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Paula Simons
Article is reprinted from The Edmonton Journal (January 26, 2008) with written permission of CanWest Publishing.
"I’ve taught murderers and rapists and arsonists and cat killers," Robert Corrigan says matter-of-factly.
Corrigan and his colleague Jennifer Hill teach a most remarkable class at Kenilworth Junior High.
It’s a class for students with conduct disorder—children with a pattern of violent or self-destructive behaviour, kids who steal, set fires, torture animals, abuse drugs, run away from home, kids who attack their classmates and teachers, kids who defy authority. Kids who personify our worst fears about today’s youth.
"These kids are very oppositional and defiant," says Hill. "But they’ve had a very rough go of it. It’s not all their fault. In order for a kid to end up here, something’s gone wrong in their lives. They’re all damaged, they all need our help. And they’re all absolutely terrified—they just don’t know it."
Corrigan says that "all these kids have been harmed. They’ve been raped, they’ve been beaten up.
"I’ve sat in parent-teacher meetings where parents have turned to their kids and said, ‘I hate you. You’re worthless. My life would be so much better if you hadn’t been born.’ Imagine what it would do to your child to hear that once. Now, imagine what it does to a child to hear it again and again and again."
Yet walk into Hill and Corrigan’s peaceful, sunny classroom and you’d never realize these were "problem" children.
Sitting calmly at their desks, reading, drawing or working on scrapbooks are a group of 14 polite, quiet boys, ranging in age from 11 to 14, whose well-mannered behaviour would shame most junior high classes.
"Be gentlemen," is Corrigan’s mantra.
The Kenilworth program, one of several offered by the Edmonton Public School Board, is about 90 per cent male.
In this class, there’s no tolerance for talking out of turn, for interrupting, for bad language. When students behave well, they earn privileges. When they break the rules, they forfeit them. The rewards are simple and concrete. So are the consequences.
At the back of the class are two bare cells, time-out rooms where students who become violent or aggressive can be sent to cool down, where kids who come to school high can come down. And Corrigan, a sturdy, no-nonsense guy, is experienced at using physical restraint on students.
But here, hugs are more common than restraint holds. For many of these students, Corrigan and Hill’s room may be the safest, most loving environment they’ve ever known, a place where traumatized, angry kids can lower their guard and learn to trust.
Corrigan and Hill ignore the old adage that teachers should be "friendly, but not familiar" with students.
"In this class, we cross that line all the time," Corrigan says. "We treat these kids as our own. If a kid is crying, if a kid is hurting, I put my arm around him."
And the kids here feel the difference.
"In other classes, I was always being criticized for being big and tall and talking constantly," says a bright, husky 11-year-old in an orange T-shirt.
"People look at me like I’m this big monstrous ogre. The difference here is that there’s more acceptance and helpfulness. People here accept you for who you are. And the teachers unconditionally love us."
Before he entered this class, this boy used to get so anxious about school he would bang his head on the school bus window and behave so erratically other students were afraid to ride with him. In Hill and Corrigan’s class, he seems happy and enthusiastic.
"I was the worst kid on the bus, ever," says a boy with Harry Potter glasses, sounding half abashed, half boastful. "I swore, I almost punched a kid, I would just be loud. And when I was in kindergarten, I almost forced a kid’s head through a window."
But Corrigan and Hill don’t encourage such stories. Instead, they praise the boy for going 10 days without provoking a complaint from the bus driver.
Many of the teens who come through Corrigan and Hill’s classroom also suffer from some underlying medical or psychological condition, such as Asperger’s syndrome, fragile X syndrome, bipolar disorder, fetal alcohol syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder or attachment disorder.
Yet shockingly, virtually none is receiving psychiatric care or medication. That may have something to do with Edmonton’s dire shortage of child psychiatrists. But the bigger problem, says Hill, is that parents are in denial, or fearful the stigma of a psychiatric diagnosis. Corrigan and Hill are left to do the best they can to help their students manage their syndromes and symptoms.
"We concentrate on teaching pro-social skills, peer interaction, and conflict management—and then academics," says Hill, the troop’s down-to-earth den mother. "I know that’s sacrilegious to say we don’t put academics first. But if those first three aren’t in order, the last one will never happen." Most kids in this class have average or above-average IQs. A couple have scored in the gifted range. Yet class work doesn’t come easily to them.
Hill and Corrigan bootleg academics into the program, with lots of practical, hands-on projects, and field trips, where the kids can practise their new social skills in public. Often times, Corrigan says with a grin, strangers come up to say they’ve never seen such well-mannered boys.
On this day, there is one
flare-up. Two of the students get into a disagreement. One boy picks up his chair and hoists it high. For a moment, it looks as though he might throw it across the room. Instead, he stomps across the class and sits tearfully down at a different work table.
After a signal from Hill, Corrigan moves to the boy, puts his hand gently on his shoulder and speaks softly to him. In a few moments, he visibly relaxes and rejoins the class discussion.
Some of their students integrate into regular classes and go on to high school and college. But it’s not always easy for these emotionally stunted children, trapped in adult bodies, to transfer the social skills they learn in a calm classroom to their often-chaotic out-of-school lives.
It’s not unusual for the teachers to get calls from students and former students who’ve landed up in jail or to accompany kids to youth court.
"We’re not curing them," says Hill. "All we can do is teach them strategies to cope with the big, bad world."
"What we want to teach them is how to take their finger off the trigger," Corrigan adds.
These students know many people see them as dangerous, frightening, disposable. But they’d like a chance to speak, too.
"Most people think that we’re super-mean and evil, with horns sticking out of our heads," says one boy.
"But think back to when you guys were teenagers. It was rough back then. Think how much worse it’s got to be for us."
"There’s always someone looking down at you when you’re our age," says a slightly-built boy with elfin features.
"But not all teenagers are bad. Some of them just have problems they need to get over and sometimes they need big people to help them get over them."
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