A colleague stopped by my room on her way out this afternoon. She recently announced she was retiring, and I congratulated her. What followed was a conversation I'm sure many teachers are having all over the country about the needs of the kids, their lack of attachment and social skills after being out (on top of the challenge of early adolescence!), and the dearth of support from administration and the community.
This particular teacher moved from sixth grade to eighth grade last year, and since then she has faced two very tough classes of kids. Where sixth graders are still mostly sweet, eighth graders can bit a bit surly and rude, even in the best of times. Added to that, the eighth graders last year and this spent a considerable portion of middle school learning from home, and so their connection to the adults here, which can be tenuous at that age, is frayed and in some cases broken.
The behaviors she described were appalling: openly rude, physically threatening, and academically disengaged. Of course, I had heard the stories, but it was disheartening nevertheless. I tried to be optimistic-- the kids in seventh and sixth grade who have been with us full-time, seem much more like their pre-pandemic counterparts I remember.
She nodded as she turned to leave, and noticed the teacher appreciation pennant on my door. It was covered in notes of gratitude from sixth graders. "I saw these as I came down the hallway from eighth grade," she told me. "There are more and more signatures on each one as you get closer to sixth grade. It reminds me of how different the younger students are."
She pointed to a note at the bottom of my pennant and read out loud, "English is amazing!" She laughed and added, "said no eighth grader, ever!"
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