Life as a teacher

Since some of my students are reading my feeble attempt at blogging, I have to be a little careful what I say. Although I suspect that I would win a constitutional fight in the courts, if it were to come to that. A student down in Fort Smith who publish all this nasty stuff about one of his teachers and won in the courts--it should work both ways--"should" being emphasized.

I think it is somewhat a misnomer to call me a teacher, however, it is the position that I hold. Teachers have this roll model status that has been given to them. The real question is what should a teacher portray themselves as? Many teachers were the "A" students in school, they enjoyed the teacher's pet status, followed all the rules of prim and properness, and the went to college and straight into teaching. They are masters at the art political correctness in the classroom. Students have been conditioned into thinking that teachers are almost like priests, living this pure virtuous life. Which I guess is OK, if you are able to pull it off.

Some of us however, were not the perfect students and are not comfortable acting a persona that we are not. Although I must admit that I also have an acting career going. Because my true self would preferred to be somewhat alone, on an island somewhere, reading books, and figuring out the meaning of life. But if I have to be around people, I am somewhat comfortable in an extroverted role playing mode, more with kids than adults. That is because I rarely get hurt by kids, the same can't be said for adults. In my extroverted mode I want to be an entertainer. I like seeing kids laugh and my tool for that tends to be sarcastic humor, which in this day in age is certainly not PC. I suspect in some schools I wouldn't last very long.

Physical contact is another thing that I do that is not on PC list of things to do. This is something I learned from my group home experience. I found that many kids aren't touched or have ever done silly crazy things with adults. Many are starving for it. It was amazing to me how much a child would improve just by having physical contact and horse-playing with them. I have continued that as a teacher. I will not hesitate to hug a kid, high five, low five, slap them up side the head, squeeze their pressure point to inflict a little pain, throw something at them or pour water on them or down their backs. Although I am a little more leery about the water down the back--due to some fricken asthma attack by one of my students. Of course I let them do the same to me. It goes overboard sometimes and I have to reel them in some and myself also. For me it makes school tolerable and fun. I can't speak for the students.

Once in a while it backs fires. In my eight years I think I have had 7 kids cry due to something I had said. I am sure have hurt many more than that and not know it. While it is easy for me to justify their actions as being silly and oversensitive, I still have upset 7 people. I never sleep well when I have a conflict going on. So I usually wake up around 1 am and hash it out in my mind for a couple hours or all night sometimes. I make one assumption that I shouldn't and that is they will accept me unconditionally, especially once they have been around me some. If a student has a bad day and no matter what they say or do, I am over it the next day, as if it hadn't happened. I hope they will do the same for me. But I accept it when they don't--sort of.

As usual with my A.D.D kicking in I have rambled and digressd. Back to my original thought of how teachers should portray themselves to students. After all this rambling I have concluded that I don't know the answer. I can only feel that we need to be honest with our students and not try to behave in a way that they know we are faking a persona. The students have no problems figuring out who is there to collect a paycheck and who cares about them as individuals.