A Student Called Me a “Dick-rider.” Here’s What I Said

The job never has a dull day...

Sometimes the job does feel like that

It’s the middle of February, which means at my high school we’re right at the beginning of the Ultimate Frisbee unit. Because Frisbee was my college sport, I naturally get fired up. Over the years my enthusiasm has created a culture around the sport. The games are overly competitive - which I (somewhat) unprofessionally encourage. It’s not uncommon to see students cursing out the other team after a successful score, or going ballistic on the ref (me). The frisbee unit brings out the best and worst in my students. It’s a volatile time to teach. I love it.

Unfortunately, sometimes a student's behavior reaches so far beyond the norm of acceptable competitiveness, that I have to stop the sport and address it. It happened with my senior class on this particular occasion.

I feel a little sorry for my senior class, and that's because they have to deal with two kids I’ll call Larry and John. Larry and John are great kids, the problem is they’re too athletic. It’s like having two kids in an English class who have the ability to speed read “Infinite Jest,” but they have to wait for the rest of the class to figure out how to get past the 5th grade reading level. These two are practicing dunks while the rest of the class hasn’t managed to dribble a basketball one-handed yet.

Like all great athletes, Larry and John are hyper competitive, and unlike great athletes they have little control of their emotions. Much to their chagrin, I always place them on separate teams, and I encourage them to take leadership roles. Unfortunately, when things go wrong - a teammate drops a pass or someone misses an easy score - they mistake leadership with yelling at their teammates. The basketball coach and myself have had numerous conversations about how this method actually makes their teams worse, and I’m sad to say it hasn’t made much of a difference. I once brought the entire senior class to the library so we could discuss how encouraging your teammates after a mistake is actually a competitive advantage, then mid conversation John announced, “Nah, fuck that. I’m still gonna be an asshole.”

Teaching is such a fulfilling job.

In any case, on a regular Wednesday two weeks ago my senior class was playing Ultimate Frisbee. I say “regular” because nothing was on the line. There wasn’t a reward and it wasn’t a tournament, only the knowledge that if you won you…well, you won. That’s it.

Larry and John were up to their usual antics: cursing at each other from opposite teams, grumbling loudly when one of their teammates dropped a pass, hating that their teammates didn’t have a 30 inch vertical like they did. They are two kids who can’t fathom not being athletic. Their standard issue normal classmates drive them insane to a childish degree.

To make matters worse, there were two girls in the class that had recently arrived from Africa and spoke little to no english. One was on each team. Fortunatelly, they were somewhat astute at catching a frisbee. Unfortunately, they were struggling with the travel rule. In Ultimate Frisbee you can’t move with the disc; you can only pivot with one foot. Unfortunately, through a combination of the language barrier and sheer skittishness, when someone came to block them, they would immediately start shuffling their feet whenever they had the frisbee. Whenever this would happen Larry and John would roll their eyes in frustration.

After allowing both of the girls some soft reffing, (I let them travel a bit) I eventually paused the game and explained the travel rule again with body motions and gestures. After I was fairly sure they understood the rule, I let the game continue. It looked like things were going well, Larry and John were containing their tempers, and the game was even.

Then one of the girls caught the disc and shuffled their feet five or so steps. I called travel. In the pause that followed, Larry turned to me and asked, “Why are you a dick-rider?”

….

I took a deep breath, and said, “Larry, you can’t say that to me.”

He doubled down and said, “but you are, you’re a dick-rider.”

The rest of the class had stopped moving and started staring at the exchange.

I breathed again, battling my inner rage, and then as calm as I could manage I said, “Larry, if you keep going with that I’m going to call the dean.”

“You’re a fucking dick-rider. You’re a fucking dick-rider. YOU’RE A FUCKING DICK-RIDER.”

“You got it.”

I called the dean.

While I was waiting, Larry had crashed out full on. He was cursing out everyone: his teammates, me, the world. Three kids in the class walked out of class in disgust before the dean removed Larry. By the end of the whole ordeal all the kids were just looking at me wondering what was next.

I shrugged and said, “Welp. Let's play some Ultimate frisbee.”

I joined Larry's team.

The Meeting

Whenever something like this happens, I pull out all the stops. I call both parents. I file all the paperwork necessary for a suspension. I walk into the principal's office, lay down what happened, and ensure the student has a meeting with me before they reenter my classroom. Organizing the meeting is the most important step. Suspensions are just days off if you don’t fully address what happened

The meeting is also a dice roll. You enter the strange land of social-emotional-learning where there’s no real rule book. If you actually want to make lasting change, you can’t get angry at the student and yell at them in front of their parents, it's a guaranteed way to lose the kids' respect forever. You need that respect. This isn’t a corporate company. You don’t get to fire your emotionally unstable students, you have to learn how to work with them regardless of their attitude.

Two days after the incident, Larry came into school with his father, and I took them to the meeting room behind the office. The meeting room was really a storage room full of school uniforms that students didn’t wear and textbooks that teachers didn’t use. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead as we sat down at the table.

I’m a little nervous before this conversation. I usually have the support of a second adult in the room, either the dean, the basketball coach, or preferably the principal. But today 7 people had called out, and in a school with 25 teachers, that meant the principal was stuck putting out fires. I did my usual mental bullshit and framed the situation as a challenge, “Can I have a meaningful conversation without the support of higher authorities in the room? Let’s see.”

I started the way I usually do. I crucify the kid with the truth in front of their parent. I flip open my notebook and read verbatim how I recorded the event the day it happened, “Student was getting frustrated with teammates…teacher called travel….student proceeded to call the teacher a…” as I read the incident report in a monotone voice, Larry’s dad started shaking his head and his facial expression looked like a thundercloud.

Then I extended an olive branch to the kid and said, “Now I know every side has two stories. Is there anything I’m missing in this report from your perspective? Did something happen to you in class before or did a kid do something that triggered that reaction from you?”

Larry was silent.

I waited. I knew from experience I didn’t need to speak. The silence would work far more effectively.

Eventually Larry’s eyes slid toward the ground and said, “I just felt like you made the wrong call.”

And that was it.

Dad and I sat there in silence. It wasn’t quite shock, but I was surprised. Usually there’s something I miss. Some kid whispering suck my dick when I’m not aware, or some catastrophe before my class that altered the students mood. Usually students grasp these excuses like a drowning man grasping for a stick.

After a long moment, I went back to my playbook, “Larry put yourself in my position, what if you-” and dad cut me off.

He said, “Naw. Stop. Larry, the man is talking to you. Look him in the eye. Don’t show disrespect while he’s talking to you.” Larry gave him a long look, then he turned and looked me in the eye.

Dad was interesting. He was young for a parent, and he dressed cool. Leather sports jacket, Nike Jordans, and a baseball cap with a flat brim. Great for a date, but an interesting choice for a teacher-parent meeting. I had caught wind that Dad was newly involved in Larry’s life, which is why maybe he was here instead of Larry’s mother. In any case, I appreciated his support.

I decided to throw the playbook out the window. I had been teaching Larry for years now and forcing him to empathize with me had grown stale. I tried something new.

“Larry, you gotta understand something. There’s two things that make a man a man. The first thing is a man does what he says he’s gonna do.” Dad starts to slowly nod with a brooding face. “And the second thing is a man doesn’t let his emotions make his decisions.” Dad nodded some more.

I continued to shoot from the hip.

“Don’t get me wrong. That frustration you felt when I made that call, that’s always going to be there. That frustration when you feel you’ve been wronged never goes away. I’m not telling you not to feel it. You have a crazy desire to win no matter what the occasion is, and I respect it. But if you let your emotions control your actions…you’re always going to lose.”

I remembered that Larry was dating one of the popular girls at school…and that they had already gone through a break-up and a reunion already.

“Let's change the frame here. Let's say you get into an argument with your girlfriend. She said something that frustrates you, she says something that really frustrates you. And you follow your emotions and you lash out. You don’t take a moment, you don’t think your actions through, you just yell at her. You say something you didn’t really mean to say, or you meant to say it, but you didn’t mean to say it in the way that you did. Now you lost your girl.”

Larry was giving me his full attention, silently watching me, looking me in the eye. I kept going.

“And I hope this doesn’t happen, I really don’t, but let's say a cop pulls you over. Let’s say he accuses you of something that you didn’t do, and you feel that frustration again. If you just react. If you don’t think through what you’re about to do…you may just ruin your life.

I’m going to look you in your eye and tell you right here and right now that I am for Larry. I want you to be successful. I want you to have the ability to chase your dreams and do the things that you want to do. And I’m taking this situation seriously, because if you don’t figure out a way to react to your emotions in a meaningful manner, then you’re never going to accomplish anything you actually want to do. You’ll derail yourself.”

There was a long silence. Then dad jumped in.

“Your actions leave a stain, son. People remember what you do. And they don’t always forgive you for it.”

I liked the way he said it, the word “stain.” It was a brilliant metaphor. You can wash it, and you could make it fade, but what you do to other people never really goes away. Every adult eventually learns that lesson, and I wonder what harsh lessons the man had experienced that had made him realize it. He also gave me one more idea.

I said, “You gotta understand something Larry. I’ve been doing this for 8 years now. You’re not the first kid to curse me out, and you won’t be the last. But when you come back from suspension, I’m going to give you a fist pound at my door and look forward to playing frisbee with you. Most people won’t be like that. The real world won’t be like that. People are going to remember your actions, and they won’t forgive you so easily. Your dad’s right, actions leave stains. I’m training wheels for real life. And I hope you take some time during the suspension to reflect on that.”

Larry’s reaction to me and his father had been the same the entire time. Dead quiet, looking us in the eye. He didn’t say anything, but it was clear he had listened.

We established there wasn’t anything more anybody else needed to say and I ended the meeting. As we were walking out the dad thanked me, and quietly said that he should have taught these lessons to him earlier. I shook his hand and thought to myself, well at least you’re here now.

Larry and his dad left the building. As the door shut I wondered if the conversation would have any impact on Larry.

I sighed, maybe in four or five years.

---

P.S. I’m sure some of you are wondering how accurate this article is. All I can say is, I made it as accurate as I could remember. (Try writing down a half hour conversation you had two weeks ago and you’ll get the idea.) I can say with full honesty that I remember saying many of the phrases that I wrote above. “I’m training wheels,” “It’s not the first time I’ve been cursed out by a kid and it won’t be the last,” “You’ll derail yourself,” and so on and so forth. I remember bringing up the girlfriend scenario and the cop scenario. I especially remember the way his dad said the word “stain.”

This was not a perfect rendition of what happened. I did not have a tape recorder. But I can promise the heart of what happened during that meeting was reflected in this piece.

***If you’re curious to find out what the aftermath of the conversation was to this article, here’s the follow post. A Student Called Me a “DickRider” Part II. The Aftermath.