Skip to main content

Junior High School

The first "first" day of school I can remember was my first day in junior high school. I was more afraid than years earlier when my dad took me to a Boy Scout meeting to see what I thought, and equally afraid to the time my mom enrolled me in a basketball camp when I knew I was a wretched basketball player.

I knew one person, a nice guy named Michael, but I also knew that I couldn't latch onto him, lest I be seen as a leech and a wimp. No, I had to face it alone.

My solution was to keep my mouth shut. I was socially awkward and felt myself unintelligent, so anything I said or did to draw attention to myself would have been no better than negative publicity. It turns out that things weren't as bad as I thought they'd be. As far as I can recall, the teachers were nice, and no one went out of their way to mock me. Of course, no one went out of their way to talk to me, either, so I suppose I got what I wanted: a neutral day with nothing to speak of in terms of friends or enemies.

My junior high school days, in fact, turned out to be wracked with the mean-spiritedness and low self-esteem so endemic to that age. I remember making mean comments toward others, and having equally mean comments made toward me, all of which were communicated outside the presence of a teacher.

Still, I know these years have redemptive value for today, for I eventually became a junior high school teacher. The fears and failures I felt then afford me an empathy I can draw on with my own students, even if I don't always do so. I was as petrified in seventh grade, and as confused and mean in eighth grade, as my seventh- and eighth-grade students are today. Now I know that when they act toward each other the way they do, there is an underlying reason, that they seek an affirmation of their identities at an age when identity is so clouded. I'm shocked at how well my students handle themselves. Then again, I think many of them are expected to grow up faster than was required of me.

Perhaps because of this, my students may take different lessons from their junior high school days, lessons more in line with the spirit of the times, of an age in which social statuses are built and destroyed as much as-- if not more-- on the digital plane as they are on the physical one. I only hope that with this increased power to encourage or tear down, my students choose the former rather than the latter.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Nice Guy Fallacy

I read part of a poem recently by one of my favorite poets. It reads: I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage The linnet born within the cage That never knew the summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time Unfetter'd by the sense of crime To whom a conscience never wakes. Nor what may call itself as bles't The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall I feel it, when I sorrow most 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. At base, Tennyson contrasted a life of risk, and consequent pain, with one of security. He sides conclusively with the life of risk, and says he fails to envy those who have faced no hardship. I agree with him; and, for good or ill, his words are just as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Like then, there are those today who choose to live their lives with as little risk as...

Persuasion

At different points in history, governments have devoted men, women, and resources to try to persuade others to their side. One significant example of this occurred in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Hitler knew how important it was to make sure the German people were on his side as leader of the country. One way he did this was by controlling what people heard. Specifically, near the beginning of World War II, Hitler made it a crime for anyone in Germany to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. These were called the “extraordinary radio measures.” He did this to ensure that Germans weren’t being persuaded by enemy countries to question their loyalty to Hitler. He knew that a German listening to a radio broadcast from Britain might persuade that German to believe that Great Britain was the good guy and Hitler the bad guy. This was so important, in fact, that two people in Germany were actually executed because they had either listened to or planned to listen to a foreign radio broadcast (one...

Experiment

My social studies students and I are studying Islam right now. The other day, we were reading about one of the Five Pillars, zakat (charity in Islam that means "that which purifies"). Muslims believe that giving away money helps to purify it and also "safeguards [them] against miserliness" (1). I asked the class if this was true, that giving money away makes us less greedy. They generally agreed that it does. I wanted to test whether or not they really believed this, so I handed a volunteer a $10 bill. I told the class that I would ask for the bill back the next day. I said that they should pass the bill around among their classmates, and that as a result, there would be no way for me to know who had the bill. For that reason, whoever wanted to keep the money could keep it. Even if I did learn who kept it, I told them, I would not punish that person. I wanted them to be motivated by their own honesty. The next day, I asked for the bill, and a student handed it to me...