I am amazed that my colleagues in the youth development program still remember details of their middle school days. I am not talking about a teacher or a class, but of actual activities that they did. Perhaps my brain blocked out the majority of this period so that I could develop into a semi normal adult.
I know that middle school is no picnic for anyone, but I really would like to rank my experience up there as one of the most disastrous. I remember 8th grade being particularly hard. Sure I had the acne, the baby fat but most disastrous was the thought that I had the world figured out. I thought that I was so smart and that my teachers were so ridiculously dumb. In my arrogance I lashed out at some of them trying to show them that I was their intellectual equal if not superior.
There is one teacher and one class in particular that I remember. 8th grade Health. Like I said I do not remember much from those days, but I do remember making this teacher so angry that she twice dismissed me from her class. If I recall right, I one time was arguing that she could not mark an opinion answer wrong on a test. What I should have taken into account is that there are times for smart-ass comments and a health test is not one of them. There are also some people that you can attack personally but a teacher is not one of them (I am so sorry!).
To make a long story very short, I soon realized after leaving secondary school that I did not in fact know all that I thought that I did, nor did I deserve to treat my teachers the way I did. When I got to university I knew one thing for certain, I did not ever want to be a teacher and subject myself to children like me. I can remember qualifying this by saying that “there is not enough money in the world that could convince me to be a middle school teacher”.
Well I was right and wrong. I am doing what I swore I would never do. I was correct that I would not take large sums of money to work in a middle school, because now I do it for free. Not only am I working with this age group, but also I am teaching a course that would probably be called Middle School Health in the States. I should say that I like my job and on a really good day I might even say that I love it, but I do have to put up with the know-it-alls and smart-alecks.
I have never been a real believer in Karma but… I felt sorry for my 8th grade health teacher but now I empathize with her. I have gone from assuming that these teachers have it rough to knowing that some of them should be awarded medals for not hurting their students. There was a time when I would have viewed this placement as a penance for my past deeds, but it has grown to mean so much more. I have developed so much as a person having stood on the other side of the teacher’s desk, trying to help young people see that their futures are important and fragile. I now know why that teacher got up and came to school and even let me back in her class. Perhaps she saw that I needed this class more than most. Karma is a bitch but perhaps it is only because it forces us to see our past mistakes and learn from them.
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