You Can't Growl in High School

One of the best teachers I know is female, 5ft, 90 lbs, and has been teaching for over forty-five years.  I am privileged to be able to call her my mentor through WSU.  I was instantly drawn to her because she is everything that great teaching is--love and passion for the students as well as the subject.  She has taught over 10,000 kids in her career and has no immediate plans of calling it quits.  I usually just sit in awe of her as we talk about what we are fixing for dinner, or what flowers to plant in direct sunlight, but one particular story caught my attention and reminded me that no matter how many degrees we have or how long we've been teaching, our students are full of surprises.

My mentor was given a class of nearly all boys, most of which were on a 4th grade reading level.  These were seniors who had been in and out of juvenile detention and needed a remedial English class to graduate.  She had struggled with them since the very first day of school, but one particular day, she was sent over the edge.  The principal called her down to the office to tell her that her mother had passed away.  Why this news was unbearable, she immediately thought that she left this "special" class unattended, so she quickly went back to her classroom.  Upon entering her classroom, she noticed two things on her blackboard: the "B" word and snot smeared all over.  She didn't lose her cool.  She told the students that she was going out into the hall to compose herself and when she returned, her blackboard better be clean and they better be ready to learn.  Two minutes later, when she walked back in, they were.  Since then, these students have grown to be fabulously successful adults (now in their fifties) because she was one of the first adults to believe in them.  She was their favorite teacher, and they were her favorite students.  This class meets at least once a year to catch up and laugh about the chalkboard incident. And as you probably guessed, their favorite teacher is always in attendance.

This is my ninth year teaching.  There are so many great teachers at our school doing fabulous things with their students, I am constantly learning from them.  But one thing in particular that I feel that my peers learn from me is my classroom management.  I'm little, I look like a student, I'm female, and when I started teaching, I was barely twenty-four years old.  Everyone warned me that these kids would and could walk all over me if I let them.  I took those words, accepted the challenge, and made it my mission to control my classroom seamlessly. 

Sure, there were bumps along the way.  Some classes are better than others, some years are just more successful for reasons unknown.  I had the right attitude to begin this year, but as Week 2 draws to a close, I quickly learned that my so-called "right attitude" was not going to be enough.

On Day 3, I was pulling up my personal profile to see how many sick days and personal days I'd acquired.  By Day 4, I was on to my second seating chart for nearly all of my classes, and to end Day 5, I had seriously convinced myself that I was coming down with something, anything to keep me home for the next 175 days.

I knew my days of second chances were numbered.  If I didn't get them this week, they would successfully overturn my classroom and I would have the "B" word and snot across my board this time.  I spent my long weekend memorizing all of their names, I created a third seating chart, and I had a new lesson plan that didn't require movement or talking to each other (we weren't to that level yet).

And so Tuesday came.  They walked in to another new seating chart.  This time I wasn't bluffing.  There were no promises or rewards or bribes.  This was it.  Take it or leave it.  The students were fine and receptive, but would it last?  Then Wednesday came.  It was picture day, or as I like to call it, field trip day.  Taking a large group of students away from the classroom and keeping track of them outside the normal parameters = field trip.  I begged them to behave, prepped them for five minutes on what to anticipate, and hoped that none of my peers would see my out of control classes and think less of me.  Picture day came and went, and everything went smoothly as if it was my ninth year teaching, and I had a handle on things.

And then there was today.  Another picture day, this time with more challenging students.  I went through nearly the same process: begging, prepping, and praying, and it worked.  My plan had worked!  Maybe it was my third seating chart.  Maybe it was because when I was prepping them, I called them each by their name.  Maybe they felt sorry for me.  Regardless, I was thanking every Saint there was that I had my classes back and for good this time.

But there's always one.  Similar to my mentor's class, it has its share of challenges and to put it simply, they weren't buying what I was selling, they wouldn't even take it for free.  As I was talking to them about pictures, some were wandering around the room, some were chatting, and others, well, were growling.  In my nine years of teaching, I have never had growling before.  So  I stopped, raised my voice a little higher, and simply stated, "You can't growl in high school."  There was silence.  So I continued.  "You can't growl, or talk over adults, or be disrespectful to your peers, or walk around the room when you feel like it in high school."  And I continued.  "You will be graduating in three years, and you can't do any of those things when you go to college or get a job either.  You have to stop now." 

They all went back to their seats, the growling ceased, the papers stopped crumpling, and collectively I heard, "Ok, Fred." 

And so we walked down the hall, all silent, all respectful.  They got their pictures taken and they even (shocker) returned to class.  As I was walking back with some of my growlers, my former students, juniors, came up to greet me.  "Hi Fred!" they said.  "Are we still your favorite?"  I stopped, looked at the juniors, who I adored, looked at my new students who I still wasn't so sure about, and responded, "You're on my list, but for right now, these guys are my favorite," and I motioned to my new students.  The entire trip up the stairs was silent, but as we reached the classroom, one of them had the guts and asked, "Are we really your favorite, or were you just saying that?"  "I never lie," I flatly responded, and then they all sat there patiently in their seats exactly how I wanted them to the first week of school.

Who knows, maybe in forty-five years, we will all be sitting around laughing about how you can't growl in high school.