April: Middle school fumbles and poetry

Photo courtesy of Dave Young/Flickr

“You look like you haven’t slept in days,” a student told me the other day as he walked into science.

Probably, I should’ve felt deeply unflattered and maybe a little depressed. I should’ve told the student his comment was kind of rude. But the truth was I hadn’t been sleeping well. And I was exhausted. I was actually kind of touched that this particular kid- who pretends he doesn’t know my name (he calls me Fake Miss Murphy- the name of the teacher I replaced)- actually saw me and assigned some real human characteristics to me. Like he was acknowledging I was a person, like him, and not some nameless troll who periodically tells him stop talking and put his phone away.

It was a sign he was warming up to me a little even. This was confirmed when he wandered into my room during a planning period and chatted for a couple minutes.Technically, he was supposed to be in Home Ec, which was downstairs on the other side of the school. And technically, I’m sure he hadn’t actually taken the long route back from the bathroom to visit me specifically. It was more opportunistic than anything. He couldn’t say hi to his favorite teacher two doors down from me because she was in the middle of a lesson, and my door happened to be open. He’s one of the many students around here who seem to float around from room to room like free radicals. I was in the middle of suggesting he get back to class when he spotted a friend outside and ran off like a dog chasing a squirrel without a backward glance.

It is ridiculous here. Every day.

Middle school has dramatically lowered my standards for what I would classify as normal person-to-person interaction. While there are plenty of students who will smile and say hi when I see them out and about, mostly, they avoid eye contact and ignore my greetings. 

This isn’t personal. I know in the social hierarchy of middle school, a substitute teacher– even a long-term sub– is on the lowest of echelons. Luckily, I’ve already survived one round of being deeply uncool in middle school. 

And middle schoolers just by nature are at peak self-centerdness. Hehe. (I said “terdness.” See “centerdness.” Clearly, I’ve been here too long). This isn’t judgmental or critical- just the reality of being 13, 14 or 15. I was the same way- completely engrossed in my own drama at the exclusion of all others. Just wallowing in all the emotions. And feeling as if everything that happened in my life was completely unique to me. That nobody else could possibly ever understand what it felt like to be 14 because nobody else had ever been 14. 

The kids here always have ear buds in, listening to music. As if they have a perfectly curated soundtrack to the movie of their lives, happening in real time. It’s all so extra. 

Naturally, I meet their ongoing surliness and moroseness with relentless cheerfulness.

“You need to be meaner,” I’ve had students tell me when they see their classmates being disrespectful. The truth is, I’ve tried to test drive a grumpy face. I’ve been stern. I’ve gotten mad and yelled. And mostly, it hasn’t worked. Not coming from me. It’s like they know I have no teeth. 

Someone once told me my spirit animal(s) was a koala riding a golden retriever. And I feel like that’s kind of accurate.

So in order to gain traction with the students, I’ve had to just continue to be myself. Persistent. Annoying. Kind of goofy. I wear them down with proximity and obnoxiousness. 

While I don’t recommend this as a go-to method for making and maintaining relationships in life, it seems effective in managing middle schoolers. 

I love that Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” (circa 1995) lives on in middle school artwork in 2018.

In this recent On Being interview, Krista Tippet and Zen priest angel Kyodo williams explore the word “love” and its role in social change- especially in today’s climate. Williams talks about how her own understanding of the word love has transformed from something she applied only to her family or people she preferred or those who are “aligned and in agreement and affinity.” Who are reflecting back at her what she wanted to be reflected back at her. 

She says as she’s come to understand love, this is very limiting. That love needs more room.

“It is developing our own capacity for spaciousness within ourselves to allow others to be as they are- that that is love. And that doesn’t mean that we don’t have hopes or wishes that things are changed or shifted, but that to come from a place of love is to be in acceptance of what is, even in the face of moving it towards something that is more whole, more just, more spacious for all of us. It’s bigness. It’s allowance. It’s flexibility.”

Hearing this was sort of confirmation that I’m not totally off base in my approach at school. It’s imperfect, I know. I come home many days frustrated and exhausted. But I think I’d be more frustrated, more exhausted if I viewed going to school as going into battle. Like I was an iron-clad force facing off against an army of belligerent, ignorant lilliputians who needed to be forced into submission. Learn … or else. 

My students are humans just like me, at a time of their life of tremendous transition. I see the anarchy raging in their bodies and their brains. The people they are now aren’t the people they’ll be forever. Just like the person I am now isn’t the person I’ll be forever. I have hope and confidence that they’ll sort themselves out and discover the beauty of empathy and patience and lovingkindness. 

Maybe I’m not much of a teacher. In fact, the past four months have been an ongoing lesson in my shortcomings in this arena. I committed to staying through the end of the year– and the students have finally stopped asking me if I’m going to quit. They expected me to quit, I think. If nothing else, I wanted to prove them wrong. To keep showing up for them and for myself I guess. To try to embody the hopes I have for them as people in this world. 

I don’t know. I’m rambling again. 

I just … I like the idea of bigness. Of allowance. Of flexibility. I think we could use more of that in this life.

April was National Poetry Month. Like last year, I Poemadayed with a group of women who met in my neighborhood. We were charged to write one poem a day for the whole month. As was with last year, I looked forward to each evening as poetry trickled into my inbox. They not only motivated me to finish my own poems when the day had worn me out, but I found solace and kinship in what they shared, too. We share so many of the same experiences.

Here are some of my favorites written by my fellow poets this month.