About this time of year, just like anytime else, middle school drama can go big time. One still-warm situation involving, in the words of one of our guidance counselors, “just about everything you can imagine,” also seems to have included the entire seventh grade in its sweep.
In a parent conference with one mother and her student, a drama-steeped friend of the current drama queen herself, the mother told me that she didn’t really go for my making H say “please,” that H is just like she was way back when, and that she has given up taking away H’s phone or assigning her chores because of the volatility of H’s backlashes.
In our meeting, even, H told off her mom, which merited this ominous directive from our grandmotherly civics teacher: “If you want to see some feathers ruffled, talk to your mom like that again.” H said relatively little for the rest of the meeting.
(A note about making her say please: H recently found herself in the habit of coming to my desk to demand paper: “I need some paper.”
“Oh, thanks for telling me,” on each occasion I gave my usual response, and continued whatever I was doing.
“I’m going to stand here until you give it to me.”
“Oh.”
“I’m stubborn.”
“Me, too,” I said. “But my grade doesn’t depend on it.”
Twice now, though, she’s been rescued by another student who has come and politely requested a sheet of paper and then given it to H. It’s good she has paper, of course; she’s in after school detention every day this week, hopefully working on missing assignments to avoid failing.)
A few days after the meeting, my colleague R came into my room to say, “I thought about you this morning.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. I was thinking that H reminds me an awful lot of someone I once dated. And I thought to myself, ‘I’d bet $500 that she doesn’t remind Chester of anyone he ever dated.'”
I laughed and laughed; he left as satisfied as if I’d actually handed over the cash.
As clothing edges away and spring love like sunbathing spirits wafts in through open windows (well, not anymore, since all windows are now closed by order of the principal, but due to HVAC regulation, not distraction), and as seventh graders fully convert from being kids to teens, I’ve continued my usual vigilance of patrolling for students not working on their assignments.
The other day another student H, this one a boy, madly in love with another seventh grader in another of my classes, sacrificed the chance to go on our end-of-year amusement park field trip, plus extended his spring break by three days, by using his cell phone in class, during a test.
He’s obsessed with her. He was probably trying to text her when I caught him with the phone out, I’ve heard other students tell him he’s going to scare her off, and I intercepted this note from her to him:
Yea right your eyes are way better then My eyes I hope we hold hands Monday we dont have to if you dont want to. and we kiss the week after sprig break???? I love you way more then you love me …. your beautiful IM ugly ILY ____
This note was, I admit, rather disappointing, as just last month I again taught my love poem unit, with its heavy emphasis on using metaphors–a lesson apparently thoroughly wasted on H.
Thankfully, though, other students did soak it up:
