An Ex-Problematic Student Say

In school, there is usually a problematic student(s) who becomes a big threat for both of people in that school and school image. Since my mother is a students’ counselor in two private schools in Garut, so I often heard many cases of problematic students that she deal with. Moreover, I also experienced some of similar problems either as a victim or as a problematic student (doer).
There are some serious problematic issues that students may do which are rule defiance, aggression, bullying, and violence. Every issue is indicated by certain students’ behavior and caused by many reasons either from student’s self or student’s surroundings. Problematic issues may be caused by lack of students’ motivation and cause students’ motivation decreasing.
My senior high school had a lot of defiant students, including me, who defied school’s rules either openly or stealthily from a simplest defiance until a threatening one. My defiance were like sleeping in class while teacher was explaining, skipping the class, humiliating teacher, and not wearing a properly uniform according to the school regulation.

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First, my reason for sleeping or skipping the class was simply because the lesson was not interesting and the daily task and examination that teachers gave used to be easy. Second, I had humiliated my Bahasa Indonesia teacher once by giving him my drawing of him and his bored class. I also said to him in front of class that the way he taught me was not worthwhile because I did not get anything I needed in his class. I knew it was not acceptable to do that, but I was so guilt wasting my time many times in his class. Third defiance, in my school female students should use tweezers in their jilbab, but I did not use it. I thought regulation of using tweezers was a non sense and defying it would not affect my achievement and learning process and that school. I asked the teachers why we should use it, and their answer was just because it was the symbol of our uniform which could make our uniform different from other Pesantren’s uniform in Garut. I thought it was not really important, so I defied this rule from I entered the school until I graduated.
Since my school was private Islamic school (Pesantren), it had more rules than other schools. However, it had not run a strict rule monitoring to students so that was why many students defied the rules. School’s side used to take action against defiant students when the problem they made had been serious. Thus, it was unfortunate that the school rarely prevented the serious problem.

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Besides defying the rule, I also often did indirect bullying with my gang to opposite gang. If I am not mistaken, we were taught by Islam principle that talking about other people’s bad side behind them is like eating corpse. Their sins also will be the talkers’ sins. Thus, it is totally unacceptable. However, I did not know why we still did it.
When I was in elementary school, I was not as brave as I was senior high school student who defied rules and often did indirect bullying towards other students. I had been a bullied student in elementary school. My seatmate often extorted my money and intimidated me by ruining my book if I did not give her money. I did not have enough bravery to cry or report her to my teacher or my parent or move to another seat, so it still happened in a year until I was moved to another class.
My teacher, later, said to me that at that time my voice was so low and I could not express myself. I became introvert and could not find another friend. My classmates later said that I often expelled myself from other students in class and outside the class. Even, until now I do not remember anything happened in that year except that bullying moment.
Bullying may come not only from students but also from the teacher. I had a teacher who often bullied her students verbally like humiliating or verbally abusing. She made me afraid of going to school, getting bad score, and even afraid of facing her outside the class. For instance, when I saw her in a market, I preferred to hide rather than greet her. Shockingly, my siblings who were her students and my classmates felt the same like me.
As I have mentioned before that there are many problematic cases I had ever had, I even could not write it all here. Thus, the lesson I get is if I, as a teacher, need to deal with those kinds of problematic students and issues, I will try to understand their position and possible reason why they do it since I have been like them. I had a reason why I became a defiant student, so do my students.
As a defiant student, I knew my consequences of my attitude so probably do my students. Thus, telling them about consequences of defiance is not enough. It is important to teach my students about responsibility and critical mind. When they are critical minded and responsible, they will not think about themselves only, like what I did before, but also think about the impact of defying rule to other people and their environment.