A(nother) place to write

Random thoughts at school

Writing is a form of storytelling. The great thing is that you can go back and revise your story before your audience sees it. On the hand you do not usually get immediate audience feedback. The audience can give you a direction for your story that you might not have taken otherwise.

I see that some of the jerks that I taught in eighth grade don't grow out of it by the tenth grade. Of course I knew this already because I remember them from my own tenth grade experience and from the fact that many adults are still jerks.

Why do so many people care less about the system. I am not talking about individuals who protest the system in an acceptable way-- I am talking about people who may accept the laws as being OK for everyone else but find themselves as exceptions. They believe that a rule is acceptable except when they don't feel like obeying it. These are the individuals who anger me. They talk in the theater but shush anyone else. These people speed and laugh when others are caught. They smoke and blow it into others faces. Abortion would be outlawed until their girlfriend gets pregnant.

An observation, as you spend more and more time with "problem" students they tend to loosen up. They continue to stretch the limits of behavior. When you first meet them you notice very quickly that they have problems conforming but they are cautious at first to see what you will do. If there were a way to keep them in this mode you would have an easier time instructing them.

A strange thing happened to me this morning. I walked into the donut store to purchase donuts for my testers and I heard a female student say my name. I looked at the three people working there to see if I knew on of them and then I looked to the back and outside to see if anyone said my name and no one did. I asked the ladies if they said my name and they asked me my name to see if in their conversation they had -- but they did not. I guess this means that I am having auditory hallucinations again.

Perhaps a good wring exercise for me would be to put myself into the shoes of me of my more annoying students. What would life he like for me if I were that person? What if I put myself in a friend's shoes? What would it be like for them?

I think that if I ever do become a (published) writer it will be for Juvenile or young adult fiction I don't now if it is what I know or if it is because I still identify so strongly with this age group. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those immature or perverted adults who has young friends, I understand the mentor/student relationship. Adults can be counselors, advisors or models for children, but they really should never be friends. A friend relationship offers a certain give and take that adults and children should not have.

There was so much talk about ADD/ADHD for a while. Now there is just an article now and then when a new medicine comes out. I found interesting those articles/opinions that pointed out the fact that in other societies what we call ADD might not be a detriment but instead a benefit.

How many ways can a student waste time while taking a test? I watched a student play with his face, blow his paper across the table, eat, watch the teacher and other students, talk to himself and gesture to himself. He annoyingly tapped his pencil, and made throat clearing sounds. When I looked at him, he would say "What?" loudly, followed by "I didn't do anything." This is a person who needs attention badly and who does not want to conform to the status quo. In my day and my mother's day we just would have slapped the tar out of him. Today we coddle them and label them special education or ADD.