He would even verbally taunt his classmates for no apparent reason, distracting them from their work. This refusal to engage in class work was not related to ability, for when he finally did decide to do as he was asked; he was usually the first person to finish. Sometimes, he would distract himself until just before we were supposed to finish activities, at which time he would rapidly complete work in seconds that left many of the other of the students baffled. During one testing occasion, Mrs. Smith even caught him trying to cheat, despite his high skill level. I came to think of him as one of the most intelligent students in the class, though at the same time, he was also much more difficult to for me to work with than anyone else.

I later found out that James had a history of trouble that prior teachers had noticed as well. When I spoke to the principal about the new classroom disciplinary system, she spontaneously told me that James had been suspended many times for his behavior in class; even the principal thought of him as a very difficult student:

Uhm, take James for a minute. James. He was in my office the first year probably every day. Every week ... [his] Mom was mad at me. Ooooh, she would be so mad at me. "Not again! Send him home." I'd send him home. I send him suspension, suspension, suspension. This year, he wasn't perfect but he started seeing what the system was. See, she [Mrs. Smith] had a system in that classroom; she put him in the back. Mrs. Smith was awesome with him.

Note that the principal said that "every day, every week" she suspended him. Apparently, James was well known as one of the more difficult students in the school.

As I worked more with James and observed him interacting with the other students in the class, I discovered another remarkable aspect of his personality that set him apart from everyone else. The following field note excerpt took place during the first week I was in the field: As usual, James was very disruptive to the entire group. He grabbed all the pencils away from the supply bin, refused to share them and refused to do his journal. I soon got the pencils back, but for a while, he didn't write at all. Instead, he used his pencil to make holes in his journal paper, wearing a hole that went through several pages, destroying the paper in the journal. At one point, he got very angry and huffy because someone took his pencil. I tried to get him to take another pencil from the bin, as there were several that were not being used, but he refused. He was being very difficult. I honestly could not understand why he was acting this way.

I tried to get him to work by saying, "Show me how smart you are." This was a technique I learned from Mrs. Smith, which seemed to work with other students.

James had a very interesting, unexpected reply I hadn't heard from any of the other kids. He said, "I'm not smart. I have only half a brain." And he put his hand over his head and made a slicing motion from the back of his head to the front of his head, signaling that he only had half a brain. He said this several times about "1 /2 a brain" as if he had heard this from someone else who had told him this. He seemed to be completely rejecting the idea that he was capable of anything.

I replied to him, "That's not true, James, I've seen you write before, I know you are smart."

He looked at me and then he started saying that other people in the group didn't have brains either. And I told him that wasn't true. And finally, I said something out of frustration which was, "I don't want to hear that," because I was beginning to get upset at how he was insulting the other kids. I really didn't want them to think badly of themselves. This seemed to work, because he stopped insulting everyone, but he still refused to do work.

Why would James say this about himself when he was clearly one of the smartest students? Perhaps James wanted attention, for in directly contradicting me, James came to occupy a position of power during this interaction as he contested my definition of the situation. He seemed to want to challenge me as he insulted the rest of his nearby classmates; something he knows will only make me more upset. Students knew they were supposed to "respect your friends," and that classroom insults like this were unacceptable and deserving of punishment. It seemed to me that James was doing his very best to make

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To get around this characterization of himself, James adopts the role of the classroom bully. At every step, James opposed my definition of the situation.

In redefining events to suit his own desires, James clearly wanted to be in control of the resources of the classroom. In adopting the title of "bully," James seems to be eager to adopt a form of hostility in order to get his own way at the expense of his peers. In this case, he was successful at getting his way, much to my chagrin. My field notes record my feelings about the event, "I find myself feeling frustrated with James and with myself. Here he has gotten away with being a bully and I didn't do anything to stop him!" The feelings I had towards James were, in a sense, inescapable. I knew that such resistance was likely to happen again and because I was part of the classroom, I couldn't remove myself from future conflicts. Teachers are faced with similar problems in their work, according to data from my later interviews.

One of the more startling moments in the field occurred during another encounter when the word "bully" came up yet again in reference to James. Tom, one of the students who often sat next to him, shared his low opinion of James in language I had never heard in the classroom before, "You're a bully!" Tom says. "Sometimes, I wish you were dead!" Tom said this with his brow furrowed and his lips pursed closely together. When I heard this being said, I am shocked that Tom would say such a thing to James, for I've ever heard anyone say anything so completely awful. But at the same time that I disapprove of Tom saying this, I also almost involuntarily felt like I was on Tom's side here, as James was so often disruptive and so very difficult to work with.

"I wish you were dead earlier!" James says in retaliation.

Tom tells him that he is going to get Charles (from class) to beat him up. James says, "Charles won't hit me,"

"He's older than you!" Tom says back.

James disagrees. "I'm nine" he says, and starts listing the other names of other older kids in the class who are all younger than nine9 years old.

As one of the oldest students in the class, James age and his size meant that he was quite fearless in physically challenging the other boys for most of the students were just six or 7 seven years old. This meant he had somehow fallen two or three years behind his classmates and he was only in first grade! Educational psychologists who have written about bullying in childhood write that elementary schools are one of the most common places where bullying takes place (Lines, 2008).

My relationship with James changed over time. Towards the end of the year, he gave me hugs much like the other children did. During the day when there was time, he would occasionally approach me in more friendly ways, excitedly showing me his toys. When we had about one month left of school, James drew a picture of me and himself and gave to me as a gift. I think this drawing encapsulates his own understanding of our conflicts. He gave it to me during a time period in class when students were able to play. My field notes record this event in the following excerpt:

James gives me the picture he drew and then tells me the story behind it. He tells me that I am up in the cockpit of a monster robot controlling it. He points to a stick figure in the head of a very large monster like machine. James points to the other figure next to the monster which represents himself- a large man with big muscles to the left of me in the picture. He tells me that we are both fighting. "And those are our girlfriends," he says, pointing to two stick figures with long hair on the sides of each picture, each one next to a tree which separates us from our girlfriends which are drawn in red felt tip pen . The girls are both smiling, but clearly marginal to the action. (See drawing on the following page.)

Page 38 Mi~ronesian Edu~ator- Volu1ne 15, 2011