I felt like Buckner walking back into Shea... of course, that particular analogy doesn't entirely fit when you consider that he has already walked back into Fenway Park, this now only 22 years after the crime. However, there I was walking back into a local public high school, albeit as a substitute teacher but even so, it was a bit intimidating at the first because I found myself walking IN around the lunch room, not really sure if I should be parking in the staff lot or not, so I did the best I could to blend in with the locals. Children have not changed much since I last experienced them, this alone does not particularly surprise me because of the fact that times do change but the human essence remains intact. Like Anne Lamott said, we can't be too sure that Mary didn't want to whoop on Jesus every now and then too. Think of the story of Jesus in the Temple conversing with the scholars of Torah, and even then, he gave them some lip. SO it goes with the average high schooler. Trying to make their way into the big cruel high school world by being the biggest sassers on the block. And God forbid they don't establish themselves, excedpt in the small pack of kids who will hang out with them and will accept them for who they are... then they get really verbal, not just trying to mouth off to you, but trying to mouth off to everyone around them.... in that sense, I felt sheepish, I felt like I wasn't nipping their behavior in the bud enough...like I needed to really gop after a couple of them, chop their heads off and show it off to the rest of them... see what happens when you f**k with me & my mighty sword?? But it begs the question as to why teachers would want to simply ignore the problem and hope that it solves itself. Or skirt the issue in some way, shape or form. But they are smart enough or no doubt learn that with the students it has to be a wrestling match if you're going to complete your objectives. It's just that you're never really sure if that is what is currently slapping you in the face as it comes. You start talking and imparting imformation or spreading the seeds of knowledge and next thing you know, you got somebody talking right over you as you go, as if you are not even there in front of them... wrestling with your muscles pumped. You think that within the last few seconds, perhaps they forgot that I was just about to tell something to the whole class, you think that maybe they figured since you were talking that you wouldn't be able to notice the fact that they were now going to talk while you were. How very strange that such a thing should happen.
At any rate, I did it, after all, and made some small victories for myself in the process by adapting to a bit of a screwy schedule. Welcome to the Big Time that schedule shuffle seemed to be saying to me. and so I did. You got to accentuate your positives and most of all, I refused to fall into the Substitute trap of just going by the game plan. If they were going to be in the same room as me, I figured I might as well talk to them about a few things. And offer them a chance at maybe seeing the Big Picture. God knows I never did. Not in high school, sometime in college and only occasionally, in real life. Maybe it's gotten better, the jury's still out on that one, but at least I'm starting to see how educators build larger frames of the puzzle. And you can start to see how you make that puzzle come together, knowing that with it, students will hopefully be able to gather together some of that puzzle and learn how a story is put together, how to link together the narrative, so to speak.