Friday, September 26, 2008

The joys of puberty

Today marks the end of my first full week teaching 11th & 12th graders. And most people might find this crazy, but... I miss middle school. 12 year old boys are relatively predictable. They are often a thorn in a teacher's side, but it is a thorn that is easily removed with the right strategies. They hate you one day and love you the next. They are immature, yes, but that is to be expected at their age. They are still young enough to be afraid of you and deep down they really want to please you. Most of them anyway. Then the flood of testosterone hits and it all goes downhill. 16 year old boys (to be fair, at least the ones that I've worked with this past week) don't care about pleasing the teacher. They dish out excuses all day long; and believe me at this age they have some doozies! They can look you in the eye and tell you a boldface lie. Oh, and it isn't as if the hormones make them any more mature. 16 year old boys try to play paper football in study hall, find hilarity in drawing beards on people's faces in the newspaper, and write stupid messages to each other on the white board.
I am happy to be working again, I'm just not so sure about this whole high school thing. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, P is feeling better about daycare but has decided to stop sleeping. It may be some sort of protest, I have no idea. And our homestudy has been approved by our agency & should be on its way to Korea any day now!!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So this might show up twice - internet issues.

I hear the same type of stories from my friend who teaches HS biology. Hang in there!

Congrats on the home study - I hope you guys have a short wait time. As for the sleeping issues, we are in the process of giving up naps. I think sleep issues are the hardest during this age bracket.