Things I don't understand

Interesting incident today. K----- said something about M------’s mother this morning, so M------ got up, walked all the way to the back of the room, and pulled K-----’s chair out from under him while he was sitting in it. Of course, K----- jumped up off the floor and got in M------’s face and the two started fighting, pushing and shoving up to the front of the room, I, meanwhile, alternating between demands that they stop what they are doing and commands to the rest of the class to stay seated in their chairs. Then, M------ slammed K----- into the wall at the front of the room, at which point I directed him to leave the room and go to the office. He responded by walking to the back of the room, picking up K-----’s backpack, walking back to the front, soundly shoving it into the trash can, and resolutely spitting on it as a last blow. I again asked him to leave, and he finally did, only to come back five minutes later, retrieve K-----’s backpack from where I had placed it next to K-----’s desk, and return it to its place in the trash can.

I don’t retell this merely to vent or even to enlighten you about what exactly goes on in inner city classrooms in Kansas City. Rather, I have the very particular purpose of asking the question: what is it, what combination of experiences, what sort of psychological make-up, causes a ten year-old to behave in such a way? Lack of attention, surely, but there are many other ways that children demand attention that are not so extreme or so odd. M------ has a very rough life. He is homeless. His father is in and out of the picture. He is considered a thief by the other children and a miscreant by the teachers. But how all this translates into the actions I saw today is beyond me. My background in psychology is far too limited.

If M------ were my only student who did things like this, and if this were the only time that he had done something like this, the questions would stop there. But many of my students do things that are equally bewildering, some of them on a daily basis. How did each of them become the way they are? How do their interactions play into these extreme actions? How does their common socio-cultural environment create the impetus for such behavior? I really don’t know. I'm working on it though.