Lent Confessions 2014, Day 2014: Teaching high school has a wide variety of challenges as well as rewards. There was an interesting psychological dance that I engaged in as I spent most of my day in the company of 15-17 year-olds. These adolescents were a cocktail of blossoming personality and raging-hormone-induced mania. In one instant I could be engaged in a conversation with them and easily see their maturity and then that balloon would burst in split second and the juvenilia would take over and I was suddenly reminded of the pain and torture of being that age (or dealing with that age). For the most part, I really did love my students. I think if you have any aspiration of being a successful teacher to have to prepare to love them. Failure or refusal to do so makes you ineffective. That being said, there were times when dealing with them made me wonder if my eyes could roll any further back in my head. So my levels of smarm and sarcasm grew in direct proportion to the level of maturity I was dealing with. And then there were times when I genuinely wondered how some of them managed to dress themselves and walk upright. And it was these occasions which gave me the greatest pause. Im not really one who is prone to yelling. And apparently using the kind of language that would immediately pop in my head as a valid response was frowned upon I had to find other ways of dealing with the occasional (read frequent) teen-age attitude. And this is where having a podium comes in handy. Standing in front of a class where a student (or gaggle thereof) would begin to display behavior that made sighing hurt, I could face them calmly, sip from my coffee cup, and discreetly flip off the offender from the security of the covered podium. They were none the wiser that I was passive-aggressively displaying my true reaction as my demeanor wouldnt change one bit. I found this habit to be quite stress-relieving. Of course I would never make such a rude gesture to them openly. And they had no idea I was exercising my expression of sheer annoyance and objectivity. So to my former students, I now take this opportunity to apologize for secretly returning a gesture that I know many of you wanted to offer to me. Mea Culpa!
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 02:31:28 +0000
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