Every teacher has them and every student knows who they are; the problem child. The obnoxious student. The energetic one. "The bad kid". Every class has at least one of them, if not four or five.

This is the student that sits in the back of the room because they are always up out of their seat or making noises. This is the student whose name is never forgotten because the teacher learned it on the first day. This is the student that has the power to make teachers exhausted and burn out after one hour of one-on-one instruction with them. Well, I learned something about the bad kids — they're not as bad as we all think. While this is the student that makes us all crazy, this is also the student that may need us the most.

I have been interning at an elementary school in a very rough part of town, for lack of a better word, for about seven months now. Many of the students come from households with very little income, and very little support. Needless to say, between the spring and fall semester, I have come in contact with a lot of "problem children". It's much easier to put the student in the back of the room with the intern than it is to stop instruction every few minutes to call out their name and tell them to refocus or sit down or stop talking.

I know because I've been the teacher in the front of the room before, completely distracted by these kids. I wouldn't be able to carry on a lesson because the student right in front of the room is snoring so loudly, while the student in the back of the room is out of his seat and the student sitting somewhere in the room that I haven't pinpointed yet is humming. I wish I could have taken all of these students and put them somewhere else. But that wouldn't solve anything. I didn't need to change them, I needed to change myself.When I started working one-on-one with these kids was when I changed my outlook. When the students became more comfortable with me, I learned more about their lives at home and everything started to make sense. The student who was snoring accidentally took his night-time medicine with breakfast and he can't stay awake. The student who won't stop talking doesn't have parents that care to listen to her at home. The student that didn't do any of his homework last night was up taking care of his younger siblings because both parents were working late.

I take a lot of these problems home with me because after all it's my job to help people, right? I wish I could have take the students under my wing and given them the life that I had growing up, although I knew their parents were doing their best. I regretted all of the times that I snapped on them because I was stressed about my lesson not going the way that I had planned. I felt terrible that I wanted to change their lives instead of taking the time to change mine.

These students are always the students I miss the most when my time with them is up. These are the students I've developed relationships with, and they made me a better teacher because of it. I learned that each student has a story and we need to put it in perspective when we set expectations for them. I learned that it's time for me to change what I'm doing to better instruct for all of the students — so they don't want to stand up, talk, hum, or sleep while I'm teaching. But most of all, I learned that I may be all some of these students have, so I need to be my best for them. It was something I was told throughout my entire college career that I would be a hero for a lot of my students, but it never meant as much to me then as it does now when I finally have a chance to feel it.

Next time there is a problem student in your class, whether you or a teacher or another student, do me a favor and don't ever think about what you can do to change them. Think about what you can do to change yourself to the point where it makes an impact on this student. Every student is a "problem student" on any given day, I guess that just means we need to give them a little more love