The Tale of Trouser Boy

Trouser Boy is another member of year 9 bottom set maths. He's not a great fan of this fact, or of me. First lesson, he refused to sit where I asked him and then refused to write. We've improved since then, but very slowly.

His mathematical ability is actually not too bad, but he manages to distract from this quite effectively. You see, Trouser Boy wears his trousers so very low that I can always see the pattern on his boxer shorts (waistbands, I can deal with - this, not so much). Perhaps this is because his trousers are too tight? They certainly look small, and in recent weeks he has taken to complaining about this fact loudly, combined with standing up, wriggling and - no, really - putting his hands down his trousers. Repeatedly.

He can't freak me out, he can't freak our (awesome) TA out, and the rest of the class are frankly bored of him doing this by now. However, the frequency and dramatic nature of these events had been increasing. So why? I'm not buying genuine discomfort, he's taking cues from and studying the audience far too much. He may have initially been trying to make me uncomfortable, but he can see that's not working. He's failing to amuse or distract anyone else- so he's doing it for him.

I got his parents in, eventually, to talk. I planned my strategy beforehand, opening with my perception of Trouser Boy's genuine mathematical ability. I described incidents when he had grasped a concept far better or more quickly than the rest of the class, and he grudging recalled those occasions, soon adding to my accounts as we talked to his parents. There was one problem, I said. Just one. They looked astonished, and that wasn't what I was meaning to say at all - there were multiple problems, culminating in the trouser incidents. They had looked so hopeful. I had to wrap it up in one problem.

'Sometimes, Trouser Boy, I think you look at the work and think you can't do it. It's scary, and you feel like everyone else is doing better than you, so you don't want to try it. So you look for something else to do.' After a pause, he started nodding enthusiastically. His dad started talking about similar feelings at school. We spent 15 minutes coming up with strategies and solutions, and emphasising Trouser Boy's ability when he pushed through his fear.

When his parents stood up to leave, his dad leant over. He thanked me for being so positive, and said that he'd expected 'doom and gloom', not strategies or even the acknowledgment of his sons ability. He asked to shake my hand, and as he did, he said quietly 'You know, no one has every talked about my son like that.'