Friday, February 18, 2011

In Defense of the American Teenager

"Derned kids."
For a few days, I have been struggling to come up with a post. A rarity for me. Not because I didn't have an idea -- I knew exactly what I wanted to do: rip into a whining (irony intended) teacher who trashed her students on her blog and then argued that she didn't intend for the world to read it. But I won't. Still, I might be able to help.

Um, Natalie . . . I'm no one and people in Japan, Egypt and Belarus read my blog. See, there's this thing called the "interweb" . . .  If you want only your friends to read your blog, you need to make it private. There are buttons to click for this. Your lazy, whining, sub-standard students could explain this to you in about six seconds.


Ah, whatever. I notice your "followers" went from about ninety-one to almost five-hundred in a few days. So, that's nice for you, disturbing for me.

The thing is, I don't want to contribute to her fame. That's where I'm torn. But I want to counteract her acceptance from those who say: "Yeah! You go girl! Kids are lazy and whiny and gross!" -- as if every generation hasn't said something similar about the previous one.

Please, whatever happens, don't make this woman a hero for the embattled and (of course) intrinsically better older generation. She doesn't need to be fired. She is not a hero. She is not a villain. She is worse. She is commonplace -- the carrier of a snooty, superior adult attitude that is typical and cliched.  (And it only took her a few years of teaching to develop it. I know thirty-five-year veteran teachers who haven't made it that far yet.)

Chances are, the generation before you probably thought you were the beginning of the end of society. Were you? 

I've taught teenagers for about twenty years, from high school to college. If you read kids on the surface, the way Natalie (whose blog is a reference to our going to hell in a hand basket -- an indicator of her prevailing mindset) does, they can be annoying. (I wonder if it ever occurred to her that they act the way they do just to make her mad. Nah. Teenagers never try to make older people mad. Forget I brought it up.)

Do my students make me mad? Frustrate me? Sometimes. So do my own children, but I wouldn't trash them (anonymously or by name) in front of the world.

The way I see it, if you are a teacher and can't see the poetry, energy, the potential and the involuntary honesty in high school students, you should quit. One could argue that kids give teachers what they deserve: respect or the other thing.

Do you remember daydreaming? Being bored to death in class and looking at the clock and being amazed that it was only three minutes after the last time you checked? Do you remember knowing you teacher didn't like kids -- even if you were wrong? Do you remember adults saying to you, "Why can't you just . . . " when you simply couldn't? You just couldn't do whatever it was. We need to remember, to teach well.

 I see my job as teaching. Period. There's no "unless the kids make it difficult" codicil. There's no "unless the parents don't stand behind me" clause. There is no get-out-free pass for kids who are hard to like. As a teacher, if a kid doesn't learn in my class, I consider it my failure. It's not society's fault. It's not the parents' fault. My fault. I have a job to do, no matter how hard it is. I've committed to helping kids. And I have failed many times and that bothers me, deeply, but I don't try to cover up my failures by blaming the world for going to hell in a hand basket.

Maybe all of my students don't love me, but not one can fairly accuse me of ever having given up on him. My job is to figure out a way to teach even those many would label as "unteachable" when they appear on my roster, as well as the ones who would "learn in spite of me" as we say in the profession.

And you know what? I believe what I referred to in a recent post: teenagers are the purest form of who we, as adults, are. They know what makes them happy, instinctually. They know what they want out of life. They know how to live in the moment. Sure, they don't have the maturity or the means to pull things together yet. The crime is, the adult world, instead of helping them to draw a map to their dreams, convinces them the dreams themselves are immature. Instead of helping the kids to revise their dreams into realistic ones, we make them crumple everything up and start over on something new -- something practical. Something they really don't want but feel they need to surrender to.

Maybe it is the grown-ups who are lazy whiners. Maybe we don't want to work hard enough to teach difficult kids; to help them sort out complicated, embryonic dreams; to understand the place their protests and rebellion comes from; to make up for some of the innocent mistakes their parents may have made, instead of condemning them all as bad role models.

I'm not a former hippie -- I wasn't born until 1968. But I tell you, the kids are alright. I work with them daily and I come out of school, most days, with more hope for the world than when I walked in. Sometimes, it is hard to see, but there is a light around the younger generation. Don't let the shadow of popular thought hide it from you. We owe it to the kids to find the positive things -- the magic -- in them and help them to wield it. We owe it to our own futures and to our consciences.

I'll say it again: she shouldn't be fired. She should just consider a new profession. Clearly teaching isn't making her happy.

6 comments:

  1. "...teenagers are the purest form of who we, as adults, are. They know what makes them happy, instinctually. They know what they want out of life. They know how to live in the moment. Sure, they don't have the maturity or the means to pull things together yet. The crime is, the adult world, instead of helping them to draw a map to their dreams, convinces them the dreams themselves are immature. Instead of helping the kids to revise their dreams into realistic ones, we make them crumple everything up and start over on something new -- something practical."

    This is HUGE. I feel like this definitely happened to me. Although, I still "dont know what I want to be when I grow up." So if I don't know how to make my own map to my dreams as an adult, how would I help a kid do it? Perhaps this is the problem with some of these teachers? Although, I still wouldn't crush his dreams; I would try to help him find someone who could help him in ways that I couldn't.

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  2. I think you pretty much said it all there.

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  3. Thank you for finally making a stand for the down trodden. Memory loss is the greatest enemy to teenagers, because all adults were teenagers, at least for a day, at some point in their lives. I remember a quote from ancient Greece, though I forget the speaker, that talked about the children of the era being disrespectful, lazy and selfish. There was graffiti seen in the ruins of Pompeii. *bell rings*
    Now that the history segment of our discussion is over, (hey it did turn out to be useful for something!) Teenagers really are a fantastic gift because they are a blank slate. Usually their biggest enemies are themselves. Imagine a society where each person has the ability to change the world for every other person in the planet. However, the members of that society don't know it. They only know they don't like people telling them they cant do something, or they should do something. This is the life of a teenager. So when a teenager acts "stupid," "annoying," or (God forbid) "rebellious," maybe we shouldn't despair for the future but instead be happy. Without some rebellion, society would not change and improve. I will admit I am saddened when I see some teenagers, in fact, it seems like a lot of teenagers, but I am saddened when they don't seem to think for themselves, they only mindlessly follow. (Enter the plot for every "slow" zombie movie ever written.) At least a teenager thinking for themselves, no matter how far off that thinking is, shows signs of a mind working. And as long as a mind is working, it is a benefit to society.

    Thanks for your time and space to ramble
    --Papi

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  4. Yup -- they key, I think, is to harness teenage energies -- to teach them to direct their passions, rebellion and strength into worthwhile directions. We tend to try to "break" kids like horses. Bad idea. Yet we continue . .

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  5. You nailed it! Teachers are cynical and bitter...mostly because of their pay and their daily duties... but to have a mediocre person judge someone with the world ahead of them is distressing.
    I am a teacher and am disturbed by what I hear in the teacher break room...hence the publication of my book "In Defense of the American Teen." Read it... you'll be disturbed too.
    My time in public education is inspiring me to start a private school!!
    Thanks,
    Ryan Teves

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  6. Thanks for the comment, Ryan. As a new teacher, I was once told by a veteran (one of the good ones) that his only piece of advice to me as a teacher was "stay out of the break room." It made an impression, indeed.

    Good luck with the book -- I'm glad I'm not the only one who actually likes the little devils.

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