Anyone with half a brain knows that teaching is a crazy, crazy job. At what other job would you encounter a male skipping gleefully down the hallway in front of dozens of people? (Today, 13 year old boy.)
By May, the teaching-student boundary can sometimes get a little blurry. You have to remind them that you're not their mother, and they may not argue with you about whether or not they need to follow your directions. You give the class a direction- "OK, stay in your seats until I say it's time to go."- and they totally ignore you. Of course, you rein them in, because that's your job.
Almost every year, I notice in May that I've begun to adopt the behaviors of my most idiosyncratic students. Maybe I find myself using a word they use, or laughing in that high-pitched way that they laugh.
Just this week, I noticed that I do this thing that one of my funniest, most creative students does. He'll come up to me and start telling me a story. I'm interested for like 2 seconds, then my attention span goes. As he sees my face start to glaze over in boredom, he makes his eyes pop wide and continues to tell the story, using his eyes popping every few seconds as a way to try to keep me interested in the story by making the story seem eye-poppingly interesting. His stories aren't boring, but he gets to his point sort of slowly.
Anyway, in the past day or two I've found myself popping my eyes at people as I begin to tell a story and then realize my story is TOTALLY! BORING! (Eye pop! Eye pop!)
And I think, oh no, here it goes again- I've adopted my students' behaviors.
You really know you've chosen a crazy job when you start acting like an 11 year old.
And you sort of love it.
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