Teacher Trek Day 7: Post-Traumatic Teaching Syndrome

 

As I walked toward the school this morning, I saw a ladder against the building for roof repair. Immediately I was transported back to my first year of teaching high school in Louisville, Kentucky.

Having been associated with graduate school for the years leading up to my first high school job, I confess that my classroom discipline was lax. Make that LAX. For example, in grad school, if someone wanted to leave the room, he simply left. If someone wanted to get coffee, she went. The thought of having to be in the room with my students all of the time had simply not crossed my mind in several years.

I had completed my Ph. D. classes on an early August Thursday, 1997, in Pennsylvania. We climbed into the moving truck and drove into the night. My new job began on Monday in Louisville. I missed all of orientation, and I saw my books for the first time on the afternoon before classes began. I was in survival mode, and class discipline was not on my radar.

So when I needed something from the office on Tuesday, I simply told the students, “Be right back,” and walked out. When I returned down the hallway toward my class, I just happened to glance out the window. To my dismay and to his classmates’ delight, I saw one of my students crawl out of my classroom window and onto the roof.

The horror, the horror.

I was ticked, so I hustled into the room, ushered the student back through the window and into his seat, and grabbed a demerit to penalize him to the fullest extent of the law. When I told my principal, B.Rose, he offered sage advice:

“David, were you in your room when Brandon S. climbed out?”

“No, I definitely was not.”

“Then if I were you, I would just put that demerit back into my pocket and hope this goes away.”

The incident remained undiscussed in my classroom for the rest of the year, but I did receive a call from Brandon’s father that night, asking if I was in the habit of letting my students walk on the roof.

Amazing how seeing a harmless ladder against a building can trigger the PTSD from my early teaching years.