This past week was my first full week of my fifth year to teach middle school. Whew! I love teaching middle schoolers. They are such a fun age to be around, energy and angst included. The first week, as any teacher will tell you, is a biggie. You are setting your expectations in the classroom, starting a line of communication with parents, and still smiling the whole time because you have that “beginning of the year” teacher energy. Everything is still so fresh and exciting. You are learning names, getting to know your students’ strengths and what they already know, and then….it happens.
Getting to know the new seventh graders’ personalities is easily the highlight of the new year.
“I love to draw. It is one of my absolute favorite things to do. The only thing I can draw is a character that is half wolf, half human.”
-7th Grade Student
Then you have that one student who really is a leader amongst their peers. They are the alpha of the middle school wolf pack who is unafraid of pushing you and your clearly outlined expectations to see just how far they can go. It happens every year, without fail, and yet I am somehow still shocked by this envelope-pusher.
The real dilemma, of course, is not just that I have a preteen testing boundaries, it’s how to handle this preteen. Through my short years of experience I’ve used up all of the teacher bag of tricks on these bold kiddos: call parents, write a detention the first week, move seats, move classes, beg even (not a proud moment). As it turns out, what a preteen needs to get on board and what a toddler or adult need to get on board are pretty much the same thing. All any of us really want is someone who enjoys having us around and is invested in our success.
This is how, for the very first time, I quickly got this reluctant student to realize that we’re on the same side. First, I learned his name, and not by calling him out in front of the entire class, “Hey you! What’s your name?” style. It was a combo of looking over shoulders at names on papers and waiting for him to say “here” while taking attendance. Let’s be honest, even so, I still didn’t remember his name two days in; there are a lot of names to learn. Knowing a student’s name early on is an invaluable tool. You can greet them at the door; they know you know who they are.
Then, I showered him with encouragement. I’m talking notes on his journaling about how happy I was that he was in class, how sharp he is, how relieved I am that we have someone in class who will really make our class discussions spectacular, and so on. I really do believe these things about this student, the difference this year is that I’m not letting my frustrations over his behavior get in the way of me telling him so.
At first I thought to myself, “Why am I sucking up to this kid? Shouldn’t this go the other way around?”, but then I noticed the behavior changes and I thought “Who cares?!” We’ve all heard about those self fulfilling prophecies. He stopped adding in his unnecessary two cents after every single thing I said; now it was just once or twice per class period. He started replying to me when I greeted him at the door. He’s turning all of his work in on time.
It’s early days yet. I know that this is not the last I’ve seen of this student’s daring side, but at least we are starting to build some rapport so that when things get dicey later on, we’ll have a foundation for mutual respect.
Child Goose Chase 