A class of their own

Dontt dismiss the bottom-feeders’ in today’s schools history shows us the battlers can make it through, with some focused guidance.

- DAVID HILL

Chaz hailed me in the street last week. He's in his mid-50s now, lays concrete, drives a beat-up Honda. He's missing a few teeth, missing his razor, too. He's done all right. I mean that last sentence. When I taught him four decades ago, you couldn't imagine Chaz holding down a job of any sort. Yet here he was, married with a couple of granddaughters ("you wanna see the photos?") Chaz was in a special Form 5 (Year 11) English class our small high school formed one year. We knew a bunch of pupils with major learning problems were about to start their School Certificate course (now replaced by Level 1 NCEA); knew also they'd sink in a mainstream group.

I heard myself say, "I'll have them." I lay awake that night, wondering what I'd taken on.

It had to be a small class; they'd need focused attention. There were 17 of them, 15 boys and two girls. The ratio is revealing, and still depressingly relevant.

A number of the 17 were "behaviour problems". Of course they were: our 1970s education system was as loud as today's in trumpeting failures. "We're losers," was how Mitch put it. They were poor at communication; didn't have the language to explain themselves. If there was a misunderstanding or confrontation, they got confused, then frustrated, then angry.

It was no use teaching them the official School Cert English syllabus. Even at the slowest pace, they'd be lost. But I still wanted them to learn... well, something. How? Common-sense stratagems offered themselves. I found early on that they liked being read to. They became silent, attentive, almost gentle. So I worked through Barry Hines' Kes, with its slum boy, hopeless at school (yes, an obvious choice), who finds and trains a young hawk; finds also skills he'd never imagined.