The days after the eruption

The days since my anger at my students have been quite, oh…well, I guess…blech. The anger I felt made me literally torn up with anger until I left the building. I sat by the water for a while and after a long time of reflecting I felt two things 1) I was overwhelmed and burned out and 2) those kids would not be prepared for the simulation on Friday. After an emotional mental battle, I canceled the simulation, told my admin that I couldn’t host the visiting teacher observers Friday (a big deal for me, to tell someone no), and emailed my students to tell them not to worry about homework…we’d do it in class on Friday.

I determined that we needed to stop. We all did. Just stop. This week they had gotten lost and I had gotten angry and in my anger plowed on through. Friday we needed a day of reflection…which was strange. I never stop in my AP class and they know it, but I was convinced it was the right thing to do, though it scared the hell out of me to be so vulnerable with the class.

So today after our First Amendment Friday discussion, I asked them to take out a blank sheet of paper. I explained to them how irritated I was Wednesday just to be in the building and how my own reflections made me realize how important it is to just stop….to take time to think about where you are, especially in the middle of the rat race. I told them about grad school, about how I had this professor who, in the middle of the most intense time of our work, made us spend 45 minutes of class time somewhere in the building reflecting on life. At the time I thought it was bogus, but I ended up getting so much out of it and the class energy soared and confidence perked again. Parker Palmer says we all need space in our lives, time to be silent. It’s through these silences that we come to peace with things in life and have time to just breathe.

So today that’s what we did. I gave them three questions and I had them just think and write for 15 minutes. 1) Why did you chose to take this class over the other options available? 2) Write about life. What’s going on in your life? In school…out of school…family, relationships, college, etc. 3) What makes you happy? What makes you grumpy?

I can’t tell you how wonderful that was for us today. The kids wrote and wrote and wrote. It was crazy…it was like they craved that time to just stop and reflect. I told them that if they wanted to just reflect for themselves, they didn’t need to turn it in to me. But, most of them did and when I read them during lunch and after school today I was very emotional. They were very candid and I saw so much in their words that helps me understand how they’ve been acting. We talked as a class about how they feel right now and what we can do as a group to get through it. It sounds like a group counseling session but really, it wasn’t like that. It was like a problem solving session. I’m glad we did it because now it’s out in the open and we all know what’s going on and there’s no hiding from it. As the kids left they were smiling and calm and I practically had to kick each class out.

It was also good for me because I knew that there were probably other things going on in their lives that made them so distracted, but I had no idea. Because of the pace of my course I don’t get to talk to them as much as I’d like, to get to know them as well, but today I learned SO MUCH about them and I think they wanted me to know.

Only problem now is figuring how to get my work done. My tutorial has become haunted in recent days by adoring fans…who are confused about life (my first hint that it was more than just they were bored with the class) and are scared of the future. I had to remind myself this week that it is really for those times that I teach. I was feeling overwhelmed by the pressure to perform and forgot why I wanted to teach in the first place.

Things aren’t perfect. We’re still all tired and I really am burned out, I now realize. But…I could feel the love and support in those classes today…we’ll make it through.

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