Blog #319: You Can’t Teach Every Unteachable Student

First of all, I want to thank you all for your patience in between the last blog and this blog. After helping oversee the Unicorn Children’s Foundation’s annual gala last week in Boca Raton and then recovering last week, it made sense to hold off on blogs for the past two weeks. If you haven’t done so already, be sure to check out the album here:

Unicorn Children’s Foundation’s “Golden Age of Hollywood” Gala in Boca Raton, FL (March 11th, 2023)

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Anyways, now that’s out of the way, I wanted to share with you something that is happening in a lot of schools right now across the country. Last night, we were celebrating my dad’s 63rd birthday and we once again had another conversation with our next-door neighbor about the horrors of today’s students. It seems more and more there are students who are seemingly disengaged with education and for that matter, many students are becoming unteachable with each passing year.

As a former special education student, it sickens me to hear that such actions are still commonplace in our classrooms. Having this conversation got me thinking about something that I feel I should share with all of you. That is that not every student is going to be teachable, especially at public schools.

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The truth of the matter is that teachers work very hard to teach students pre-Kindergarten through Grade 12 and they, unfortunately, don’t get paid very well. However, it seems that the only kinds of classes teachers enjoy teaching in are special education and smaller general education classes (whom, I will confess, can also have its moments of unteachable students).

If you recall a few blogs back, I talked about why education shouldn’t be a dangerous profession after a paraprofessional was attacked by a student in Florida. In a way, teaching students that are unteachable are just right on that level. In many ways, it’s like talking to a brick wall where no one can hear nor listen to what you are trying to say.

Now, let’s be frank here. The difference between students when I was in school and students today is night and day. In my time, sure we had our moments, but we never considered ourselves unteachable. Nowadays, students become unteachable because of unaccountability from the higher power (superintendents, etc.), the fact there are no enforcements on such items like cell phones or the fact that students are free to do whatever they please without any consequences.

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One example of an unteachable student is the fact that they feel entitled to do something because of a position that they feel they should belong in. In fact, my neighbor was telling a story about how a student threw a water bottle at her and he got off lightly because his father is a former principal turned 4th grade teacher in my town’s school system.

Now, let’s face it, I had a bottle of cold coffee thrown at me when I was a junior in high school, but in that case, it wasn’t because the student was unteachable, it was because he was in a dispute with his girlfriend at the time. The difference between that was if someone would throw a bottle of cold coffee at me, I would be asking for it, but I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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The fact is that many teachers are getting unteachable students by the year and while many have stuck it out because they need to make a living, many are quitting because of the environment that they put themselves in. Teachers everywhere deserve to have teachable students, but it sadly does not work that way. In fact, I see this a lot in my day job too. I work in a grocery store and I deal with customers that are unserviceable and it’s like dealing with unteachable students because they think they know everything.

It’s like what Sebastian the Crab says in Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” (1989) that if you give a child or teenager an inch, they’ll swim all over you:

“The Little Mermaid” (1989): King Triton yells at Ariel

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And that is the only way that an unteachable student cane be teachable is that you have to not let them swim all over you. Sure, it could be because the student might have a disability or developmental difference, but that can be no excuse for being unteachable. Sometimes the student needs better support and teachers will fight for the student as long as the student shows respect and fights for himself or herself.

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But if teachers are burnt out, then its up to the students who are teachable (such as myself in the old days) to show that teachers can have a passion of teaching and not let those who are unteachable get them down. I’ll discuss more about this in the next blog.

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Catch you all later!!

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