Now, it has always been my intention to be captain of my own classroom someday. I had just always planned for that classroom to be populated by teenagers approaching normalcy, not a bunch of cretinous tweens.
Cretinism is a thyroid related medical condition. My students are just dumb.
But here we are. So lets just make the best of this situation and make fun of those kids. Deal?
For the past several months whenever someone asks me how teaching has been, I reply with one word: "interesting". Because that's really all I can say without telling them about the minutiae of my job. I have a few rather singular stories that I share whenever I have time, and a thousand little commiserations when I have time to speak to somebody else who has to deal with children for a living. Today I'm going to start to share some of those noteworthy stories or opinions.
Let's begin with the opinions. Or as I'm going to call them "Facts".
"Kids are the worst! Am I right? Of course I'm right."
I teach roughly 170 students, give or take how many are suspended, across six classes. There are only 25 students in the 7th grade that I have not taught. That means in just my first year of teaching, I have taught roughly a fourth of the entire school's population. So I feel like I have a fairly accurate assessment of what my school has to offer.*Disclaimer* I like my job. It's what I spent years of college preparing for. History and teaching are two things that I like to think I'm pretty good at. I have no thoughts about quitting, despite some of the kids taunting to the otherwise. I tell the kids that they pay me too much money for me to quit. This is just a chance to do some good-natured griping about my students.
Fact Number 1)
Middle school students are terrible, terrible people. Seventh graders are the worst of the worst. Keep that in mind when you read the things I say about them. They deserve it.
For serious.
Let me be clear: kids love Dr. Woofers, and Dr. Woofers loves kids. But these sub-humans are not, NOT kids. Middle school kids have all the worst qualities of children and adults. With none of the perks. They're like the opposite of sporks. The opposite of boat-planes. The opposite of surf and turf. I think you get the point.
Gross...
Fact number 2)
My school has some of the lowest of the low. I teach nearly all of them. There is not a moment in the day where I don't have at least five problem students in the classroom. In addition to behavior problems, I have students who read at a 2nd grade level. Not to be cruel, but one class also has eight students who are classified as being "high functioning" members of the special education program.
Gold medal level high functioning. Seriously, they're awesome.
We also have some really bright kids. Every school has the honors program, the gifted kids, the advanced class, whatever you want to call it. Our school is no different. This school has a robotics team. My high school didn't have a robotics team.
Don't get me wrong, those kids are terrible too. They think that they know everything. I had one kid try to tell me the historiography of the American Civil War. These kids can't stand to make bad grades. They whine more than the "dumb" kids when a study guide doesn't tell them every single answer they'll need for the upcoming test.
I don't even know what to do sometimes...
The lesson of the story is you can't win with middle school students. They are the quintessential Pyrrhic victory. You can't win for losing.
Fact Number 3)
Middle school kids seem to have a problem with converting their short term memory to long term memory. It's like every time they go to sleep at night, they forget everything that happened the day before. They have the memory span of Drew Barrymore in "50 First Dates". Not just things like not remembering what they learned during elementary school. But things that they just learned last period.
"What does "simile" mean? Think. Think. Think."
Anyway, this is just the start. I'm sure that at some point I will have the time to write up some of the anecdotes from my time in the crowded classroom. In the crowded hallway. In the crowded lunchroom. You get the point.
