{"id":228,"date":"2014-12-18T12:14:54","date_gmt":"2014-12-18T17:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/?p=228"},"modified":"2015-04-09T10:24:36","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T14:24:36","slug":"t-o-y-stories-blog-facing-the-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/t-o-y-stories-blog-facing-the-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"T.O.Y. Stories Blog: Facing the Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"anne<\/a><\/p>\n

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Anne Cross<\/p>\n

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T.O.Y. Stories: \u00a0An Education Blog Sharing Thoughts, Ideas and Strategies from Maryland\u2019s Teachers of the Year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Facing the Challenge<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Anne Cross<\/strong><\/p>\n

You know the kid.\u00a0 He is the one who at six or seven years old already had a \u201creputation.\u201d\u00a0 He is the one whose name appeared on your class list and you groaned.\u00a0 He smells bad, curses, never does his homework, bites other kids, carves his name into the desk, etc.\u00a0 Yes, you know him.<\/p>\n

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Matt was that kid.\u00a0 Matt moved to my fifth grade classroom from another county school.\u00a0 It was several months into the school year.\u00a0 He also came with a reputation.\u00a0 When his mother had been sent to prison on drug charges, Matt came to our community to live with his grandmother.\u00a0 She admitted that she had no idea what to do with him and had no intention of even trying.\u00a0 She told me not to call.<\/p>\n

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Matt was a wild man!\u00a0 Whether it was due to ADHD, his mother’s drug use during pregnancy, or having had to raise himself, Matt was out of control.\u00a0 To say that dealing with Matt was a challenge would be an understatement.\u00a0 Reaching out to him was nearly impossible.\u00a0 He was violent and destructive.\u00a0 At 10 years old, he had already built a wall around himself and had already defined himself as worthless.\u00a0 He had no friends.<\/p>\n

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There was no miracle behavior management strategy that I employed with Matt.\u00a0 Believe me, he was far beyond checklists, stickers, and incentives.\u00a0 Instead, I just approached each day one at a time, and dealt with each incident one at a time.\u00a0 It was hard; very, very hard.\u00a0 We spent time together.\u00a0 We talked.\u00a0 Working with Matt took a tremendous amount of patience and creativity; more than I ever believed I had within me!\u00a0 To be able to help Matt, I could not make excuses, and I could not sell myself short.<\/p>\n

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I often had to be ten steps ahead of Matt just to protect him from himself.\u00a0 There was a tremendous amount of hurt and anger inside of that little boy.\u00a0 I tried to help him see himself as more than the wild man he believed himself to be; to respect himself and feel a sense of self-worth and dignity.\u00a0 I never gave up on Matt and I often wondered what happened to him after he left elementary school.\u00a0 That was nearly 15 years ago.<\/p>\n

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It was after school about five years ago.\u00a0 The secretary called down to my classroom and asked if a former student could stop in and see me.\u00a0 Of course!\u00a0 I love it when they visit!\u00a0 Although many years had gone by, and he was a grown man, I recognized Matt right away.\u00a0 You never forget your Matts.<\/p>\n

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Matt told me that he hadn’t planned on coming to see me that day.\u00a0 He had been driving around and was reflecting on just how great his life is.\u00a0 He has a job he really enjoys, working on cars in a body shop.\u00a0 He has a loving wife and a beautiful six week old baby girl.\u00a0 Matt told me that he had to come and see me that day.\u00a0 Matt said, \u201cMrs. Cross, I am the man I am today because of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is impossible to put into words how much Matt’s visit meant to me.\u00a0 Of course I felt overwhelmed knowing I had had such a positive impact on a child’s life, but Matt also made me realize just how much \u201cthe challenge\u201d means to me.\u00a0 It is the challenging students who taught me what it truly means to be kind and patient.\u00a0 They taught me to give respect, even when I don’t receive respect in return.\u00a0 They taught me to be compassionate; nearly every one of them has a story.\u00a0 The challenging students taught me to never lower the bar for any student, no matter what their reputation might be.\u00a0 They taught me that they need me, and I am there to serve them.\u00a0 I MUST believe in myself in order to teach them to believe in themselves.<\/p>\n

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Matt may have told me that he is the man he is today because of me, but I know in my heart that I am the teacher I am today because of Matt.\u00a0 Thank you, Matt.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Anne Cross teaches 5th <\/sup>grade at Gunpowder Elementary School in Perry Hall.\u00a0 She is Baltimore County\u2019s 2014-15 Teacher of the Year.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Welcome to MSDE\u2019s T.O.Y. Stories Blog.\u00a0 The blog capitalizes on the expertise of award-winning Teachers of the Year in Maryland who share educational ideas to promote the continued discussion of a wide range of topics. Issues to be discussed over this year may include parent engagement ideas, instructional strategies for increased achievement, educational innovation and reform \u2013 the Maryland college and Career-Ready Standards, new online PARCC state assessments, classroom management techniques and strategies and suggested solutions to various perceived education problems.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

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Articles do not endorse any educational product, service, curriculum or pedagogy.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/a>
\n 
\nAnne Cross
\n 
\nT.O.Y. Stories: \u00a0An Education Blog Sharing Thoughts, Ideas and Strategies from Maryland\u2019s Teachers of the Year.
\n 
\nFacing the Challenge
\n\u00a0
\nBy Anne Cross
\nYou know the kid.\u00a0   …Learn more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":229,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,32,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-toystoriesblog","category-teachinglearning"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions\/232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/msde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}