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When most people hear that I am a middle school teacher, they sigh and give me that look. You know the one that goes along with, “You are such a trooper.” Yes, middle school sucks. It sucked when I went through it, and that part has not changed.
No one tells you before you walk in the classroom door that most of your day will be spent wrangling and pleading and praying that you don’t say something that will be misconstrued by a parent or media outlet. I usually find myself laughing sometime during the day about what comes out of my mouth in the course of those interesting 7 periods.
Here’s some of what I said today:
“Please don’t kick boys in the knees. Ladies don’t act like that.”
“Yelling is only acceptable at sporting events, to stop someone from running into traffic, or when someone is beating you to death.”
“I guess I just like them better. What kind of question is that?”
“I asked you to please stop talking. I didn’t say anything about acting obnoxious and ignoring me.”
“These excuses are getting really lame. You can come up with something better than this.”
“Wow. You guys are, like, really bad at this whole voting thing.”
“Um, I asked you stand in a circle, not in a weird polygon.”
“Hmph. You know, if you’re going to cheat, you really need to work on your technique. I’m not supposed to be able to see it.”
It makes for a interesting day. Fortunately, I’m laughing today.
I’m sure my header picture tells my current story (check out the two month old date!). Since I don’t have internet access at home, I am limited to posting whenever I have some free time at some other place. I’ve posted some on my other blog, and keep thinking that I need to put something over here. So here’s some of what’s been going on.
I sat down at a table today with four teens who are still learning English. Our goal was to learn the past tense of some irregular verbs, like drive/drove and eat/ate. Most of us who grew up in this country take for granted the fact that we know delightful grammar rules like this. This is often a struggle for these kids, and if you ever tried to learn a foreign language as an adult, you can sympathize.
So like I said, I sat down at the table today and started off with, “Today, we’re going to talk about verbs. What is a verb?” Fingers snapped in the air, accompanied by several “ums” and desperate appeals to the ceiling tiles. In their Spanish-mumbling, I heard the correct answer—in Spanish—so I asked them to teach me. It wasn’t enough to just tell me “accion”, they taught me an entire sentence: “Verbos es una palabra que espresa accion.” I butchered it. They corrected me. One boy fought to keep his hands from molding my jaw into the proper stance to pronounce the words. They erupted into loud applause when I finally got out all the words without stumbling.
Their eyes shined like they had just won permanent immunity from all standardized English tests. It was our moment. You see, it’s easy to dismiss these kids as slow or lazy when they don’t pick up the language the way we think we did. Believe me, there are many times I do that. There are days when I struggle to even smile at them because I don’t think I’m making a difference. It takes far more energy to embrace them and listen to what they have to say.
By the end of the lesson, they all knew the past tense of burst and caught. I was reminded again that the way to a person’s soul is to show them you care about who they are instead of who they should or could be. In the end, that’s all that matters because that’s all we really want anyway—to be loved.
Here’s a discussion I had today with some seventh-going-into-eighth graders getting ready to make strawberry shortcake.
“When you get into your groups, assign a new role. You cannot be the same thing you were the last time. That means everyone needs a different job.”
“Miss, I was the reader last time, and they are making me be the reader again.”
“Well, you can’t be the reader again. Mary, what is your job right now?”
“I’m the mixer.”
“Okay, well Sarah was the reader last time. She cannot be the reader again.”
“But I’m the mixer.”
“Fine, but Sarah cannot be the reader again.”
“But I’m the mixer and Donna’s the supply person. I was the supply person last time, and Donna was the mixer last time.”
“Okay, but Sarah was the reader last time, and she cannot be the reader again today.”
“I’m confused.”
“I don’t care if you’re confused or not. Go back and change jobs again so that Sarah is NOT the reader.”
“But…”
“Go!”
