So, Why "Kid in the Cabinet"

So, I have gotten a lot of questions regarding the name of my blog and the concept behind it. As I have said in earlier posts, I have over 25 years working with kids. While I used to think a lot of good stuff happened that would make a good book, it wasn’t until a few years ago, while working at a particularly tough inner city school, that I met the true kid in the cabinet. The one child who gave me the “aha” for my future. This blogspot is only one aspect of what culminated from that eye opening experience! Read on for the story.

So there was this kid in my class, we’ll call him KitC. KitC was an attention seeker. This kid was being so neglected at home that he would spend every second of everyday trying to get my attention: positive, negative, indifferent…he didn’t care how he got it, he just wanted it. He had never been diagnosed with any mental condition. I believe things were tough at home and it caused him to be an attention seeker. School wasn’t a primary concern of his, but survival was. His mom was usually too busy for him, his brother was always in trouble and seemed to get the most attention as a result. I think KitC was starting to pick up on that. He was a pretty bright kid, but school just wasn’t where his head was. As a matter of fact, it was considered un-cool at the school where I worked. It was more important to the kids which gang affiliations belonged to who and who could tag the most walls in the school. He liked to wait until I would start teaching to be disruptive by throwing markers and things out of the window or walking around or just walking out. If I was attempting to work with other children, he would badger students so that I had no choice but to stop what I was doing in order to address the situation.
I remember one time in particular where he grabbed a kid by his neck, threw him facedown on the desk and bent his arm back like a policeman would do! He started squawking “Chicken wing! Chicken wing!” and at first he would not release the child when I demanded him to. I was nervous he was going to hurt the other student. Obviously, I wrote a referral about the incident…its probably still sitting in the AP’s desk.
When KitC came back to class, he wandered all around the room, hopped over some desks, not caring who was sitting in them, walked in one end of the coat closet and then out the other, circled the class a couple of times, then went and stood at the cabinet. He kept looking from me to the cabinet. I kept trying to teach as if I were ignoring him, though I was a hundred percent aware of what he was up to, but I still didn’t know where he was going with it. I was just thankful that his hands were to himself. He just stood there for a little while looking back and forth and contemplating. Finally, he opened the cabinet, got inside of it, curled his legs in, and closed the cabinet door. There was a hole in it, so I knew he could breath, and he left it cracked a fraction. Most importantly, he wasn’t endangering himself or others…I figured we were finally getting in some teach time, why not leave things be. Maybe this was not the wisest decision, but I figured why rock the boat or get in a power struggle if no one was in danger. I continued to teach, acting as if I was completely oblivious to this student. The kids seemed amused by his antics, but were still paying attention…I think they were following my lead. I kept teaching and asking questions. Sometime along the way, after asking one of these questions, I see an arm rising from the cabinet. I don’t know if I was more impressed, or intrigued. KitC had NEVER raised his hand to answer a question before. He would participate in brainstorming activities, he would call out guesses, but had NEVER raised his hand to be called on. So I picked him. He answered correctly. I guess the quiet stimulation of the cabinet helped him to LISTEN. Once that was accomplished, he was able to concentrate what he was hearing with what he already to knew to form an accurate and reasonable answer about the topic being discussed. It’s been a couple years, and I still want to celebrate…he was not just learning, but applying what he was learning to a classroom discussion.
I decided at that very moment that KitC could sit in the cabinet anytime he wanted. I would never object. So, I didn’t. One day, the Assistant Principal came in (still never having addressed referrals…there had been more issues since that day) and asked where he was. I said “over there,” as he popped his arm out with a wave. She began screaming at me in front of the entire class how I could not allow a student to sit in a cabinet. That it was child abuse. I said it was only child abuse if I put him in there. I neither put him in there, nor forced him upon his will to come out. I suggested that the state would applaud me for finding a way to help this child learn and that the classroom had recently be disrupted less as a result. I think it was innovative and resourceful…even though it wasn’t really my idea.
KitC was not allowed in the cabinet anymore and the classroom went back to his form of “normal”. I wasn’t lucky enough to find a way to get him interested again that was acceptable to my AP. KitC began acting out in worse ways, just trying to get a rise out of someone. At some point during the school year, for something that happened outside of my classroom and I am uniformed about, KitC was taken away from school in a police car. I was at lunch during the time. When he returned back to school sometime later, he was pretty much unresponsive to me. He ignored anything I said or asked of him and I felt powerless to help him. But I kept trying to find ways to break through.
It was very shortly after this, and several other incidences with other students, that I tendered my resignation, citing my incompetent AP as the cause. With her, it was a constant battle to help our schools population. And the school would have been a much more serious and productive place without her. I just wished her heart was in the right place, but it never quite seemed to be. I just wanted to help my students. And that is how “Kid in the Cabinet” came to be.
~KidintheCabinet

Coming soon: More stories of the State of Education and what I intend to do about it.