The past two Valentine’s Days I haven’t spent in a
classroom and I have been feeling a bit off because of it. Considering that
this day where Cupid is King is harder to teach than the first day of school,
harder to keep the kids on task than the day before any long break and even
harder to quell the chaos than the last day of school, I’ve had to ask myself,
“Why?”.
Did I miss the normal teenage hormone-infused highs
fueled by a day-long dose of chocolate? Did I miss the kids skidding into the
classroom in a tangle of heart-shaped balloons, stuffed animals and red roses
just as the tardy bell rang? Did I miss all of the “Happy Valentine’s Day, Mrs.
C.” wishes accompanied by a few Hershey’s kisses surreptitiously slipped onto
my desk or the Godiva Chocolate Raspberry Bar handed to me with a flourish and
a shy grin? No, no, and no.
Well, maybe the chocolate.
I realized that on this day where love was supposed
to permeate every wisp of air, my memory banks chose to play and replay the
faces of so many sad-eyed, somber-spirited teenagers who rarely felt loved or
loveable on any given day. And they haunted me.
I thought of David, whose father held him captive in
his home at gunpoint during a hostage situation, the result of a custody
battle. He escaped unharmed, physically but spent a year in the institution for
emotionally disturbed adolescents, where I was teaching, after his mother
abandoned him when she took off with hubby number two. I thought of beautiful Kara, a fragile blond
ballerina who told me that she was tested for aids once a month because of her
propensity for dating much older men in her quest to find someone to love her. I
thought of Julio, a former gangbanger who hid his fear of his peers still
involved in gangs behind a wall of arrogance and a sneer of disdain.
And I was reminded of Jennifer, the catalyst for my
book on teen dating abuse, A Fine Line,
who slipped into my room, her black and blue bruised arms hidden under a jacket
until the steamy June day forced her to take it off. “My boyfriend and I had a
fight,” she whispered in answer to my question, “Good heavens, Jennifer, what
happened?” And then she murmured five words that broke my heart, “But it was my
fault.”
These are just a few examples of the many kids I
grew to know who dreaded Valentine’s Day more than they feared the
disappointment in the eyes of their parents when their SAT scores weren’t as
high as expected, who became totally engrossed in the difficult syntax of Franz
Kafka’s sentences in The Metamorphosis
every time another balloon bounced by their desks, or who feigned sleep when
the bag of Candygrams were delivered to my room for me to hand out to those
teens who enjoyed a BFF or two, or three..
Today, I was once again reminded that teaching is
not just about turning students on to the love of learning, whatever the class.
It also means giving up part of a free period to listen, just listen, to a
detailed account about the loss of a once Best Friend Forever, or of Mr./Ms.
Right. It means offering welcoming smiles to every young person, even…especially those who offered only
discourteous defenses in return because they expected to be ignored, since they
usually were. It means nagging and pushing and challenging students to try,
try, try until they finally achieve even a modicum of success, but a megadose
of “Yes, I can.”
Most importantly, it means finding the “Me Nobody
Knows” buried inside all young people and making sure that they feel loved and
loveable by accepting their weaknesses as well as their strengths, thereby
taking the lonely sting out of not only Valentine’s Day, but their every day.
What’s love got to do with it? Everything. For every
student. Every day.
NOTE: Here are a few activities to turn students from the "Me Nobody Knows" to the "Me You Know and can Reach to Teach".
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Language-Arts-Personal-Collage-Present-Project
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Language-Arts-Writing-First-Day-What-About-Me
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/That-Was-Then-This-is-Now-Prewriting-Activity
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Language-Arts-Personal-Collage-Present-Project
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Language-Arts-Writing-First-Day-What-About-Me
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/That-Was-Then-This-is-Now-Prewriting-Activity
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