Adolescents: They are exactly like animals.

There is a distinct advantage to students seeing you as a “sub.”  When they don’t see you as a teacher – sometimes not even as an adult – you are not deemed worthy of the “good behavior” façade that other teachers get.  At first this sounds like a serious drawback.  How can not being seen as a teacher possibly be a good thing?  The answer (and maybe this is just me trying desperately to find something good in the lack of respect I am shown) is that, when a student does not see you as a teacher, you have the privilege of seeing who they truly are. 

Again, you’re wondering what could possibly be good about this.  Hear me out.  When a student doesn’t put up the façade for you that everybody else gets, you get a truer, rawer honesty than most other people in their lives.  Students will tell you exactly how they feel about their world: each other, teachers, school, sometimes they may even sneak some global issues in there.  Sure, they are not going to confide in you the same way they would a counselor, but being a substitute provides a beautiful opportunity to see what’s really going on in there.  And that matters.  What students think and feel about their world matters a lot, and they rarely get any kind of outlet for their voices to be heard.

Of course the downside to getting to see the “Real Students” is that this means you get much less respect than their normal teachers.  When a person (I say person, because it’s not just students who do this, and we know it’s true) is in a situation unlike their usual circumstances, the mask comes off and their true self comes out.  This happens almost unconsciously (and while we’re at it, I don’t recommend sharing this information with your students.  They won’t understand it, they won’t find it as interesting as you do, and they will feel insulted – even if that was not your intention).  In my time as a long-term substitute, I had students texting, throwing paper balls, throwing books, one even took out a knife to show his friends – all things that these kids would never have done with their regular teacher.  These events created a somewhat endless cycle of negativity between the students and me.  First, the thought (or maybe even the mentioning from an outside source) of they don’t act like this for their normal teacher.  What am I doing wrong?  Followed by the anger/humiliation that something like any of the above could have actually happened.  Followed by the punishment.  Followed by the new personal vendetta of the student against me.  Followed by more bad behavior.  Followed by me, one step away from rocking in a fetal position and wondering into the chaos around me “Why don’t they respect me?”

I’m beginning to think that the issue is even greater than just a lack of respect for me.  These types of students regard me not just with a lack of respect, but with apathy.  It’s not that they don’t respect me, it’s that they care so little what I think and what I want from them, that it literally does not matter.  It makes no difference what I do.  I could ask them nicely, I could ask them meanly.  I could threaten to distribute some kind of discipline strike, I could actually distribute some kind of discipline strike.  I could write them up, send them out.  It does not matter.  Because this is who the student really is at their core.  To that super helpful student who says, “They’ll only listen to you if you punish them”:  No.  No they don’t.  I do that, and it still doesn’t work.  The issue is not that I am not scary enough for them to listen, it’s that they don’t know how to behave.

This prompts the question, what is wrong with these kids?  I find myself asking that more often than I should, sometimes even out loud. Sometimes loudly out loud.  How can a student be so rude, so apathetic, and treat another human being (not to mention an adult with a job who does her best to stay afloat in today’s craptacular market) in such a terribly undignified, degrading way? 

There is actually an answer to this.  I read today in a National Geographic magazine (Yes, the day has finally come where I read these things for genuine entertainment/educational value on my own will!)  that the brain of an adolescent more closely resembles its original primal state than that of an adult.  It’s not that the brain is still growing in the teenage years; it’s actually just about finished growing.  It is however, still developing and organizing itself.  In much the same way that they are learning how to walk and move with this newer, longer, larger body, teens use their brains in a similarly awkward manner during this time of organization.  This could be to blame for all their mood swings and inconsistencies -- they're not really sure what to do with themselves.  During the adolescent years, the brain somewhat reverts back to its ancestral state, and we become more focused on things like survival and instant gratification.  Being that humans are social creatures, it would follow that those who are the best at getting along and working together would have been the ones naturally selected to carry on.  This could be the answer to why our social life matters so much in adolescence.  Teenage girls treat their blue jeans, cell phone covers, and whether or not the popular kids let them sit at their lunch table as a matter of life and death, because as far as evolution is concerned, it is. 

If fitting in with the pack matters for survival, then things that appear trivial to us matter a great deal  to them.  It’s no secret that adolescents are always seeking approval (no, not yours.  They don’t care much about that).  I remember a class of mostly boys in which every boy would crack a joke, then immediately turn to look at the Leader.  Every one of them (Leader included) denied that this happened, but from an outside perspective, it was undeniable.  I felt a bit like Jane Goodall watching Gorillas.  “And see how this one checks yet again with the Alpha, to make sure his move has been deemed worthy.  Ah, it has been.  He has been granted permission to stay with the pack.”  Watching adolescents is exactly like that!  

                                              

                                                     Except that this one reads willingly. 

Kohlberg (And Esquith, if you’d rather a more simplified, kid-friendly version of the levels) would say that most adolescents operate on level three of moral development/motivation.  They do things to please others.  The problem is that they don’t seem to be interested in pleasing the person who (we think, and find it increasingly irritating that they don’t agree) matters the most. 

But it’s not that they don’t care what you think.  It’s not that they’re rude, nasty, or terrible little demons.  It’s that deep down, at their core survival instincts, they are vying for the approval of the pack leaders.  And, unfortunately that matters a whole lot more to them than anything you have to say about grammar, algebra, or history. Sorry.  But hey, some of them do care.  Those are the ones who have stopped equating survival with acceptance from peers and started seeing it as attainable through personal success.  The hope is that the rest will get there one day, but we don't want to lose our ability to socialize, either. 

...are these even words?

On how much life changes in three years... and sometimes doesn't.

There was a recent episode of How I Met Your Mother in which the three main guys reveal that they get together every three years to watch the Star Wars trilogy and reminisce about where they were three years ago. As a next step, they would fantasize about where they thought they would be three years later -- which for these guys always involved being some combination of successful, married, rich, and heavily moustached.  Considering I spend most of my days trying not to get to the point where I sit and stare at the wall thinking, "This is my life, huh," it may surprise you, my loyal reader, to read that I am about to the exactly that.  But when a favorite show tells me to do something, I usually do it.  Whether it's "Don't go away, we'll be right back," or "examine your life," I am a slave to the television.  Always have been.  Something about brainwaves being manipulated at night; I don't know.  Anyway, here it is.

Three Years Ago:
Three years ago, I was 21.  Exciting age of finally legally doing what I had already been doing in verrry responsible moderation being one year away from graduating college aside, I had no idea what I even wanted to be doing in three years.  I had virtually no plans.  Something like grad school or maybe teaching, but I had no idea how to accomplish either of those things.  They tell you that you need to go to college in order to get a job.  And, in many cases, you do.  What they don't tell you is that having a college degree does not magically put you in some kind of Stonecutters-esque secret society in which your name is spontaneously carved on a list and distributed to all potential employers or graduate school-runners.  The fact that I refer to deans of colleges which contain graduate schools as "Graduate school-runners" is a further testament to my cluelessness.  Want to know a secret something that everyone who talks to me for two minutes on any given day already knows?  I still have no idea what I'm doing.
Facebook timeline (Which is growing on me, I have to admit) reminds me that about three years ago my boyfriend of three months was just getting out of the hospital (nothing major, just a failing liver inadvertently caused by self-medicating for a benign tumor in his femur, which doctors overlooked for two or more years) and we took an exciting trip to the beach with friends.  That year was my SAI formal, which I planned (poorly) and spent so much time stressing out over it (panicking at last minute) that I literally made myself sick over the ordeal.  Because that's a real-world problem: booking the proper venue for ladies and their dates to parade around in fancy clothes for a few hours.  But I can't be too hard on 21-year-old me.  It's not fair to yell at a child for crying when their ice cream falls to the ground, just because one day they will be 24, barley have a job, and somehow have to figure out how to pay for that degree that has so far served no other purpose than giving the cat something to knock over at night.  For a child, fallen ice cream is a legitimate problem and is capable of causing distress, in the same way that 21-year-old me lost sleep over booking the pavilion and figuring out exactly how to make her bangs lie flat without parting in the middle (result: unsuccessful).
21-year-old me wrote papers the night before they were due, drank coffee like it was water, and occasionally skipped class simply because she couldn't find a parking space (I'm not kidding.  The parking situation in college was insane).
21-year-old me went to Europe for the summer, spent two weeks in England, a weekend in Paris, and  a few hours in Scotland and Wales.  21-year-old me discovered that she was not cut out for a long-distance relationship, and when 21-year-old me became 22-year-old me, moved in with her boyfriend to start an exciting adventure of never doing dishes or laundry, spending way too much money caring for a cat, and always having someone to cuddle with at night.

Present
I think the three-years-ago version of me just thought everything would fall into place by now and "work itself out."  Present-me is learning that the universe at the same time adamantly follows that policy and adamantly doesn't.  You can't sit around a wait for a job to come to you.  But, after you send resumes and "please hire me emails" and leave messages with enough secretaries, there is a finite amount of things you can do from there.  Present-me is learning to keep that slowly rising scream quiet, but it's a persistent little monster.  I try not to wallow, but there are times when I want to sit down and make a "reasons my life sucks" list.  I do not do this, at least not in list form.  Occasionally I do it on Skype, in essay form, when unsuspecting friends ask the seemingly harmless question of "How's it going?"  Perfectly aware that they do not want the sad-sack story I am about to give them, I proceed anyway.  They say something like, "It'll get better!" and then I talk about my cat until we both get bored enough to be finished with the conversation.  But those are the bad days.
On the good days, I have amusing anecdotes from the day's adventures in substitute teaching or a story about my drive to or from work or the dream I most recently remember.  On the good days, getting to eat chocolate and watch The Simpsons is a perfectly acceptable high point of the day, and whether or not I can find something to complain about, I don't.  I will still talk about my cat.

Three Years from Now
In three years, I dearly hope that I have a full-time teaching job and am John Keating-ing my way through my days.  I will find a class of students who are perfectly motivated, respectful, understand my unique brand of sarcasm - rather than mistaking it for rudeness - and who come to class eager to discuss literature and hear what I think about what was written.  No.  Just about none of that will actually happen, I'm sure.  For one, I'd be doing my students a disservice to inundate them with "this is what I think about everything" and not give them the opportunity to explore their own consciousness.  Secondly... Let's be real.  High school hasn't change since I've been in it, and I doubt it will change when I'm teaching it.  Regardless of how exciting I am, somewhere in the back of their heads, they will still probably be wishing they were asleep, or playing video games, or eating chocolate and watching The Simpsons.  If I have a job at a school where I am accepted and I don't come home and try to wash then sleep every day off of me -- I'll say good enough.
I'll be 26 then.   No I won't.  I can add.  I'll be 27.  It's strange to say that I might be married, maybe even working towards having smaller, louder, needier versions of myself running around stinking up the place -- but I suppose it's a very real possibility.  I guess that will have to depend on the job situation, though.  If I'm still waiting by the phone every night for Subfinder to give me a job for the next day, I highly doubt procreation will be in the cards just yet.
I'd like to not be so tremendously in debt, but I've found that if you view loan payments as any other bill, it's a little easier to write the check.  Pay rent, pay car, pay car insurance, pay phone, pay cable/satelite/internet, pay for those five or so years I spent on an education that has hopefully started mattering by now.... See?  It's easy!  Whistle while you do it, and it's even more fun (whistling significantly reduces the fun-factor for me, as I can only get out approximately two pitches.  You do not want to hear my "Twinkle twinkle")!
I imagine I will still probably sing terrible improvisational ballads about whatever food I am cooking and, and I will still bore the pants off of anyone unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of a cat story.