Hello, I teach 6th Grade Drama

Last year was utterly exhausting. I dreaded going to school every morning. I felt like I taught nothing because I had such bad classroom management. Apparently, though, the kids learned a lot. In retrospect, it wasn’t so bad last year. The first year of teaching is always the hardest. The kids were physically exhausting, the material was new, the culture was different, and I was adjusting to not being able to integrate the language arts within other subject areas.

This year started out great. The kids were older. They didn’t come tearing into the teachers’ room yelling their little heads off because some boy pulled down the pants of another boy. They didn’t come tattling about whatever their classmate did. It seemed like it would be more of a breeze to teach them this year.

Then bang! I got the emotional homeroom class. Of all the sections, it’s the most hormonal. We could have our own TV show. It would be the Jordan B Soap Opera. We could also have the Jordan B Circus Show (for showcasing the talents of fitting one’s body into a cubby hole, tossing pencil cases up at the electric fan because boys can be brainless, etc.). These kids are absolutely hilarious and creative, annoying to teach (they’re too chatty), and super duper emotional and think their lives couldn’t possibly get more complicated than they are now. Last year the kids were physically exhausting. This year, they’re emotionally exhausting. My poor kids also get the most unsympathetic, unemotional homeroom teacher. So far I have not laughed to their faces about their issues, but I laugh at them inside.

Each day brings new drama. This is the age where friends and secrets (whether real or imagined) are the most important things in their lives. The girls are secretive about it. The boys emote loudly and publicly. The girls run in and out of the classroom hyperventilating and crying and fanning their faces as if that somehow stops them from crying. The boys stare dumbly at each other in the hallway and wonder what the girls are up to. The girls chase after the crying girls and yell things like, “I don’t know what’s going on but I MUST KNOW!!!” The boys hold hands in a circle and chant, “Cherish! Cherish!” because they’re mourning the near end of 6^th grade and life as they know it. The girls pass around a little notebook of secrets and having secret meetings. The boys try to steal the notebook and they have public meetings. The girls band together, ostracize the girls who aren’t cool enough, and sit in front of me and have a debate back and forth about what they should tell me and what they shouldn’t. The boys just beg to talk to me and then pour their hearts out about why they’re so confused about the girls. The girls cry because they’re empathizing with a boy who likes another girl but is about to “get his heart broken” because the girl likes another boy. The boys probably have no idea that their lives are on the brink of the biggest heartbreak in the history of 6^th graders. The girls and boys might be very different in how they live dramatic lives, but both sides are just as dramatic and hilarious. Some of them do have real reasons to act dramatically about life. Some kids have homes that are breaking apart and as a result, they fear change and are afraid of growing up and moving beyond the friendships they knew in grade school. Their classmates and teachers are their securities and now their classmates are changing.

Their lives are changing. They are going to face a lot of new things once they start 7^th grade. Some of them are viewing life a lot older than they should because of the books that they read that contain content far too “mature” for their age. I have no control over what their parents allow them to read. The only thing I can do for them is love them and point them to the Unchanging One. There is so much more to teaching than giving them worksheets and tests. How inadequate I am and how vain will my words be if I am not founded upon the Rock, drawing from the Eternal Spring, feeding upon the Bread of Life. May I teach these precious children in view of eternity.