Miss Long had a whole drawer full of Koosh balls that she would randomly catapult, fling and throw at her students--sometimes when we wouldn't stop talking, sometimes when someone didn't do their homework again and sometimes just for fun. She had a collection of ladybugs on the shelf behind her desk and a tiny ladybug tattooed on her left foot. She let us have assigned seats in her desk chair, the stool behind the podium, the rocking chair up front and the bean bags in the back corner. In her classroom we created book projects, filmed a movie and read Romeo and Juliet. She made me love English in 8th grade.
Mrs. H wore a different pair of overalls every single day; ones with Looney Tunes embroidered on the pocket, corduroy ones and capri ones that showed her socks. Her dry hands constantly covered in chalk from the board, she left the yellow dust on our papers when she pointed out a mistake on our math homework.
Mr. McConnel showed us pictures of his adventures around the world when he taught us about climate, biomes and states of matter. We spent weeks constructing our hot air balloons and testing fuels before the big take off... which got cancelled because of bad weather. On the day before Christmas Break we put off Science work and played the Big Booty game the whole period. When you finished your test you got to walk around to try to find the answer to the bonus question in his museum of a classroom. Everyone had anxiety while making sure every homework, note, test, worksheet and lab report was in the correct spot before the dreaded Binder Checks.
I've been a Junior High English Comp teacher for four years now but some days I forget that I'm a teacher to these kids. As in I'm the one that makes them love or dread coming to English class. Ten years from now when they look back on Junior High they'll think of me and I can only guess what details they'll remember. When they see me out at a restaurant or pass me in the aisle of Target it's weird because I'm their teacher and they sometimes forget I have a real life too.
When I think about my role in kids' lives I immediately think of summers at Camp Tecumseh and the time spent with Young Life kids. I'm not sure why I forget about this whole teaching thing that actually takes up the largest part of my life. There are days when it's hard to be a teacher-- when I'm trying to be patient, when the questions never stop, when I see kids being mean to one another, when they can't figure out how to staple the top left corner of their papers instead of the right. But then there are more days when I love being part of this school and spending my days with these kids.
Junior High is a strange land. In my three years at Delphi Middle School I lost my best friends and found new ones. I went out with a boy for the first time when he asked me out at the Valentine's Day Dance... and then broke up with him the next day so it wouldn't ruin our friendship. I had a mouth full of braces and a really cool pair of glasses. Every Monday morning I showed up early to play my clarinet in the Honor Band. Cross Country, Track and Swimming filled my afternoons. I was trying to figure out who I was and where I belonged most of the time.
It's a common response for people to think I'm crazy when I tell them my job. So many of them remember Junior High as a time they'd rather forget. I get why they say that, these years are a blip on the radar of your whole life but it's a crazy, up-and-down, hormonal kind of blip. One of my hopes as a teacher is that I can help make these good years, that I'll teach my kids about thesis statements while I'm teaching them about life and believing in themselves. I want them to contribute to our school, make friends with new people and feel like they belong.
I would like to suggest that by teaching in a building filled with a thousand 11-14 year-olds I'm privy to the largest maturity, physical and social gap possible in one school. Boys' voices are cracking and girls are shooting up a foot taller than their male classmates. A few of the kids are still so small they could pass for the fourth grade while some of these girls could easily pass for college freshmen. About half of them have braces, herps and expanders filling up their mouths. Some of them still occasionally act like animals and talk in weird voices but others can engage in mature discussions with any teacher.
While learning to divide square roots, analyzing characters and building circuits these kids are also juggling huge things at home. I've had students lose parents, move in the middle of the school year, go through divorce, get bullied by their best friends, miss weeks of school because of concussions and break more bones and growth plates than I can count. I'm learning over and over again that these kids are resilient. Most of them still have such strong hope in the world and believe that anything is possible. They want to grow up to be professional athletes, singers, lawyers and doctors. They're not afraid to ask questions and they say what's on their mind. They transform into stronger, wiser, braver, smarter versions of themselves in the two short years they walk the halls of this building.
It makes my day when boys walk into class saying, "I love school," and they're completely serious. When I hear my Young Life girls talk about how they wish they could be in Junior High again I know we must be doing something right here. We're playing the pencil game in the hallway, staying after for dodge ball, going 212 degrees every Monday, being Pawsitive all the time, hanging out at Wyld Life Club and making class creative. While some people remember wanting to hit fast forward on these years, I hope our kids want to stay, or at least soak it all up while they're here.
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