GETTING TO KNOW MY STUDENTS

Although many teachers would never admit it, each teenager he/she has ever had in class are complex and emotional and fragile human beings. Since I enjoyed being a bit more involved with my pupils than some other teachers, it took me longer to reach our level comfort and familiarity. I always needed to tread lightly at the beginning to know what each would accept. I don't want to tease a kid about being tall/short/ red haired, etc. If they are sensitive in that area. Some kids love teasing, others do not and I wanted to learn all those sensitivities first. Some students stay very quiet and care to remain less conspicuous and I honor that need.It does not mean that I don't call on them in class, but it certainly means that I don't draw undue attention to them.

 It is really important for future communications that one does not breach that trust. There were times when a student responded in class that I would joke about something he/she said. With others I would not. I discovered that macho males respected a show of force on occasion and in at least one time when I got up in a boys face in a somewhat threatening manner that student became much more respectful of me and almost defensive of me with others. If I saw a quite introverted student who seemed distressed or distracted, I might take a second after class and ask if everything was OK. The one thing I had trouble doing was to allow that person the privacy to say, “I don't want to talk about it.” that happened on occasion.

One girl fell up against my chest and started crying and told me that she thought she was pregnant and seemed to find solace in the fact that I was not going to judge her, just be a friend at that moment. It turned out that she was not pregnant. Another asked if she could come by just to talk. When she came by after school she began to tell me that she lived with her grandmother and that her granny was so old fashioned that she was not allowed to a lot of things that other teens were able to do. She had a twin brother and he was treated much more liberally than she was and she thought that that was not fair. For more than an hour she poured out her concerns to me and for the most part, I asked a few questions, consoled a bit  and asked her to consider her grandmother perspective. Other than that I did almost nothing but listen to her. When she was finally finished, she got up in the motion of leavings looked at me and said, “Thank you, Mr. McAdams, you have really helped a lot.” Sometime they just need someone to listen to them.

One Freshman asked me to beat up a senior for him. In discussing why, he told me that this guy had been a hero to him while growing up in their neighborhood and had treated him rather well. But when he became a Freshman in school, the senior would not even talk to him in the halls and lunchroom. I tried to explain as best I could that there was some pressure to be cool and that did not mean being friends with underclassmen. I suggested that he talk to him out of school and try to work things out. In this case I intervened a bit and told the senior how the Freshman felt. He was surprised that it had hurt him that much. It seems they worked things out.

Teens are such a maze of emotions to begin with and that time of their lives is such a traumatic one,  puberty and the accompanying body changes, need for popularity, degree and strengths of sexual desires they have never experienced, the looming separation anxiety of leaving home for college, the peer pressure to fit in is never stronger than in the teen years.  I think we make a big mistake by telling them that these are the best years of their lives and to enjoy it while they can. Nothing is farther from the truth. We adults have selective memories about our adolescence. Let them be anxious, let them fret and just be there for them when they think they can't deal with it alone. These are fascinating people with immature and mature problems and are in a learning process of how to handle it. It surprises me how well they handle such fears and angst.