Kids are Kids.

They say this to you at Teachers College, they say this on every placement and yet, it is harder than diamonds to NOT TAKE IT PERSONALLY, they are children.

By it, I mean students beahviours and attitudes. I think of myself as a fair teacher. I can have a laugh with the students, and in general am pretty relaxed. Yet, every day I still find myself thinking back to an event where one student either was really rude or annoying and pondering on what I did wrong.

Maybe I did do something wrong, not follow through with some type of discipline procedure as I had warned, maybe, maybe not. Either way these types of throughts can really eat into the mind and ones overall happiness - they certainly do for me. I find myself getting wound up and thinking I am not good enough for this profession and doubting my ability.

Today, I understand that kids are kids, and their actions are not always a jab at me. There were two people that really cemented this comprehension.

Teacher one is a teacher I admire, a real awesome person with awesome interpersonal student-teacher relationships, amazing genuine ability in her subject and an all-round able sense of teaching.

She is cool.

Today, we were having a defrag at the end of the day, and she mentioned to me a class that really got up her goat. These were the same students that I had been having trouble with.

I know that she has a good realtionship with them - I observed her teaching them a few lessons. To hear and discuss the problematic issues she was having with the class (constant talking, apparant "no ears no hears" attitude, calling out etc) and discover that they were the same as my issues was the greatest sense of relief I could ever feel.

To think, this teacher whom I truly think of as a rolemodel with years and years of experience suffers the same REPETITIVE issues that I am going through - *phew, I feel relief. When I told her this (my sense of utter relief) she said "Oh yea, they are kids! They have bad and good days like us, they are kids, don't take it personally."

The next person was a slick looking chap who was monitoring his class in the library as they read quietly. I wandered in and looking for the adult in the room, found him. He had the class totally under control, and we started talking.

For some reason, we got into my frustrations - he was a very absorbant sponge for my groanings. The same issues came up and he said that he gets those issues as well. His comment of the day was "They are kids, they don't know how to do their washing, their mums probably still cook all of their meals, clean all of their messes, drive them around and buy their clothes. Kids need rules, kids don't like rules thus kids will battle until they know their boundaries."

Slick advice from a slick chap, I feel better now.

If this is a process that all teachers go through, why does it feel so isolating?

I think that being alone all day with clasrooms of students, it is easy to forget that they are learning how to be people, and how to function around others. Taking their adolescent behaviour personally seems to be a self destructive attitude that is pointless and misguided. I am pleased that these two helpful seasoned teachers were part of my day.

#PersonalDevelopment #MindBlown