Out of the Mouths of Babes

This morning I woke up after a terrible nightmare in which the pupils had ganged up on me.

I have been feeling very demoralised with student attitudes of late. There is this constant power struggle going on in the classroom and I for one don't even want to play the game.

Some of the bright lads in my History class wage this constant war of oneupmanship; the 'Get One Over On The Teacher' game. This involves; jumping on me if I accidentally trip over a word, loudly pointing out typos or inconsistencies in worksheet questions; challenging me over pedantic definitions (is a pilot a soldier since he kills people and goes to war? is Scotland a country?) etc etc etc

So it was with a dark heart, still brushing the cobwebs of the dream off my shoulders that I fronted my Year 10 Maths class today. Adding inconvenience to my black mood was the fact that we have classroom changes due to Year 11 exams. This means I have to cart all my equipment, calculators, tables folders, whiteboard markers, OHPs etc across the school to another room where I find I have brought the wrong set of folders or forgotten to bring the rulers and pencils. (after all, why would the kids bring them????)

For some reason, I think because only a few made it to school on time today and the classroom was comfortingly empty, we started having a discussion about life, exams, future study options and the like. The conversation got around to hating school and of course hating teachers. Teachers are stupid/mean/unreasonable etc. Names were named.

One particular colleague came in for a bit of a hammering with descriptions of her inflexibility and hardline manner. This is always difficult and I in no way encourage this kind of discussion of the staff but they were most insistent in this case and in the midst of my protests and attempts to change the subject, one of my most problematic pupils announced..

"No, but Mrs A, she's not like you. We know you care about us. With you, even when we've had a big argument or something, you go home over the weekend and calm down and when we see you again it's like a fresh start. You don't hold it against us. But with her, she doesn't forget and next time you see her she's still mad with you...."

Now, if the Lord could have sent me any gift today, any assurance that something I was doing was getting through to them, it could not have been any more perfect than this statement from this pupil.

I managed to steer the topic off my unfortunate colleague and onto the power of prayer and how much of it is needed to wipe the slate clean every weekend and bring me back to these kids, optimistic and accepting. We went on to do some revision on the Virtual Road Trip which some of them remembered and could almost complete independently. All in all it was a most satisfactory and tranquil lesson. The answer to prayer really.

Of course, the year 9s after lunch were revolting and it was back to reality but for a brief moment there it was all worthwhile.