it was interesting to observe the response of my students to the year ending. you can't expect them to put everything in perspective and reflect on their lives when IT'S SUMMER!!! some did, though. i continue to be amazed by the enormous gap between the actions of seventh and eight graders...and i continue to try to figure out why. how much of it is environment? how much is expectations? what is correlation and what is causation?
part of the reason this started is that i was trying to determine why my students were treating me differently. many of my seventh graders (and i have 3x more of them than eighth, to be fair) were openly expressing that they liked me as a teacher and that they wanted to have me as their teacher next year. i even got a few notes and gifts from them. ((obviously, this is great to hear, but the best comments were the ones who said they had learned to like history, or see it in a new way. those were by far the most rewarding — my only goal, ultimately, was to get my students to think, and question, and see that an examined life is not equivalent to a boring life))
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| Quite possibly the sweetest note ever written, from (quite understandably) one of my favorites. It's like this student took a class on the perfect thing to tell a teacher! And aced it!! You know Mark Twain's quote about good compliments? Well, I'm pretty sure this one will last forever. |
all of this made a thought occur to me. i have a fairly good idea what my seventh graders think of me. but eighth? i'm confident they didn't hate me, but beyond that i'm unsure. part of what makes the teacher/student relationship strange is that most have them have read/heard, in detail, exactly how i feel about them.
the odd thing is, on the whole, i feel as if i was much better with the eighth graders. not only did i think we had fun AND learned medieval history, i rarely got frustrated with them or chewed them out. i gave ONE detention in that class the whole year! yet, the response was not there.
so, why the discrepancy? i have a few theories.
when i looked back on the year with this filter, i realized that i'd been treating my classes more differently than i meant to. all my students think i'm weird, but if i had to predict a second adjective, it would probably be weird/silly for seventh grade, and weird/cool for eighth. though i personally think "cool" can't be defined and therefore is entirely subjective and therefore is pointless, it does exist, and it does cause real problems.
because of my occasional mistakes/minor breakdowns and frequent stories from childhood, i suspect that i appeared much more vulnerable to my ancient history classes, and, therefore, as someone they could identify with or even confide in at times. also, i interacted with them more outside of class, for various reasons.
on the flip side, my medieval history class probably had less of an idea how to react to me (because i rarely showed "weakness"), and i could have seemed aloof or intimidating. i was always calm and usually collected (except when we had "tours" come into class haha). sometimes i would complain about dealing with the seventh-graders, but i never really drove it home that i had no complaints with them, and i honestly thought they were an awesome group. [this theory would put more explanation on me for not providing a more open environment]
it's certainly also possible that they liked me for the most part and just cared MORE about what i thought about them. maybe they felt more pressure. as i'm sure you've experienced, that can have a freezing effect at times. you overthink, then you fail to express yourself accurately, or at all. [this theory would put more of the explanation on normal life environment, since more students tend to care more about being "cool", and being accepted, as they get closer to high school]
i'm generalizing here, of course, because i'm sure it was somewhat different for each student, but my actions certainly matter as well. and, in the end, the answer is a little of each of these theories, and innumerable others.
typically, reflections and realizations of this sort occur when it's too late to change anything. still, it's good to realize it at all, and adjust for the next situation (yet also frustrating to edit the past constantly). this particular lightbulb moment, however, came just in time for one last effort.
i'd decided a long time ago to write a note to each of my eighth-grade students at the end of the year. 22 is a manageable number, and i believe personalized interaction to be one of the biggest benefits of our school. Jon bought a book for each of his 18 seniors, and Tom bought each of his 12 eighth graders a copy of "The Little Prince". when the time came to write the notes, i did my best to convey openly how and why i valued each of them specifically — my broad theme was that you can't base your self-worth in personal accomplishments or in other people's opinions.
as with everything else you do as a teacher, and in life, there will be a broad range of reactions. i know some of them will dismiss my note, perhaps even scoff at my attempt. to others, though, it will mean something. you can't ever perfectly predict who will do what, or what impact it will have, which is the beauty of the thing. <<-- this is why i'm an abnormal economist, because i recognize you can't predict human behavior....
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| Connection? Unpredictability of human behavior. check out xkcd.com for more humor. |
....hmm. i'm about to do that thing again where i take something sincere and human and turn it into something calculated and robotic. classic double-think paradox.
there's a theory in economics called "Pareto Optimality." in short, it says that, in any situation, if you can make even one person better off (in the slightest), without making anyone worse off, then you should do it and the resulting situation is an "improvement". though it seems obvious, it has fascinating implications when applied. the connection? writing personalized notes. though it's not guaranteed to impact their lives positively, i can be pretty positive it won't impact them negatively. maybe they'll toss it. maybe they'll miss the point and save it as a trophy. whatever their response, i can be sure of one initial reaction in common (i wrote the notes on "happy birthday" cards):
"what a weirdo."
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