the day of reckoning

I'm a pretty laid back guy in the classroom. On more than one occasion I've been asked if I was having a bad day after beginning to show signs of frustration when my students refused to listen to me. Yesterday, I decided I'd had enough. You see, for today's typical teen, a 2-3 page research paper over anything from the 20th century is an awfully daunting task, especially once I'd told them the topics from last year's paper were off limits. With thirty of the most commonplace ideas wiped out of contention, what else is there to write about? (When I suggested the student watch the video carefully for potential ideas, the student told me there actually wasn't anything to write about World War II. Who knew?)

In response to my students' claims, along with their habitual apathy and disgust, I penned this little note and distributed it to them today in class.

On the first day of school, I made a point to tell each of you that I don’t see teenagers the way that a typical adult (or college student for that matter) does. Your consistently disrespectful attitudes, along with more than a handful of cases of open defiance during the past two or three weeks, have seriously called my assumption into question.

My assumption is based on my experience working with junior high boys. After working with 7^th & 8^th kids for a while, I assumed juniors in high school would at least show the same level of maturity.

When you act like you have, it tells me two things: you think I have nothing to say that is worth listening to, and you couldn’t care less about anyone who isn’t you.

You need to grow up. Some of you are more at fault than others, but each of you is responsible for getting us back on the right track.

If you are part of the problem, stop it. I want to be able to trust you, but right now, I can’t. It’s your job to rebuild that.

If you see the problems happening around you, do something about it! Stop watching me fight against so many of your classmates. Please, help me.

The bottom line is that I no longer trust most of you.

When you walk out of my room for the last time in May, I won’t care if you hate English. Really, it’s not a big deal to me. But, if you can’t see the worth in listening to someone who cares about you, if you can’t pull it together long enough to participate in something that’s less than incredibly entertaining, and if you can’t treat each other better than you do now, I’ve failed. 

I'm very proud of the overwhelming majority of my students' responses, and most remarks could easily be resolved by explaining to my students that they actually need to read the letter. Their classmates were especially helpful in laying on the embarrassment.

Tomorrow will be interesting. Much of the shock of disappointment will have subsided, and hopefully those faithful few arrogant enough to tell me that "this is the way 7th period classes always are" will have cooled down a bit, too. Either way, I feel like I left a positive impression on them today, lasting or not.

Also, to the one girl who I told me she was glad I had finally said something about how people have been acting, "Thanks."