Seventh grade lives 3

Forget pedagogy, curriculum, lesson plans, learning theory, brain research and all that for a moment.  This teaching business is often just an emotional hurricane from the first bell in the morning to the last in the afternoon.  Take today for example:

Second period:  today was the last day at school for the boy who lost his mother over the weekend.  We spoke briefly of it in the class, and the boys were visibly affected by his misfortune.  I could see them trying to imagine how it would feel if it happened to them.  I continued to feel troubled by what this fragile boy was facing.

Advisory:  Today was the final game of our basketball tournament.  My class was playing Mr. Beach’s.  Emotions ran high at the game.  The other classes were cheering from the stands.  My students constantly wanted only the best players to play while I insisted on playing anyone who wanted to.  Everyone was very excited--it was wonderful!  We lost but the whole event was very positive for the 7th grade boys and for the five of us who have their advisory periods.  (Next up:  spelling bee!)

Sixth period:  The excitement of the game carried over into this period, always my most difficult.  Somehow one boy who is always pretty hyped up and volatile was pushed off the edge by something someone said.   Next thing I knew he was in a violent rage, trying to throw tables and chairs, screaming and sobbing.  I hustled him outside asked him to just stand still for a moment, get hold of himself,  and calm down.  He was shaking and sobbing, but he did slowly calm down.  Later he came back into the room and soon, in typical boy fashion, he was his usual rambunctious self.  But the display of raw emotion was awesome and hard to forget. 

Meanwhile the provocateur in this case continued to be the most willful, determined, and successful disruptors in all of my classes.  This boy doesn’t even try to control his acting out, but rather issues a steady stream of mockery, goofiness, and impudence.  Yelling doesn’t have more than a transitory effect, so I began ignoring him.  Unfortunately the rest of the class continued to find him hilarious. 

I ended up addressing myself to them rather than him.  “He just wants an audience,” I said, “and if you are his audience ask yourselves, what will he teach you?  Is it more than I can teach you?  It’s up to you to deny him his audience so we can get on with the job of learning and teaching.”  Maybe they heard that, maybe not.  I intend to repeat this argument at every opportunity.  We’ll see. 

The emotion I feel is anger at this boy for making my job so difficult, even while I keep in mind that he’s only 13 and must be deeply troubled to manifest this behavior.  This is a common dichotomy--they piss me off while they evoke my concern for their futures.  This is a basic teacher issue--we care deeply for them even when they infuriate us.  It's sort of like parents, but with scores of kids and only for school hours.  It's what makes teaching so energizing and so exhausting at the same time.

And so another day in the hurricane of emotions that makes up seventh grade lives.