I realized in this moment of being frustrated with this girl, that last year I would have gotten very angry and made myself miserable about it. Instead, I've very much learned how to have fun.
In my first lesson of the day, I had to throw about five students out of the room for making my life difficult and for demonstrating a complete and total lack of respect. One kid stood up and did his best impression of the way I speak, which annoyed me, but I let it go. When I asked him a question related to what he was talking about, it was clear that making fun of me was his only objective. I let it go, but as class continued and he failed to stop talking with his neighbors, I threw him out. I didn't get mad.
A couple of classes later, I found myself in this moment. Five minutes in, face-to-face with a group of 4 students who weren't my students last year. And all of them up to no good. I just warned them, and it seemed that the ringleader of the problem was a girl in the back.
For whatever reason, there's no table or desk for me to put my books down in this room, which is quite inconvenient. So I decide to make this one girl hold my book for the entire time, while I alter the seating of the others. Once the class got over the novelty of a student holding my book, the punishment wore in and my point was clearly made. It's funny - I haven't yet had to punish any of my students from last year, aside from reassigning their seats.
Which makes me truly appreciate how respect must be earned and is not simply given. True respect, that is. There are formalities, which we have all but lost in American culture, such as standing up when someone to be respected enters the room, greeting someone and asking automatically how they and their family are doing, thanking people for small things, etc. These constitute automatic respect, the stuff you don't have to earn.
But just like in the States, people won't simply respect you because you have a certain status. They'll up the automatic respect, but you won't get treated with loving respect.
And by this I mean that people truly care about you, they care about your opinion, they like to see you happy, and they look at you as human with the same basic needs and desires. This is what took the better part of a year to get with my 9th graders last year, and will most likely take the better part of this year to get with these 10th graders.
I'm frustrated by this only because I was led to believe that it was in fact different here. I am somewhat relieved to find that it isn't, because it restores my hope in Americans. Maybe we Americans haven't completely alienated ourselves from our humble European/Asian/South American roots and maybe there's some hope of not completely obliterating the Native American population and maybe we can realize what other cultures mean when they bow to us and say "We hate you." There's respect in that that we've earned and cruel honesty we've earned the right to hear and react to. Maybe if we can realize that the rest of the world looks to us not to be annihilate because we're so arrogant, but to change our arrogant ways because we've generally got a good thing going, in terms of possible change and power to influence the world positively. I'm not sure that makes sense, but I just feel like America is a train starting to derail and the rest of the world wants us to get back on track. Maybe there are a few people pushing us off even further, but you can't simply get rid of them.
So I teach my classes in the same manner - most of my students help me out because they want to see me succeed. They want to receive a good lesson and understand things. But there are those who try to derail everything because they don't understand why I'm teaching the way I am. Why don't I just give out dictation and be satisfied when the student has memorized the information? Since they don't understand, they don't pay attention and they end up making things quite difficult. They end up trying to derail the lesson and it seems like I'm not making the right call by throwing them out.
When I throw a student out, they then miss out on even more opportunities to learn my way of teaching. So I made quite a few students stay on their feet today so as to ensure that they paid attention, like that girl who held my book. I'm still undecided as to which decision is better.
Peace
John
