Action-Ed’s “Making Education Meaningful” Blog

For some students, absolutely nothing their teachers teach them will ‘get through’ because their self-talk is resistant to learning. I am NOT talking about troubled, abused, incapable students; I’m talking about those ‘slug students’ who just sit there and resist learning because what they say to themselves on a minute-by-minute, second-by-second basis repels it. Their self-talk, for whatever reason, repels new information, new ideas, and new skills … like water off a ducks back. It’s stupid, lame, retarded, boring, who cares, this sucks, whatever, when does class end?

Example
I was in a classroom last week and overheard four female students converse during a work period. Here are some snippets:

“Mr. _____ is so lame. He thinks his subject is so important. It’s so stupid.”

“I have like no idea what they’re talking about in that class. Like I care … (friend says something) … Yeah, all I want is a pass.”

“______ (classmate) thinks he’s so smart. All he does is do homework. I think he’s the only one.”

“I can’t wait to watch ________ (reference to a reality TV show). All they do is fight with each other. It’s hilarious.”

“Are you working this weekend? Oh god, I hate my job. It’s like the lamest job ever … I don’t even do anything.” (friend replies with envious whine-like tone in her voice) “You’re sooo luckeeey you don’t have to do anything.”

How to Deal with Slug Students

When I walked over to this group of girls to see how their work was coming along, their bodies bristled, they stopped talking, and they waited for “teacher” to talk … in the same way we wait in fearful anticipation before a nurse gives us a needle. I spoke. They froze. They numbly nodded their heads when I asked if things were going well. They mumbled a couple of lame excuses as to why they couldn’t show me any of their finished work. They sat their like slugs, complaining about everything, liking nothing, and uninspired to do much of anything.

How do You Deal with Slug Students (or Workers)?
I’ve worked with many students like these ones over the years and, to be honest, they can be the most difficult (if you approach them the wrong way) because on a minute-by-minute basis they are telling themselves over-and-over that everything’s lame and everything sucks. Why would anyone work hard at something if they viewed the world that way? And if that’s the case, what could any teacher do to get them to do anything at all?

It’s easy to get frustrated with these students. It’s easy to write them off as lazy. As slugs. As wet noodles that aren’t worth pushing. Sadly, however, I’ve found that that’s how most people in their lives treat them and they’ve simply learned to respond in kind. But what I’ve found over the years is that what these slug students need – like what they’re really, really craving at a deep psychological level – is for someone to validate them. To put it another way, slug students are often hopeless students.

Positive Shock and Awe
What I’ve found works best is to give slug students a dose of positive shock and awe. They need someone to rattle their self-talk cages. They need someone to pull them aside and say how much potential they see in them. What outstanding qualities they possess. How frustrating it is to sit back and listen to them verbally beat themselves up – and the world – all class long. How their body language (have a look because I guarantee you that your slug students are really, really slouching) sends a message to everyone in their world that they don’t care about much of anything, especially themselves. They need to hear how happy you would be if you saw them taking pride in themselves. How happy you’d be if they found something they liked doing and poured their heart into it … regardless if it had anything to do with your course or not.

Basically, slug students need someone to come along and say, “I care about you, and I hate seeing you not care about you. In fact, in this class, I will not be able to stand by and watch you not care about you.” Slug students need their ongoing self-talk to be disrupted by something and someone totally unexpected.

Let me end with a story.
Seven years ago I was teaching a slug student who struggled with things, and her oral reading was awful. At the start of the course I let her pain through reading three sentences aloud to her classmates before respectfully moving on to the next student. After observing her repel everything we were learning in class and listening to her abuse herself over and over with her own self-talk, I finally pulled her aside and did the above (i.e. positive shock and awe), and encouraged her to read anything … just anything … for 30 minutes at night before going to bed. “Just read something! Steamy romance even,” I pleaded and then said quite seriously, “And I won’t tolerate you beating yourself up in my class any more. No more whatevers, yeah buts, or I’m stupids. Seriously.”

Three months passed and she would tell me from time to time she was finishing books. I continued to encourage her, but I remember being frustrated with her ongoing sluggish behavior in my class … but I didn’t want to be too hard on her either. With two weeks left in class we were reading a passage aloud and I asked her to read for the first time in 4 months. I was absolutely floored with how much she had improved. It was still tough to listen to, but it dawned on me that this slug student really had been reading. She really was trying. Her improvement was huge!

So I stopped her mid-sentence. She flinched. I said to her in front of all the students, “Get on up and stand on top of your desk chair.” I knew she was thinking the worst, but she obliged nonetheless. I explained to the class of students (hamming it up … in kind of an angry tone) that I had NEVER seen a student do what she did. And finally, I asked the class to give her a standing ovation for improving so much in her oral reading. They were a great group of students, we clapped and cheered for 3-5 seconds, and that was the end of it. When it was all said and done, I had maybe invested 20 minutes of time that semester working on that individual student.

Last year I met up with a few students from that class for dinner at the restaurant across the street from my house. She was there, and she was looking great. At a certain point during our two hours of reminiscing, she pulled me aside and said, “You were the only one Mr. Ross. You were the only one who believed in me. Everyone else thought I was stupid. My family, my friends, my boyfriends. You were it. The only one. It changed everything. I don’t know how I can thank you.”

20 minutes of positive shock and awe. Don’t write your slug students off. Validate them. Let them know you care.