Drifting back into my teacher self-talk, I thought, if Beavis really did have a younger brother, I’d bet anyone a glazed donut and a cup of coffee that his name was… Gavin. 

Gavin was tall, slim, and 13-years-old. He wore loose, faded t-shirts and had the beginnings of a peach-fuzz moustache. Once you got to know him well, his rosy face no longer gave the impression of a harmless teenager entering puberty, but rather of a spoiled-rotten, foul-mouthed, grade-grubbing slacker. His black-rimmed glasses rested quietly on the bridge of his large, pointy nose. 

However, whenever he threw one of his impossible-to-ignore tantrums, his hidden transformation began. If his parents thought he behaved like a harmless little angel at home, then he had clearly left his wings behind. He would start yelling in his distinctive high-pitched voice, first violently throwing his glasses across the classroom, then stomping his feet before finally burying his face in his folded arms on the desk. The sequence always happened in exactly the same order. It looked so natural and spontaneous that it felt almost as if the entire scene had been rehearsed beforehand. 

“WHAAAAT? OK. OK. I KNOW WHAT I’M SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING ON. OK. OK. I HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME. LEAVE ME ALONE. LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Sometimes the transformation would end there, especially if he heard the heavy footsteps of the two-meter-tall, grey-haired school principal, Mr. Wilton. The principal, originally from New Zealand, was famous for making unannounced rounds through the school’s squeaky-clean hallways. At other times, his transformation would end with a barrage of abusive language, such as:

“MR KARL, I’M NEVER LOUD. I CAN NEVER RECALL A TIME WHEN I WAS LOUD. NOW STOP MAKING FALSE ACCUSATIONS YOU COWARDLY DOUCHEBAG. YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE, SO DEAL WITH THE NOISE LIKE A MAN.”

Gavin and his light grey laptop, always close at hand, seemed to be inseparable. Maaan, he was hooked. I mean, glued to the screen. When he wasn’t using it to play music or sound effects, he would hide behind its screen and engage in another of his nasty habits: farting silently in class. Some of his classmates would at first laugh quietly, as if admiring his secret ace up his sleeve. Others would rush to the nearest window and open it to let in some fresh air. I reached for the  organic air freshener I had bought on sale and sprayed a bit.

His classmates claimed he never took a shower. Whether or not that was true, Gavin sometimes sat on his own at the back of the classroom, picking his nose whenever he thought nobody was watching him. Having gotten so used to typing on his laptop keyboard during class, he never bothered to bring a pen. Why bother? He knew he could always borrow one from me instead! I even went so far as to buy a box of pens so I could always have one ready for him whenever he asked. In my complete foolishness, I genuinely thought I had a good reason to go the extra mile. 

“Mr Karl, can I borrow a pen from you, please?” he would ask, beaming a phony smile.  I would be handing out the weekly vocabulary test. Well, at least this time the volcano had not erupted, I thought. 

“Sure. Please keep it, okaaay?” I would reply, sounding as polite and peace-loving as Mr. Van Driessen, Beavis and Butt-Head’s high school teacher.

Suddenly, on that overcast Monday morning, sitting all by myself in the quiet teachers’ lounge, everything clicked.  

I had sacrificed my summer holidays. ✅

I had buried myself in library research, trying to figure out a way into the class brat’s heart. ✅

I had even spent my own hard-earned money buying air freshener and pens for this harmless little angel. ✅

When I brought the tests and exams home, I went straight into the kitchen to grab a pair of disposable latex gloves before correcting his slapdash work. ✅ 

Sometimes, a blob of Gavin’s dried nasal mucus the size of a grain of cheap instant coffee was already sticking to his exam paper. ✅

As if that wasn’t enough, Celeste, my partner, couldn’t quite understand how frustrating it was for me to teach him German or decipher his cursive handwriting. That was really the icing on the cake.

Something wasn’t right. 

Counselor? Social worker? Miracle worker? Behaviour therapist? Entertainer? Special ed teacher? All at once? But none of those roles were ever mentioned in my job description! 

I suddenly realized that I had been barking up the wrong tree with every single one of my research questions:  

What essential classroom management strategies have I not used so far? 🗷

What can I do to make my learning tasks more engaging for Gavin? 🗵

What can I do to connect with him and build a meaningful relationship? 🖾

None of these questions addressed the core issue. The “problem” was never really about classroom management, task engagement, or relationships. Instead, it seemed to have everything to do with too little parenting, too much screen time, and crazy classroom expectations placed on me as a teacher. The ball had been in someone else’s court from day one.

Hmmm.

Maybe I’d have been able to walk on water with the help of an underpaid teaching assistant—someone with the loud, aggressive personality of Coach Buzzcut, Beavis and Butt-Head’s P.E. teacher. He barked orders and never minced his words.

Hmmm. 

Maybe Gavin wouldn’t have been suspended for only one day if his parents hadn’t also been teachers at the same school.  

Whether or not they had anything to do with the insignificant one-day suspension he received after hitting a classmate in a different class, I’ll never know. What I do know, however, is that his suspension had nothing to do with his tantrums or his disrespect toward learning and others in my class. The way I see it, this peach-fuzzed, spoiled-rotten, foul-mouthed, and grade-grubbing slacker really was related to Beavis. Like Beavis and his wayward mind, Gavin didn’t really belong in a mortar-and-brick school. 

Truth be told, Gavin wasn’t the only reason I had chosen to bury myself in books. I was a first-year DaF teacher who had trained as an ESL teacher. Having never taught this school subject before, my time in the library also gave me a chance to explore some of the vast professional literature on teaching German to speakers of other languages.   

Spending more time in the library also seemed like the perfect excuse to stay away from the tiny apartment we rented from Markus, a friend of Celeste’s. It offered a brief sense of relief, one that didn’t really solve anything between her and me. But at least the more time I spent there, absorbed in books and looking the other way, the less likely it was that we would plan a summer vacation together to seek refuge from the heat wave. 

Before Celeste joined me in sunny Saudi Arabia after surviving that long-haul flight to Bahrain, she and I had met somewhere in the fast-paced, impersonal world of cyberspace. That’s how we first clicked. We had been living on different continents, separated by more than one ocean. Back then, oceans apart, there had been no need for a real face-to-face conversation. We could simply sit at our computers and let our fingertips do all the talking. It seemed that our avatars spoke the same language. Turn-taking took place at the click of the Enter key. 

But since our years together in the Middle East, we had both changed. 

We just hadn’t found the time to tell each other. Or maybe, just maybe, we were waiting for the perfect Summertime (performed here by Ray Barreto)?

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