Fast Times

Teaching in a junior high school can often be like working in one of those old fashioned insane asylums without access to tranquilizers. This week I report back to the institution.

We teachers generally go back to school at least one day early. This is to give us time to prepare our rooms, write some lesson plans, and, most importantly, make up seating charts designed to separate the kid who can’t stop talking from the kid who throws textbooks at kids who can’t stop talking. This gets trickier the stronger their throwing arms get.

Our first day back as teachers will not be tremendously different than what it will be for our students.

We’ll walk into school a bit groggy, unaccustomed to functioning so early in the morning. Many of us will be wearing our new school clothes. We’ll gather in our cliques and make up stories about our summer vacations, embellishing golf outings, family trips and domestic projects in order to have something halfway interesting to talk about. Some will scan the crowd to check out the “new kids” from Eastern or Greenville or SIU, to size them up to see if they’ll be cool enough to hang out with us. Soon the superintendent will take the microphone and ask us to please find our seats. This request will be adhered to very, very slowly, as most of us are way too hip to do exactly what we’re told the first time we’re asked.

Five minutes later we’ll finally be seated and perhaps quiet enough to actually begin the annual drill: a welcome back, an introduction of new staff, a keynote address reminding us of how important our jobs are.

Everyone will be thinking about where they want to go for lunch.

There is an old saying that life never really evolves past junior high. This is partially true. Many of the hopes and fears and behaviors we had as adolescents follow us throughout adulthood.

For example,

Am I cool enough? Attractive enough? Will I fit in?

What if I forget my locker combination? My house key? Where I parked?

Do these new jeans make me look fat?

Will this information actually be on the test? The audit? The questions my child asks in the middle of the night?

Who’s the new kid? He doesn’t look like he’s from around here. He might be trouble.

They call this food?

(The) Gym stinks!

Can you believe what she’s wearing?

What a nerd!

Do you want to hang out this weekend?

Can’t. Gotta’ mow the lawn. Or babysit. (or hangout with someone cooler than you.)

Any of this sound familiar? Life can be pretty adolescent, even for those who’ve had enough time to get past such “junior high” behavior. So perhaps the big difference between us as adults and them as kids is that we’ve had time to practice pretending like we know what we're doing. We’ve had time to supposedly figure it all out.

Schools will be starting up these next few weeks, and that can be a stressful time for those going back. With that in mind, I’d like to ask you to take a few moments out of your day to say a quick prayer for everyone involved: the teachers, the parents, but especially the students, because none of it has gotten any easier since you graduated.

Especially for the kids who dodge textbooks.

Those things are thick.