Kids Get Owned (and So Do I)

After about five months of letting kids dish on me, I began to dish back.

I mean, talk back to the students. They wanted to be rude, then I was rude back. They wanted to sass me, I sassed them. In other words, I got good at "owning" students.

Some of my favorite phrases include:

"I wasn't born yesterday!"

"I was born at night, not last night!"

I used those phrases to express plain incredulity when kids tried to run me, like saying that they had already completed an assignment that the permanent teacher had just left for them that day, or when they claimed to be working, when in fact they had been goofing off, talking for the past ten or fifteen minutes.

"I'm not a record; don't play me."

The kids really liked that one.

When I worked at Hawthorne High School for about six weeks, I showed students a little coin pouch in my wallet. Incidentally enough, I called it a "coin purse."

The kids had a lot of fun with that. Every day, kids would give me nickels and dimes so that they could see me take out my "purse." I had to put up with other incendiary and offensive comments, obliquely targeting my hairline (or rather, the lack thereof) or my intellect (I am smart, but I was not yet wise enough to run screaming from that assignment when I had the chance. I do not regret the past, but I sure would not want to repeat it.)

I put up with it for so long only because I was afraid that if I zinged a kid, he could go home and tattle to Mommy and Daddy, or worse, I would so set off a student that he or she would make every day a living hell. Needless to say, some students made my life a living hell every day, whether I talked back or not.

Like most teachers, I listened to my fearful head, not my spirit, or gut-intuition as some may call it.

Finally, after putting up with one-long term assignment after another, I settled into day-to-day subbing.

It was actually a lot easier! I show up, do whatever the permanent teacher laid (sometimes nothing), I just sit there, be awesome, help out students who want to be helped. If students got out of line, I could just through them out. Administration at one school gave me carte blanche for every period, provided I did not go overboard sending five plus kids out every period.

This was so much easier. There was no pressure for me to try and reach a student whose only interest was to "start stuff." Any kids who wouldn't play along, I cast them out. It was great!

And I started talking back! Worst case scenario, I never had to deal with that student again, or I was not bound to try and nurture a kid to respect me. It took me long enough, but soon enough I figured out that respect is not something you earn, or can demand, but something you command, that you demonstrate. I do not need a student, or an adult, to respect me, in order for me to have respect in the first place. I do my job, students get their work done, and it all works out.

Some kids really liked it when I talked back, too. Because I commanded enough respect to put kids in their place, some of them actually felt safe for the first time in a long time.

So I finally realized what i one of the greatest bane for full-time teachers: they have to put up with difficult students, and the students know this! They can raise holy hell if they want to, but cash-strapped schools are not about to expel difficult students -- they badly need the attendance money. Kids are wise in the weary ways of school bureaucracy.

As a sub, the standards were so much lower. I just had to make sure that the kids stayed safe and stayed on task (meaning, that they were not repeatedly throwing things around the room). Kids' sleeping at their desks was fine; kids who dished on friends from lunch was OK, too. And there were those students who did want to learn, who asked me for help, and I was more than happy to assist them. Those were good moments. I wish that I could have enjoyed more of them.

So, I got really good at putting kids in their place, you could say. Some kids knew how to own me too. Once, a group of upper classroom in an anatomy class would own me, then I would own them, and we just loved owning each other.

Still, as the weeks turned into months, I began to feel a greater disconnect between who I am and who I was. Yes, I was witty, yes I was winning verbal tussles from time to time (or I would just send the kid to the dean's office), but I began to wonder: is this all there is to teaching? Do I show up to work every day just to put down students, to tease them, and to outright show them up for who they think they are?

Not a very satisfying conclusion came to mind: this is getting old. Eventually, sitting in a classroom, keeping kids from running out of the room, I felt that I could be doing something better with my time.

Sad to say, but in the midst of owning kids, I realized that I was getting owned, too, by a system that only valued me as a warm body that kept the kids from setting fire to the room or from running around the campus. Much of the time students only confessed that they would do no work while there was a sub; some students grew jaded about completing anything because the permanent teacher was often absent in some classes, and the work that they had completed would then be lost. A sad system, to say the least.

In short, kids were getting owned by teacher and school, and I was getting owned along with them. When will allow students to own their own education, to own their own dignity without having to get owned in the process?

Dignity has a place in every classroom, and every teacher deserves to command respect, as does every student. When schools begin to emphasize the important of character as well as content, students will have more reasons to succeed, and more opportunities to excel in this world.