Engaging the rough youths

As I was on duty today, another teacher was also wandering around. He asked me to walk with him as we 'walked over to check that these youths weren't smoking.'

To be completely honest, these are students that I do not have in my class, and most of the time tend to snarl in the corridors, swear intensely and have grumpy looking resting faces. It is strange how they are only kids, yet I think of them as intimidating.

This teacher did all of the talking, and I was extremely interested in how he would approach the situation. As we approached the group, they all stopped conversation and glared right at us - I could feel the 'piss off' vibe pretty well. One of the kids yelled out 'what yoouse want?'.

The teacher I was with replied with a smile and said 'well you know, we are coming over to check that you arn't smoking or doing drugs over here.' A couple of the kids laughed, and one who had not removed his glare said 'we are not doing anything wrong, youse are just nosy.'

My first instinct for that reaction was to tell the kid not to be so rude, and then lapse into a teacher lecture of blah blah blah. The teacher I was with simply said 'yea we are nosy, we are teachers, what do you expect?'

The kids laughed and then engaged in a conversation with us about something a rather, the teacher said something about reminding them of their rugby game and then we walked away. All of the kids said 'bye Mister.'

The amazing thing that really stuck with me from this interaction was how he dealt with the kids, and how he let their comments slide off him. I immediately took a defensive attitude, and took it personally when they were rude in my eyes. I am not saying that they were not rude, becuase they were, but what I appreciated was how a simple joke and brush off of a comment can change the whole interaction and mood of conversation with these kids.

I also began to think about how these kids are probably spoken to at home, and how they have been taught to speak to others. The comment that I thought of as being only rude, could have been also just how they speak: pure honesty. In our society we walk on eggshells alot of the time to prevent people from feeling bad, or to avoid appearing rude, disrespectful etc. But when a group of people get spoken to at home with pure honesty, where feelings of the other person are not considered, why should we take that personally?

Cool thought provoking interaction.

DO NOT TAKE IT TO HEART, IT IS NOT PERSONAL. HAVE A COFFEE.

#Criteria10 #reflection