Story of the Week!

A Roll of the Dice

In my first years of teaching, I worked at a large city school with considerable discipline issues. It was the mid-seventies, and racial conflict was paramount, making any form of classroom discipline even more difficult. The dean of the school made it clear that there was a limit to the load he was willing to carry. If a student was sent to the dean’s office at a time when the office was filled to capacity, the student would immediately be returned to class. That, of course, escalated any routine classroom problem to a disaster. Consequently, each teacher had to learn quickly how to motivate or at least control their students without any outside assistance.

I was a “shop” teacher. Specifically, I taught subjects like electricity, graphic arts, and small engine mechanics. In each case, my classroom consisted of a seating area where traditional lectures took place, and a shop area filled with tools and machines associated with the subject. Naturally, the students had much more interest in working with their hands, and much less interest in classroom instruction. Nevertheless, there was a certain degree of knowledge that I had to share before students started plugging things in or taking things apart. Often, I would mix about 15 minutes of instruction with a half hour or so of hands-on experience. In those days, shop teachers were almost always male and were typically assigned students who were uncooperative in their academic classes. ‍

In one such case there was a small group of students who clearly had no interest in anything I had to say. On several occasions, as other students were quick to jump up when released to the shop, I observed these students clustered together in the classroom area.  They were rolling dice on the floor. In a typical cat and mouse fashion, they would quickly grab the dice when they saw me looking. Each time this occurred, they were noticeably less concerned and waited longer to put the dice away. ‍

Finally, when they assumed that I had no intention of intervening, they simply continued to play their game as I approached. My mind was spinning. I knew that sending these kids to the dean’s office would be a disaster. I had to do something, and I had to decide quickly what I would do.

I couldn’t imagine a word that I could say that would have any significance in this situation. I had to do something, not just say something. I quickly noticed that the entire shop was silent as everyone present watched to see what would happen next. As luck would have it, the offending students were big, tough, and streetwise. I was barely 21 then, they were probably very close to my age, and pretty darned scary. ‍

Without saying a word, I picked up the dice and walked away. With the room in complete silence, I could hear my inner voice saying: “You idiot. They are going to kill you. This is not going to end well.” Nevertheless, I walked to the back of the shop where there stood a pedestal grinder. I turned the grinder on, held each of the dice with a pair of pliers and proceeded to grind all the dots off the dice. As I ground down the plastic dice, the air filled with white dust and the smell of plastic filled the room. I turned the grinder off to reveal a silent classroom. All I could hear was that inner voice describing ways in which these overaged and oversized students would administer pain and suffering. I stood tall, walked calmly back to those students and handed them several small cubes of plastic with no resemblance of the dice that I had confiscated. I said nothing, they said nothing, nobody said anything, it was just quiet.

The next day those same students walked into my class laughing about what I had done. They didn’t apologize and neither did I. To my surprise, they quickly became some of my best students. They developed a genuine interest in what we were doing. The other students didn’t dare slack off when these guys were participating fully in the assigned activities.

In retrospect, I must admit to a certain degree of luck. This really could have turned out badly, and I certainly don’t recommend the same action to anyone else. I did find, though, that a degree of creativity and humor can be effective in such cases.

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