pavlovsdog

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm damn glad to be back in elementary school. Last week, and part of this week, we performed our shows and workshops for Asheville Middle School, and I tell you I have never met a more rude, disrespectful, self-centered, egotistical, uncooperative, snotty, brattish, and smelly bunch of human beings in my life. At least with the little kids most of the time they don't try to be rude, they just get easily distracted. The middle schoolers prime motivation it seems is to see exactly how much they can disrespect someone before they get called out by the teacher. The eighth graders were the worst. You would think being the oldest, they would have developed better manners, but it seems that the part of the brain that controls human manners actually de-evolves when you reach middle school.
The performances weren't the bad part. At least if the kids aren't paying attention to or making fun of you during the performance, it doesn't really matter, because they you can't see them. In a classroom however where you're face to face with a bratty tween who it seems would rather swim a lake of fire than pay attention to you, it takes all the control you can muster up not to grab that kid by the throat and punch him in the face repeatedly. That's not a god thing for a harassment prevention educator to do. You would actually think they would be happy that you're getting the out of math or science to watch a play and discuss real life problems. However this was not the case. They actually looked as if they've been sentenced to life imprisonment when they saw us coming into their classrooms. One kid when asked what their favorite part of the show actually wrote, "When they left."
One girl muttered under her breath for me to "kiss her ass" while trying to explain respect to them. The teacher took care of her, but as soon as that student left another picked up the reigns of defiance and began steering the class into chaos. By the end of the day I could care less if all those kids got the shit kicked out of them by a bully. Contrary to all I'm trying to teach them, I think most of those kids really are in need of a good ass-whooping. I realize that I probably wasn't the easiest kid to deal with in middle school, and this is somehow karma for all the snotty things I did, but I swear I was never as bad as these kids.
So thank the powers that be that we're back in elementary school the rest of the month, where at least the kids are happy to see you, even if they don't pay attention all the time.
Parents don't let your children grow up to be teenagers!