Me in all my teaching glory: ” *Chloe! Stop kicking Matthew!”
Chloe: “He kicked me first.”
Me in all my teaching glory: “Well please stop, you know the rules. Hands and feet to yourselves. Keep it up and you will both be missing recess.”
Chloe: “But it’s not fair, he kicked me first.”
Me in all my teaching glory: “But if you kick back, you are breaking the rules too. You need to tell him to stop, and if he doesn’t- tell a teacher. He may have done it first, but if I look up from my desk and see YOU kicking, you are going to get in trouble too. Understand?”
At recess, I watched the students from the classroom window and contemplated how easy it was to solve kid problems with a quick phrase and stern voice. I found the words “but if you kick back, you are breaking the rules too” sink inside me and realized as my mind raced over the last few days, that I hadn’t been taking my own advice.
This last week I’ve been a complete asshole. It’s true. I’m ashamed of how I’ve been acting. Ashamed. And it takes a lot to get me to cross that threshold, but I’m there. I know that writing here is one opportunity I have to not talk about what I’ve been doing,- it would be easy to tell it all with a few jokes or even skip it completely and tell only a funny story about a kid who is bringing a deer ear to show and tell on Monday (no seriously. A DEER EAR.) . But… that wouldn’t feel right. Because I’m not always funny. And I’m learning I’m not always nice.
The first incident was no one’s fault. It was a wrong place, wrong time sort of incident that resulted in a disappointing night. There was no yelling or drama, just curt goodbyes and a long sigh on the drive home. But it was frustrating. And at the time, I didn’t know what to do when handed a box of frustration addressed to me. A gift wrapped up in misunderstanding and mistakes- I took it out on the only other person it involved, not being calm enough to realize that not every disappointment is linked to a person. Sometimes things fall apart, mistakes are made, people change and no one is to blame. And I blamed. In ways that are still making me shake my head.
The second situation is too ridiculous to even write up. I can with 100% certainty say that if I shared it, you would see my side, commiserate with me and call the other individual names I’ve already said in my head. But it wouldn’t help. She screwed up, but my reaction to it- the slamming of doors, the swearing (not so much under my breath), the ranting to everyone on the phone who shares my area code- was just as bad. She broke the rules, and instead of dealing with it- I broke them too.
It’s harder now that we are older. The rules still get broken, our feelings still get hurt, we still get kicked. And when we do get kicked, there’s no teacher to tell, so often we just kick back- with a cold word, slammed door or an unanswered call. But whether a classmate kicks us in the shin or life kicks us in the ass- we still decide how we deal with it. Whether we stomp around in the kitchen and curse the Gods or take a minute and put it in perspective before dealing with it like an adult- we choose how we respond, we choose if we kick back.
Matthew and Chloe made it out for recess. They played nicely outside and at the end of the day I told them I was proud of them for getting along so well. And I was. Because they were able to do something that I have been struggling with- getting kicked, dealing with it and then playing nicely.
I have a lot to learn from 8 year olds.
* Names have been changed to protect kickers who teach me stuff
