Once every couple of years, the need arises to chew out your students. Even the best ones.1 2
Sometimes it’s due to a lull in effort. Or a premature splurge of senioritis. Or a general lack of respect for the classroom.
It’s not something I particularly like to do, because if you know me well, you know: When I get angry, I really get angry. And that is a side of me that I do not like to show unless it is absolutely unavoidable.
Plus, the last thing I ever want to do is make a group of good kids feel bad about themselves.3
It’s not something you can do more than once a year, because once you’ve used up that well-measured moment, any subsequent occurrence becomes a droning act of beating a dead horse – they just tune you out the second time.
It is in moments like this, when I am weighing the complexity of the delicate balancing act of how to walk that fine line of encouraging vs conveying a sense of fervent urgency to your students, when I cannot comprehend how parents deal with raising kids. I imagine it is this times a few thousand billion.
Is it them?
Or is it me?!
(Am I not teaching/raising them right?)
UGH!!!
In other words… this is about the time of year where things really starts to feel like an uphill battle.
Turkey break cannot come soon enough.