Those Kids Are Mean

"Why don't you just go back to Colorado?"

"Get the fuck outta my face."

"You can't control your class!"

"Ms. Z, those kids are mean!"

Apparently the day before big tests for my kids has in the past consisted of watching movies and sitting on the desks making idle chitchat. I always know when I'm breaking my kids' long-held habits of the past because quotes like the ones above become a lot more frequent.

My resolution to stop giving sarcastic retorts was tried dramatically today; to "get the fuck outta my face" I managed to respond with a mild and convincingly confused "I'm not not in your face", as I was as far across the room as I possible. Which drew one laugh from a reasonable child who moved up in my books, but drew a lot of scowls from the rest.

At my lunch break, a few students came in to pick up make-up work. That's when I got to hear "those kids are mean!" This shrewd observer was one of the girls from my second mod which is my class with the worst attitude. I don't know how to explain that class but to say that there is just a negativity that permeates everything. Those kids are mean.

But the girls that know that that class is malicious tend toward making callous remarks to me when they are all together in class. What is it about the groupthink mentality that makes the kids nasty to the teacher (and, admittedly, the teacher nasty to the kids) during class, and then outside of class they are great? It's as if we have specific roles to play, but only during class time. Outside of class we can be our nice, friendly selves. My next experiment is going to be pretending like it's not a class, and I'll sneak teach them.

Unfortunately, though, the uncaring attitude doesn't always stop outside of class. Today I admittedly did something stupid. I left my phone in one of the classrooms during a meeting. One period later, it was gone. Turned off. Goodbye, phone.

Maybe it will turn up tomorrow; they really are good kids, even if they say mean things.