle. He get his power need, freedom need and fun need met every time he succeeds.

This student was assigned to my advisory class at the end of last year and he is also in my science class. He is challenging some days, but over the course of the year, we have developed a pretty good relationship. Some of his teachers can only see the bad in him. They see the world as black and white and this particular child has no good in him in their opinion. I on the other hand love to see the shades of grey that make life so very interesting.

Today is our potluck lunch. Each child was asked to bring in something to contribute to the lunch. This student chose tomatoes. Before school started he came into my room with his hands behind his back and said "Ms. L are you going to be mad at me if I forgot tomatoes, but brought something else.?" I replied "No, I won't be upset. What did you bring?" With a huge smile on his face he brought his hands out from behind his back producing a bag of tomatoes.....I almost fooled you didn't I? I had to laugh and at the same time I thought about how sad it was that some never would see this fun playful side of him because they only saw a naughty boy.

Am I in his quality world? I don't know. I do know that he is always respectful and polite to me. He rarely tries to cross the line and when he does he knows that I will talk to him about the choice he made and why. I don't rant and rave or punish him. Does he do my classwork. Yes and No. He rarely turns in any written work, but always demonstrates his understanding verbally. Is he succeeding......Is he learning.....