The last time I was at a school function, I was chatting with a board member. She remarked that she felt she had watched me grow so much as a teacher over the years since my second year when I had taught her son (in my record book, she was the first parent to really yell at me, and in her record book, I am the only teacher of the distinguished line of her children's teachers that she has ever yelled at. Historical for both of us). Anyway, the board member came back to me later and said she hoped she hadn't come off as condescending--that she really meant that she has enjoyed journeying through my career with me, and that my "growth" she was referring to was not in the, "Our baby has grown up before our very eyes" sort of way, but rather an appreciation of the careful sculpting of a teacher.
I didn't take offense at all. Back then, I was one teacher. But now, I'm twenty teachers.
I see myself really as a ball of clay that gets bigger and changes shape each year. I started out as a small square of gray clay, fresh out of the package ten years ago. I was smooth without a single fingerprint on my surface, but also flat and monochrome. Then gradually, I met other teachers, other unique shapes who had once been brand new, like me, but who had since been molded with other teacher clay, resulting in a whole medley of colors and shapes. Some were soft and warm and marbled from years of working and kneading. Others were lumpy with blotches of color stuck to the surface, not yet totally blended. Each teaching experience united me with other shapes and colors, twisting me in and making me new. I am never going back to flat and monochrome, because I am now twenty educational colors and textures. I am twenty teachers.
Therefore, I'm going to make an indulgently long list of what I know so far in my career about how to win at middle school. Often, best practice isn't written in a policy or professional development book somewhere. Every item on the list has been learned by taking pieces of some outstanding educators in my lifetime and carefully patting them into my skin. I wear these teachers every day, continuing to let myself twist and fold and blend with them until they all seep in and embrace my students with me, or talk me off the ledge at the end of a hard day. Enjoy, but more importantly, consider who else has seeped into your skin over time, rounding out your edges and changing your shape.
1. Strike these words from your vocabulary: balls, erect, sack.
2. Keep spare bars of deodorant in your desk drawer for those Spring days when the children reek.
3. Keep Kleenex for drying tears or for gently breaking it to the nose-pickers that people can see you doing that.
4. Have a plan of action to restore calm in case a kid farts loudly and a) everyone notices, b) you think it's funny, or c) a combo of a and b.
5. Appreciate when a classroom door has a mechanism that prevents dramatic slamming during a teenage tantrum.
6. Become well-versed in planner/binder/locker organizational systems.
7a. Become well-versed in Tiger Beat titans, XBox games, the latest "I'm a teenager fighting authority" trilogy, and those new songs that remind you of a mix between Color Me Badd and Jay-Z.
7b. Listen to their stories with sharp focus and sincere interest.
8. Be a friend. "No one will even notice that zit, I promise! It's miniscule!"
9. Be a parental Life Coach. "He won't always be this way, I promise! You're doing a good job!"
10. Fib when necessary to preserve self-confidence. See numbers 8 and 9.
11. Answer every question with patience as if no one asked it already. One minute ago.
12. Know and accept that in your students' lives, friends are most important. They need time to practice socializing and handling conflict safely.
13. Encourage play whenever possible.
14. Plant seeds knowing that some will sprout right away, and others will sprout two (or four, or ten) years from now.
15. Hold the bureaucracy at a distance. Hold your students close. Sometimes a full-out hug is necessary.
16. Watch those Youtube videos your students recommend. What's not funny about a ten-minute montage of cats licking lemons?
17. Ask them how their days are going.
18. Don't let them congregate at the drinking fountain. Trouble ensues!
19. Save their poetry.
20. Get to know their parents. If you do nothing else, let them know how much you love their child.
21. Look for the voices that aren't present, whether among students or parents, or whether in the texts our children read or the viewpoints they study.
22. Don't assess everything. We shouldn't physically be able to keep up with the writing, thinking, and discovering that our students do.
23. Make mistakes, be open about them, and celebrate them with your students. Be open to and celebrate their mistakes, too.
24. Your sense of humor is the key to your survival in middle school. Even the most irritating situations with thirteen year olds are most likely hilarious to someone.
25. Pretend you have swag. Then decorate your room accordingly.
26. If you have pillows or cushions, wash the farts out occasionally.
27. Find embarrassing stuff from when you were in middle school/junior high, like old notebooks or diaries, or school pictures, or even recall stories, to share with your students. Try to make light of the most difficult period of their lives by showing how ridiculous you were (and yet obviously, you survived to be cool now).
28. Beware of creepy dads.
29. Find a coworker to whom you can ugly-cry.
30. Don't be afraid to derail your own lesson plans (or someone else's lesson plans) because you learned something exciting that you can't wait to share with students.
31. Open up your space to students without fretting over supervision.
32. Realize that your connection to your students and colleagues is divine. More than you know.
33. Wear weird outfits. Costumes. Wigs.
34. Work harder than your students.
35. Don't work so hard that you lose your connection to your other support system outside of school (in my case, my husband, children, and friends).
36. Bake for your students if possible. Or give them little inexpensive gifts, like notes.
37. Clean your desk. Just in case you're absent the next day and someone has to look for some sort of lesson plans or class lists and ends up finding your yogurt spoon from last quarter.
38. Take your students outside. Explore, climb, play, and cheer. Fight for opportunities to do so.
39. Find ways to make sure your students are questioning more than answering, investigating more than memorizing, and creating more than copying.
40. Instead of complaining about the way things are, listen, study, and change them.
What can you add?
