Dostoyevsky once said that "the soul is healed by being with children."
Clearly, Dostoyevsky was never a 6th grade teacher.
On the face of this planet, there cannot be a sweeter person than my dear best friend, Sharon Lee.* Sharon will laugh at all your jokes. She sings your praises. She is blind to your shortcomings. Sharon goes to church and is extremely patient - this is a girl who will sit with you while you drink yourself to oblivion bemoaning your fate, and then she will drive you home and hold your hair while you throw up...all over her backseat. Verily, I say, my friend Sharon is a good person.
My friend Sharon is also a teacher. A 6th grade teacher. She teaches a class of 30 ungrateful pre-teens who think they know everything (or so my trusted source says). Once my good friend Sharon goes to work, she stops being Sharon. She becomes someone that I don't recognize. Someone who takes candy away from babies. When Sharon walks into her classroom, you can almost hear the faint sound of drums beating out a rhythm of impending doom. Birds stop chirping. Sunlight weakens. When Sharon starts her class for the day, she stops being Sharon. She turns into MISS LEE.
Miss Lee is scary. I hear that she has eyes that will kill you on the spot, especially if she catches you talking during class. She has been known to banish students to the seventh circle of hell for rolling their eyes at her, and she's deprived whole classes of recess, lunch and the afterschool privilege of going home because they forgot what a common denominator is. I have never sat in on one of Miss Lee's classes, but our mutual friend, Christine, has. She's reported back that the excursion is a must-do, although she couldn't really recount too many details because she spent most of the day with her head down on her desk - Miss Lee punished her for laughing.
Outside the classroom, though, Sharon has tearfully revealed to me the unfortunate circumstances that necessitated Miss Lee's unlucky birth. Apparently, today's students are nightmares. Back in my day, back in 1952, my friends and I would never dream of acting up in class. We had a healthy respect for authority, but more than that, we had a healthy fear of our parents. If my mom ever got wind that I was disrespecting my teacher and the school's rules, you can be sure she'd have me digging my own grave in the backyard before sundown and no amount of protestations or denials would commute my sentence. Back in my day, whatever the teacher had to say went, because THE TEACHER was GOD.
Well, things just ain't what they used to be. Sharon has told me horror stories of students who outrightly disobey her, challenge her authority and, even worse, expect to get away with it. And if you think it must just be because of her, think again. This kind of shite is going down EVERYWHERE! Take my friend Brent as an example. Brent is a wildly gifted radio DJ who moonlights (or I guess I should say "daylights") as a substitute teacher. The other day, during silent reading time, instead of opening a book, one kid sat doing yoga in the corner. Yoga! He told Brent that he was "reading in his mind." Cheeky.
Sharon contends that these rugrats have got this way because their parents allow it. When she's met with parents to talk about their unruly children, they end up arguing with her and insisting she must be mistaken about their darling Bruce or Mallory. And rather than parents reinforcing what the educator is trying to teach, Sharon has had parents yell at her for reprimanding or failing their precious ones. Seems like parents these days just don't want to admit that their children are anything but perfect little angels, and this leaves the teacher unable to influence his or her students, unable to teach.
Sadly, schools have become battlegrounds for teacher vs. student, so it's no wonder that Miss Lee has had to put the smack down on...and that she gains tremendous satisfaction from doing so. After all, you have to win your battles where you can. Brent has also learned this art of war. At the end of the day, when he handed out reward tickets to his students for the silent reading time, he gave one to everyone in the class except for the budding yogi who had sat in the corner, "reading in his mind." When the boy asked where his was, Brent relished the moment.
"I gave it to you in my mind," he told the boy.
And just like that, Brent's soul was indeed healed.
*Name has been changed to protect the teacher from murderous parents and their hellish offspring.
If I'm not mistaken, I love the Matilda shout-out - darling Bruce or Mallory. Love it!!
Posted by: Antonia | 01/22/2010 at 12:24 AM