Devolving

Sometimes I feel our actions as teachers do not meet the expectations we have of our students. Some examples:

1. A teacher walks her students in a line through the school. She is at the head of the line, and they are all trailing behind her like ducklings following their mama. Can the expectation be that the students will walk in a straight line, silently, with their limbs to themselves?
2. A teacher assigns group work to the class, then sits down behind her desk to grade papers. Can the expectation be that the students will stay on topic and complete the work?
3. A teacher doesn't have a consequence for students who are tardy because she feels that sometimes the kids just need a little slack. Can the expectation be that the students will not abuse this policy, coming to class on time the majority of the time?

If the expectation is that a middle school student will monitor his own behavior and actions and do what is right just because, then the student is being set up for failure. Middle school students are just not wired that way ... it's not in their nature to police themselves. They, bless their hearts, cannot be trusted to do anything remotely responsible without an insane amount of supervision. They are all on the verge of devolving into a chaotic mess of wind, words, dust, and paper similar to the Tasmanian devil that annoyed Bugs Bunny. Only the watchful, hawk-like eyes of a teacher can curb this whirlwind of crazy.

You can try to trust them to walk down a hallway and not push their "friends" into the trashcans or try to knock the clocks off the walls, but the temptation is too great, and you're not looking, so there's no reason not to do these things.

You can hope they will care enough about their class grade to focus on the work and try their best, but this is an instant gratification generation. They get nothing out of doing this assignment right NOW; the grade comes later, and the report card even later than that. They don't see the consequence because it's too far away.

You can try to cut them some slack, but tomorrow they'll see how much more slack they can get out of you. Give them an inch, they'll try for a mile.

My students will tell you that I am "mean." The discipline plan kicks in on the second day of school: you will behave in the hallways, even if we have to walk side-by-side like best friends shopping at the mall; you will use class time for work time, even if I have to hover over your desk and eavesdrop on your group discussions for the entire 30 minutes; you will be held accountable for evey single time you are late to my class. Yes, I am very mean, and I like being this way.

After a few days, I can shift my focus from establishing my meanness to teaching my class because I have fewer discipline problems. They stop testing boundries because they have found that the boundries aren't that far away and are fortified with a refusal on my part to back down. 

And the kids ... they evolve back into the responsible kids I know they can be when they know someone is watching them like a hawk.

Everyone wins.

Mug Shots, Driver's License Photos, and Yearbook Pictures: Proof I Existed I'd Like to Burn

School has started, and this year is shaping up to be pretty awesome. We have a brand new administrative team who is so on top of things it's frightening ... and wonderful. I am back in my element teaching only 8th grade classes (Can I get a hallelujah on not having 7th graders?!?). And I keep bracing myself for my students to turn into soul-sucking piranhas, but so far not even a little bit ... which is a little unsettling, like waiting for the ambush you know is coming.

With the first days of school come several standard "housekeeping" items. We have Camp Viking where the students get all the school-wide rules and expectations in one day. We have schedule changes and classes getting leveled (balanced). We also have super-torture time Picture Day.

Picture Day happens early on my campus because these are the pictures that will be on the students' ID cards. They are also the pictures that will be in the yearbook, so the students are allowed to wear casual clothes that day. This was hilarious. It was so fun to see what the students chose to wear when told they could ditch the uniform for the day. This year the girls all jumped in a time machine and went back to the 80s. The color scheme has changed (there are still the neons, but they are accent colors and not the entire outfit), but the style is still truly outrageous! Tight leggings layered with skirts and high-top sneakers. Shirts with wide collars hanging off of one shoulder with a tank top peeking out. Teased up, crimped hair. It. Was. Awesome. It was like looking at all of my friends from elementary school. It brought back memories, both good and bad, and made me glad that I had enough sense to leave the 80s alone and wear clothes that don't make me look like an extra in Flashdance because it was horrible enough the first time. The boys wore jeans and graphic tees ... BOR-ING! At least the girls made it possible to believe that today was some kind of dress-up-in-the-fashion-of-a-specific-decade spirit day. The girls won Picture Day by far.

Unfortunately, Picture Day is not a privilege reserved for just the students.We teachers must get our mug shots pictures taken as well. If we do not, our yearbook teacher had threatened to take last year's picture, Photoshop a huge beard on it, and publish that in the yearbook. So yeah, I was down there, cursing the camera and wishing I could avoid it all. Luckily for me, the company that did our pictures is amazing, and they let me preview and veto four shots before finally approving the fifth. That's right ... I'm a yearbook picture diva, and you would be, too, if you taught middle school! Don't judge me ... they do that enough without your help, thank you very much.

I could write some philosophical mess about how I appreciate my good pictures more because of the bad ones, but really I don't. The bad ones should be burned ... along with my DL picture and any future mug shots I might have. I want to be remembered as awesome, and you just can't do that with a bad picture forever on page 54 of the school yearbook.