A Student Told Me to ‘Go Back to China’

The transition back to the school year has largely been smooth, besides a couple of hiccups. I feel like my students are learning more than they previously had, and I feel more effective as a teacher than I have ever been as we go back to complete in person instruction. I have great relationships with the majority of my students and with others, I’m finding the balance behind firmness and compassion to create a safe learning environment.

However, last week, you can probably tell not everything went smoothly. This was the only lesson where we didn’t get what I planned done due to behavioral concerns. I told a student to stop cursing and do his work, and the negative behaviors escalated from there.

I probably am not giving enough context to this situation. Besides two Hispanic students, all my students are Black. The student I’m referring to is also Black. And if you can’t tell from my name, I’m Asian.

This is a student I get along really well with individually and personally, but I taught him before and he does not respect me as a teacher and authority figure. He tends not to respond whenever I tell him to stop using profanity or to do his work. Although he tells his family he likes me a lot and I am one of his favorite teachers, it’s hard to really accept that when he’s cursed me out on far more than one occasion.

I’ve worked very hard to reach the student and know a lot about his home life. I’ve been to his church several times and visited his home when I couldn’t reach his guardian. Knowing his home situation during my first year of teaching led me to lower my behavioral expectations because of sympathy for his tough and difficult home situation, but I now realize how misguided this is when those behaviors manifest themselves in bullying and sexual harassment.

Regardless, the student is a game-changer in terms of what behaviors are in or not in the classroom. Once he starts cursing everyone starts cursing, and I’m instinctually experienced enough to know to shut down those disruptions when they start. So, I go through my consequence system — the first step is a warning, the second is a call home, and the third is an office referral and getting put out of the classroom.

The “go back to China” comment did not come in a vacuum. It came from a power struggle between myself and this student when he continually disrupted the classroom and interfered with the learning environment. Any teacher will tell you not to get into a power struggle with a student, but there are times when some students are tone-setters. Letting certain things go sends a message to everyone. After I told him to get out of the class, he refused. I told him to go to the office, and he responded:

“Why don’t you go back to China?”

Unfortunately, we still had several minutes left of class. He still refused to leave, and somehow it got worse from there. As I wrote my referral forms, he took them out of my hands and ripped them up. This kept going for the whole class as I kept telling him to leave the classroom, and there was no one available to remove the student from the classroom.

I guess we both couldn’t stand each others’ presence and just had to bear with each other for ten minutes, but I’m not going to lie: it was ugly. The whole class watched as we had our little power struggle. Again, it’s better that you never get into a situation like that, to begin with, but at the same time, what message would it send if I allowed the comment to be made and then moved on? What anarchy would ensue when I sent the message I could just be treated like a punching bag like I was during my first year of teaching?

The bell rang. I moved on to my next class. It took me about five minutes to just sit there and decompress. Every teacher has gone through the “what the fuck just happened?” stage of their class. I regretted the majority of my class, who were respectful, well-intentioned, and wanted to learn, had their learning interfered with by my inability to just let the comment go. I wasn’t even that offended, but again, it was about the message it sent.

A student in my next class asked me what was wrong since I didn’t seem like myself. I told them what was wrong.

“That’s messed up. What if you told him to go back to Africa?” a student in the next class asked.

It is messed up, and if I said that, I would get fired on the spot, as I should. So it shouldn’t be too much of a double standard that I demanded the student get held accountable for that comment, right?

Well, it’s tough. I’m an Asian teacher teaching in an essentially all-Black school. To a lot of students, I’m just white. And my student didn’t even understand how offensively a comment like “go back to China” could be interpreted, right?

Well, he meant it in a derogatory manner even if he didn’t understand the derogatory nature behind the comment. You really just had to be there in the room to experience it.

. . .

I love this student, despite what he said. In my mind, a personal attack against my race was secondary to a lot of other misbehaviors I have experienced. At the same time, I had to stand up for myself, especially in front of the rest of the class, or the message would be internalized that it was a free for all in the classroom and open season for what could be said to me.

I’m human too. And there’s only so much I can tolerate personally. I have very thick skin, as well, and I’m very patient with kids. Other kids ask me how I don’t get angry when kids cuss me out or say mean things about my co-workers, and I just said I do get angry, but it’s important to manage that anger react with compassion even if you don’t get it back.

I have a transgender co-worker this year that, as you can imagine, my students have not made the nicest comments about. She is the first transgender person many of them have been exposed to and some are not the most accepting of the gender she identifies with. I’ve seen some of my students point and laugh at her in the auditorium.

I’m not the biggest activist on trans rights, but I went to bat for my co-worker. She is a human too and comments that disrespect her disrespect me. I accept I will not change attitudes and opinions on sexuality overnight, so I told my students if they have negative opinions about my colleague, they better keep those comments to themselves. If they made disrespectful comments about her, I will hold those students accountable.

In terms of intersectionality and liberal politics, my students who are almost all Black and living in an urban environment are ostensibly oppressed by American society. But so are their few Hispanic classmates. So is my transgender co-worker. So am I as an Asian-American man.

So is it short-sighted of me to take action against a Black male student with a disability for telling me to “go back to China?” Maybe. To some people, absolutely.

Within the context of the classroom, it is unfortunate the behavior of one or two students in a large class completely interferes with the learning of others. Naturally, we give the most attention to students who misbehave and we try to reach them because they often need the most support. But what I realized this year is even though most of my students are quiet and respectful, that doesn’t mean they know how to read well and know what’s going on. And their needs are not being met because I, as a teacher, devote most of my attention to students who cuss at their classmates, try throwing pens at their classmates, or interrupt their classmates when they’re talking.

The quiet and shy kids need help too, and their needs are so often not met because so much of teacher attention goes towards classroom management and redirecting misbehaviors. I came to that realization this year and am striving to reach those shy students. Part of that means not trying to go as above and beyond for students who misbehave the most — if they continually keep disrupting the classroom environment and make the class unteachable, then they just can’t be in my classroom. If the most egregious of misbehaviors aren’t shut down on the spot, another unfortunate reality is many kids are followers and might regress in their behaviors to acquire perceived social status.

I’m not a miracle worker or a superhuman, inspirational movie teacher. In reality, I’m not perfect at teaching and classroom management and I take personal attacks pretty personally, as anyone would. My student got a week of in-school suspension. I am beyond glad to be supported by my administration. I am no fool to think a week of in-school suspension is going to radically change his behavior and our teacher-student relationship, but I had to convey that there is a certain tone of respect I want in my classroom, and I’m not playing around anymore in ensuring that tone.

Also, on a more practical and humorous note, in the real world, you can’t be going up to Asians and telling them to “go back to China.” It’s going to get you in a lot of trouble, and for good reason.

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This post was previously published on An Injustice!.

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