I had this great profound title for a blog entry planned for this morning.
"The Gift of Gross Emotions"
It was going to be so enlightening, and enlightened. How much we hate panic, how much we hate true sadness, heavy emotions, gross not in feeling (though sometimes that too) but in size, quantity, as in "a gross is equal to 144 of something."
What waylaid me? Not even my own gross emotions, which caused anxiety dreams all night, but those of my 13 year old students. The little pricks had a jerk fest all last Thursday and Friday, when I should have been watching them. They found one to pick on and subtly/not so subtly mocked her and her penchance for, imagine this, having her name used correctly. Meanwhile, they have gotten sloppy in their feedback (saying things like "I like this piece a lot," then giving a list of 10 things they think didn't work at all, for instance) and the whole thing snowballed into one very gross mess.
Turns out my class isn't the only place, and certainly not my fault. But I have all kinds of gross emotions about their gross emotions, and it's quite the way to end a term.
i know the feeling. "little pricks," "jerk fest"... now you really sound like a teacher ;) ;) ;)
ReplyDeletehang in there dearie. and you can still try to take your own advice about grossness of emotions and such.
sleep in a smidge tomorrow, if you can!
If I remember correctly, 13 is the age in which the entire world comes crashing down upon you as you realize you aren't really a child anymore, yet you are still a ways from being an adult. It tends to produce some very nasty results. Remember, they are more scared of you than you are of them. Or is that bears?
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear that Miri, and after all the time you put into the class. Truly gross on so many levels.
ReplyDeleteThanks all, for Sympathy and tea. It's true, CM what you say. The kids are unruly because they aren't sure who they are.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't help that this spring has been hard for me, that I'm feeling some pre-bday depression and that this is the first time this has happened in one of my classes - a collusion which, with some perspective a day later, I realise is not causation, just coincidence...