Jordan Paul - One Teacher's Approach

foreign [Music] overwhelming feeling that students keep giving to me about their experience in school and about their experience in their life is that nobody cares nobody really cares enough to get involved with them they may care about whether they're learning the subject matter or not whether they're teaching them well enough but they're not caring about them as an individual what they're going through you're most worried about you're worried about him getting addicted it is scaring you that I don't want it to happen and and you told him this and what does he say he just uh like any answer like um don't worry I won't I won't I just need a little help um to get through the day because um I get so tired you know your school really gets me down and I just I just got a little panic and you know I try and talk to him if he does love me he will care I think he will anyway he'll care about what I feel inside you think that he'd be willing to come with you together and the three of us could talk or maybe find out if something I asked him that he might resent it no yeah he doesn't know me though yeah of course you don't know me either yeah but like I've heard about you I know you really good teacher and you understand people yeah that's why I can't do it yeah you know I try I I you know but mainly I would really like to try and get him to understand himself and what's happening and to I mean that's a pretty big thing at this point he's he's saying in essence I'd rather take drugs than be involved with you and we're not going to get too far until we get him involved you know and even if it's not today this weekend or tonight or late afternoon or whenever such as tolerance habituation and physical dependence are probably the keys to why people get hung up with drugs tolerance is a situation where an individual takes a drug over a long period of time and as a result of taking that drug over a long period of time he requires my idea is that no one approach is going to be right for all the kids in that class so there's a lot of different things that I try and one of them is that lecture and one of them would be you know having a guest speaker somewhere in the back of my mind I have a feeling that maybe for some kids this is a valuable thing and it might work for some kids the kids who are most turned off to what seem to be the kids who are most heavily involved with drugs the kids who really enjoy that lecture many times are the intellectual kids who are not very hung up with drugs anyway but I think really when I think about it it's uh one of the kids who probably don't need to hear in terms of their drug involvement what is in this kit is simply a display of the various items these assimilate the color pretty well but I looked at this and I noticed that really the colors aren't exactly what they really are in the true capsule form if you'd like to see the kit do come up we are going to assume as as I've talked about for those who weren't here we're going to assume that the drug is legal if it was available to you what would be the criteria that you would use to make a decision as to whether this is the a good thing for you to do or not now you're all to make a choice you may change your mind at any time during the debate and tomorrow if you would like you can change sides of the room now my tendency is and it's a it's a bad tendency that that I want to get involved in it because I I tend to do these times I tend to be involved too much in these kinds of things okay would anybody like to start uh to talk about why let's see this is a negative outweighs apart from Kim okay well I feel that life you only get to go through it once and there's so much to do in life there's so many things to do and I don't think that taking pot is helping you to experience all the things you can do I smoke dope before I didn't like it um didn't give me any Thrills anything like I could have more fun not loaded you people you know like people disagree with marijuana you seem to be really concerned about it you know but I think you should just mind your own business because I don't give a hoot about you guys playing football but hold on nobody all right wait a minute let me make this clear in the debate one of the reasons I phrased the question the way the way I did is because nobody is sitting over here telling you what to do or what not to do they're sitting over here or you're sitting over here because you've made a decision for yourself that's all and all we're doing now is looking at what went into making up that decision but nobody's telling you that you shouldn't or should do this and you shouldn't tell them they should or shouldn't do it all I would say is be consistent if you're concerned with what you put in your body then be concerned with what you put in your body in all walks of life everything but don't tell me you're concerned with air pollution and I see you smoking a cigarette or a joint that's hypocritical when you say that you're against the oil companies making pollution that's affecting everybody and everyone's going to suffer from that but when you smoke a cigarette or something that's your own decision based on what you want and you can still you might like you might hate yourself you might you know I'm not saying this is good right but you might say you know I I don't really try to ask myself I'm no good you know it needs help the person said that I need help somebody might say that but he might still care about other people okay I I accepted that as an exception to what I just said you're right yeah it's not purely hypocrite huh [Music] yeah I didn't hear that at all I think the reason maybe I smoke is because I'm bored you know I don't I don't got too many friends you know I got nothing to do but that's sad yeah many people at least I'm happier I don't know I I think it's sad to get to have me hear you say that I mean I I don't see you as a happy person you say I'm happy but what I'm saying is that if if you see things this way that maybe maybe if these people see it this way that it's possible to to to find out how they're accomplishing what they are and maybe it's possible for you sitting home and getting high in your room you're never going to find it I mean that's sad that's like to me like the alcoholics will sit around and on skid row and get drunk now I don't see him as being a very happy person but there are other possibilities there are ways to get out of your boredom there are ways to do things that's one of the things we're going to talk about on Wednesday and Thursday is alternative but there are ways to go I mean like you know what if they're Sports you know that's aggressive no I think it is no no I'm I'm agreeing with you but that that's not an only way to go there are many ways to go there are many Alternatives and that's why I like reading books okay I you know but you know you talk about friends you talk about you know you don't have friends and that's part of of what we're going to talk about because I think people can help people it's a great substitute for drugs and for loneliness so then the question is how do you go about finding them and that's what we're going to talk about I'm going to be on Thursday he was willing to put down anything that anybody over here said but in one minute of talking with him individually and if I can follow up on that now I think I can get him to the point where you know where his mind is a little more open because nobody's ever said to him there are alternatives that you don't have to sit home and be bored and miserable and lonely people have said you don't have to do it but they've never really helped him to go about finding out how to do it if you become a pothead you risk blowing the most important time of your life you're a teenager that unrepeatable time for you to grow up and to prepare for being an adult that can handle problems and make something meaningful out of life every generation with the brain power and the opportunity to do more to the human needs of this world than any other generation in history with hosting your children don't have too much criticism about what you did or didn't do because you were on uh well I think that a film if a film presents two negative and ideas the kids are going to think that there's something that they're leaving out hey that was so stupid you see all these guys shooting their hair when all blue and the face and stuff and you know that's wrong well you can't believe that what can you believe you can't believe any of the films and all the information is wrong then you can go out and take it because there's nothing wrong with it so if there's one part of the information that's false then the assumption is that it was the other thing this fall yeah but you can believe your fence because they've taken it and you know they have if people are educated on on drugs and everything there isn't that element of the unknown they know what's going to happen experience hopefully people can learn from other people's experiences but the question that Robin raised that's that's always been a troubling thing for me also is are the people who are most likely to get into trouble with drugs uh who we'd most like to influence the people who will be least influenced by the approach that we take towards to drug education I think that all of this conceptions were cleared up like in our class and everyone would wouldn't take threats anymore but don't you think that some people who went off drugs and lots and lots and things go to something else something completely different from drugs to get but they're kicks or whatever you call it okay so then that's really saying something about what we're really lacking in this whole thing of drug education perhaps we're not really getting to the real underlying causes of why people use drugs and really helping them deal with that but how about a positive alternative of something that you can do if you're lonely if you're scared if you if you're bored if there's all kinds of things that may be happening in your life that may lead to drugs what about helping people get involved with some possible things that can really deal with those problems I could grab on to somebody else in a relationship and I could be involved with that person and hang on to that person and not let them go and delude myself into thinking I was in love when I was really just lonely and depressed and alienated and scared and I could do that for the same motivation that someone might use dough the big hurdle I have with many kids is that I am an authority figure teacher and they've learned to suspect teachers and those in authority so we have to spend a great deal of time building a relationship before anything meaningful can start to happen sometimes the resistance is so great that I never get through so I told her I was sorry for what had happened I really felt that we could handle the situation she and I and we didn't have to involve you or anybody else and I asked her if she wanted to get together and talk and she said yeah okay ask me you know sometime again well that's the last time I saw her that was a week ago I see her every day on campus I talked to her I said you know you're going to come to class yeah she says Ah no I don't think so I don't know you know and we say hello every day in passing and I haven't seen her in class in a week from what I know do I can mentioned about his name to anybody on campus and even all of her peer group goes oh my God not her again she's in trouble again and she's been cutting every single class extensively since the beginning of the semester but you know I'm not convinced that there is nothing we can do with with Linda if we can get to her and and like I don't know if I can get to her because she's she's pretty well angry and turned off to me but uh but I had the feeling when we talked that that she wasn't as turned off as she would have as her image as she would have liked to have come off okay well I'm just gonna wait then until she shows up again and when she does I'm going to see if we can't if I can't set up something with her to talk with her alone [Music] thank you [Laughter] [Music] the concept of the teacher's role is but in terms of our involvements with students there seems to be an unwritten law that that stops when the bell rings for the end of school that that stops during lunch time that our involvement is just on a teacher student relationship in the classroom that will take papers home we'll make tests up but we won't take a kid home or we won't stay after school or take a lunch period very often I mean you know once in a while maybe but not on any kind of a regular basis foreign stop oh my God irritates me to be caged in like a it's like a game I felt that you were making a kind of game and I was a victim of the game I don't like that it seemed to me you didn't even think about I mean your reaction was immediate that you were going to use force and that was it that's true I've always felt that there's a level between what the psychiatrist has to deal with in his office which may be some really deep-seated serious problem and the typical problems which kids are having that have dealt with by teachers probably wouldn't develop into those serious problems and we can meet a lot of those needs like my parents can control you know they are above me I don't know we can you know make demand sick and you know threaten yeah there's a number of ways people don't have control over you now as much as they did not nearly as much so you can start behaving a little bit more appropriately for the situation [Music] what my life has been in the last few years have been balancing what I can do here with kids and what I have to do to be a husband and a father and to meet the needs of my wife and children and for a while I was pulling away from my family and just you know like I characterized as saving the world you know this kid and that kid everybody had problems and I was getting involved and I was really you know I was doing good things but my marriage was disintegrating and when my wife finally was able to hit me over the head with that concept I finally woke up to the fact that you know what's going on here in my home is is the basis and that's got to be where it's at it's really hard to keep perspective I guess is what I'm saying [Music] I think a master teacher in teaching is so important the last experience I had was you know something that almost made me decide to cook teaching I was so stifled in what I really could do and I had to have everything you know set up as far as classroom is where I had to be in rows where you really can get close and involved with the kids you had to have books they had to be assigned to and they had to have chapters to read every week you know and they and the role had to be taken every day which I you know you should take role but I think the point where you're reprimanded afterwards if you don't take role or if you don't start the minute the Bell Rings is ridiculous [Music] how are you in this bath Campus of 3 000 people there are many people who feel like they don't know anybody they feel alienated and I think that's the appeal of this kind of thing is maybe doing things to get people to break the ice to get people more involved with each other I've done this kind of thing before in class and the reaction is you know the people who who have an involvement like that tend to feel closer to each other there you go okay Sue can we do something like that do you think um well we could do something like that um on a voluntary basis those who want to I can do a very simple kind of thing not as threatening perhaps as the things they did in the film if one of the primary reasons that people go to drugs is alienation is is a need for contact is the need for involvement then this kind of things not in and of itself one time that's not going to replace it but if you can if people can start to become involved with each other this way uh they're saying that this may be an alternative to using drugs those who do not wish to be involved can remain in the classroom and I don't think it's fair to the people outside to have you standing around and gawking at them so if you'll stay in the classroom and you know read or you know do you know whatever you want to do [Music] thank you begin with just going to walk around with each other and uh and shake hands get around to as many people as you can non-verbally no it's laughing okay now find the hand of somebody Who You're Next to take right hands take right hand everybody get somebody's right hand close your eyes and explore that hand get to know that hand anymore that's the strength in that hand and defenderness have an argument about talking open your eyes see who your partner is see your partner for the first time foreign [Music] the rewarding thing to me about teaching is that I can have a positive effect on the life of an individual I can't feel really good about the positive effect I have if I'm just teaching him subject matter and that's how he's going out of the class with and so the positive effect that I would like to think that I can have with some students the ones that I can get involved with is that I can help them to use the material that they have in an effective way in an effective way meaning to me use it in a way that's going to make them happy and increase to some extent that happiness and the satisfaction that they can get out of their lives and there's no way that I could do this just standing up there and being a teacher for 40 minutes a day one semester of their life income taxes and things like that so so their insurance there are things that are made easier by having their life [Music] I really don't think [Music]