We Are the Adults - Ben Slavic

I am in a language lab right now on my planning period. The class in here, a heritage speakers class, is all out of control when they are supposed to be using the computers to do a writing assignment in Spanish. It is chaos in here, but the (very young first year teacher) is on her computer.

This is not a class at all. Some are on Facebook. Loud music is playing. Such impressive credentials. On paper only, I guess.

This situation reminds us that kids need to be told what to do clearly. This teacher wants to be liked so badly it is resulting in chaos. It’s like a bunch of young people with no leader like Lord of the Flies. We are adults. We don’t need for them to like us.

I was in here about four months ago with this same class. Its culture has completely changed. I bet that each day that passed since I saw this class last, the familiarity with the students increased imperceptibly, they slowly saw that they could control the class, that the teacher wanted to be liked more than she wanted to show up as an adult in her classroom, and bit by bit the class moved to this.

I see growth in myself that I can see this chaos so clearly. With some teachers there is a kind of suck where the teacher needs the kids approval so much that it results in this kind of dominance, which is just under the line of getting her fired immediately, by kids who are expert at taking all they can get in a classroom. I would rather be unemployed than work in a classroom where the class has taken over.

We must remember that these are children who in high school have bodies that only look grown up. Their prefrontal cortexes are years from being mature enough to function without adult instruction and clear rules. They need us to be adults.