Wednesday, September 23, 2020



Marcus: On Being Good

The author of this story is telling her experience about how she was put into the classroom to observe Marcus and to create a plan for the school and his mom. She says that she has grown to love Marcus while being in the classroom with him. She really sees Marcus for his strengths and not his weaknesses and even though he is complicated, she really tries to see past that and see him for the person that he is underneath the need for negative attention.

She sees Marcus as having:


  • extraordinary goodness
  • charisma
  • empathy
  • smarts
  • fierce love
  • loyalty





The teacher Emily, sees Marcus differently than the women that is just observing him. Emily tends to get a little frustrated with Marcus and she has the right to do that because she has to think about the whole class and whether they are learning or being distracted by Marcus.

Emily says that Marcus knows how to push her buttons and describes his behavior as being "in your face". She sees Marcus as having potential but he acts out and can't sit and just listen. He has to be heard when he wants to be heard.



Emily sees Marcus as:
  • Energetic
  • Assertive
  • Smart


Marcus' mom sees Marcus in a different way then the women observing him and his teacher Emily because she sees him at home; where he is in a space where there isn't as much structure as there is in the classroom. This allows Marcus to be more of himself without the consequences of missing out or being a distraction to other students at school. She clearly loves her son but she knows that he has these issues and she needs the school's help to get a plan for her son to be better. In the end, she decided to put him on medication because she couldn't deal with getting phone calls everyday. I definitely think she was right to take him to therapy and that seemed to be helping him. But I think that she might see Marcus as a problem or a handful that she doesn't want to deal with. 

Here is a link to the article if you wanted to read it for yourself:





2 comments:

  1. Omg I love your post its supper fun to read. I love the words you used on how the adults described Marcus. I did see the empathy part I forgot to add that to my post. Emily does get frustrated with him but she still gives him chances and tries to show that she cares but its super hard because he sees her as an authority figure and Marcus sees himself as the big boss

    ReplyDelete
  2. This blog is really interesting and has great details. You show how Emily has a hard time when it comes to working with Marcus. She sees him as a compassionate, assertive, and smart student, but at times when he does not seem to pay attention, he only understands a little bit of what the teacher is trying to teach him as well as finding ways for him to become a better learner. In this way, Emily is trying to show that she cares about Marcus as a student and is trying work out a way for him to do good while he is struggling at the same time as Marcus views himself as the head of the school when he says, "Nobody is the boss of Marcus Andrews. Nobody", although in the article being good, the story is mostly about him and the author is making an argument on how he should be supported.

    ReplyDelete

  Youth Work is... Identity! While reading " Locating Yourself for Your Students", one thing that really stuck out to me was when ...