The Unteachables by Gordon Korman

I picked up The Unteachables at my school's book fair a few months ago. I always end up enjoying that event more than any of my students, but I digress. The book happened to catch my eye since I was bringing a very challenging group of kids down to the media center at the time. A whole novel about a teacher trying to reform a tough group of kids was something I could connect to on a spiritual level at that moment, so I picked it up. Since all of July is going to be taken up with my Book Junkie Trials, I decided to finally give this shorter, middle grades novel a try during the last few days of June.

The plot of the novel centers around the "unteachables," a group of seven students placed into a self-contained 8th grade class, and their beleaguered teacher, Mr. Kermit. The students, as their nickname suggests, are very difficult to manage. They don't complete their schoolwork, earn abysmal grades, and have terrible behavior. Teaching this crew is the toughest gig in the school; they are the kids that no one else wants to deal with.

As the novel begins, Mr. Kermit is assigned to teach their class as a punishment. The superintendent of the school district is nursing a grudge against him and is trying to force him to resign his post before he is eligible for early retirement next year. He believes that forcing him to teach a difficult class might cause him to quit. Mr. Kermit, however, is determined to make it to the end of the year. He's completely lost his zest for teaching though, so he makes it through each day with the unteachables by assigning them worksheets while he sits at his desk doing crossword puzzles. 

Before too long, a young, idealistic teacher in the classroom next door takes an interest in Mr. Kermit and his unruly class. Her encouragement motivates him to put in a bit more effort, and his kids start to show some improvements. Their progress reawakens Mr. Kermit's original love of teaching, but the superintendent won't give up the idea of forcing him out of the school. When he comes up with a plan to use student test scores to fire him, the unteachables must pull together to defy expectations and save their teacher's job.

This was a cute, quick read with a lot of heart. The characters were charming and there were a lot of little moments between Mr. Kermit and his students that made me smile. However, Gordon Korman got so many details about how schools work wrong that I had trouble fully enjoying it. Obviously, this novel is written for a middle grades audience, and most kids that age won't be able to see the problems with it. For me though, an actual middle school teacher, I couldn't resist making several annotations as I read about everything that didn't make sense.

It would take too long (and be very silly) to go through every detail I took issue with, so I will limit myself to mentioning the biggest one I noticed: the use of a self-contained class as the main setting. Self-contained classrooms are serious business in schools. Students have the right to learn in the least restrictive environment possible. This is a law. For a student to be placed in a self-contained situation means that they have very severe behavioral/mental health issues. Lots of paperwork and monitoring is involved in self-contained placement decisions with input from doctors, counselors, and parents heavily considered. Teachers of self-contained classrooms need special certifications and training.

In the world of The Unteachables, however, self-contained classrooms are a holding tank for kids that misbehave or earn poor grades. Here's a quick rundown of the unteachables:

1. Kiana: A new student to the school that is given an incorrect schedule and attends the class for several months, despite not being on the roster. She earns excellent grades and displays good behavior. Still, no one questions her placement in the class and Mr. Kermit doesn't realizes she isn't on his roll for a very long time.

2. Parker: A nice kid with very obvious dyslexia. This goes completely undiagnosed for most of the novel, despite him openly being unable to decode words in front of Mr. Kermit.

3. Aldo: A student with anger issues. He is easily frustrated and punches inanimate objects when mad.

4. Barnstorm: A former football player sidelined from the team due to an injury. He got away with slacking off academically while on the team. Once he couldn't play anymore, teachers realized he never really did any schoolwork, gave him low grades, and chucked him into the self-contained class.

5. Elaine: A big, strong girl that everyone is afraid of. She's quiet and does well on her schoolwork.

6. Rahim: A boy that sleeps in class constantly. No one is concerned about this for most of the novel.

7. Mateo: A boy obsessed with Star Trek and other nerdy media. His fixation resembles mild autism, although his exact diagnosis is never mentioned.

None of these kids qualify for self-contained placement. Even if they did, Mr. Kermit would not be allowed to teach them without the correct certification. Teachers certainly can not be given an assignment like that as a punishment, and the fact that these kids are even in this class are grounds for a lawsuit. Students like the unteachables are actually just the type of kids that teachers have filling their mainstream classrooms every single day, twenty five at a time, seven or eight periods a day. I had around 75 "unteachables" this past school year alone.

I know why Korman structured the story this way. He needed to create a situation where one teacher dealt with a small amount of kids all day long. To have regular class sizes full of kids rotating on a normal schedule would have made this narrative impossible. There would be too many kids to keep track of, and Mr. Kermit could never have become close enough with all of them. Still, this was such an incorrect depiction of a self-contained classroom that it affected my enjoyment while reading.

Despite all of the inaccuracies, however, there were still a lot of great moments in the novel. While Korman got a lot wrong with the details of the school setting, he got a lot of the emotions that go on in teaching right. Mr. Kermit's initial burnout is all too common, and his negative feelings about teaching were things I have felt myself from time to time. There is one moment in the novel where his entire class doesn't show up one morning, and his brief fantasy about all of his students being absent on the same day is exactly something I have thought before on days when my students are slow to filter into the room. When he begins to turn things around, his protective feelings for his students and his pride in their work are also things I have felt. I actually got a little misty-eyed during some of the nicer parts of the novel, and that's not something I do very often while reading.

So ultimately, my feelings on The Unteachables were mixed. I know too much about how schools work to fully enjoy it, but at the same time, the story was sweet enough to make me smile. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to students though, and I will be sticking my copy in my classroom library for sure. Adult readers won't get much out of it, but this is a fast and funny little read for the middle grades crowd.


Challenge Tally
Finally in 2019: 19/6 Books Read - Complete!

Total Books Read in 2019: 36