A Mistake

Last year was rough to put it gently, while this year has gone swimmingly thus far, but I just experienced the worst moment as a professional teacher. There is a student in my advanced Latin II class who always does the work and does it well but comes to class and puts her head down every day. She always looks like going to my class is either the most boring and pointless waste of time or she hates me and wishes I would die. I generally try to pep her up a little bit and beg her to play along even if she is bored or doesn’t like the class, because I don’t want to lose her entirely.

So I kept her after class today to talk about it, and she left in tears with me apologizing profusely as I escorted her to her next class. She told me that she’s like that in every class and understands where I’m coming from, but that I’ve basically misjudged her and reinforced my negative judgment every day, which of course makes it all the worse. I won’t go into much more detail since that’s the gist of it, but at the risk of seeming naïve, I will say that I’m totally convinced that I was unconsciously putting her down. I feel awful particularly because this makes me realize that I’ve grown so arrogant and comfortable with the personalities in the classroom that I believe I’m handling my students exactly as they deserve when in fact I’m way off the mark with some.

And now at the end of the week I have to meet with the father of a girl who last year dropped her average a good twenty points from an ‘A’ to a ‘C’ because she refused to come to school and take my tests and quizzes after AP test time. Apparently, she deserves the world and can dictate what happens in my classroom just because she’s too smart for her own good (which I ordinarily wouldn’t say about anyone of course). I’ve taken a hard line on the issue, because it’s very clear that her own immaturity and false sense of entitlement as a “good” student were her downfall, but now I can’t help but doubt what is an entirely clear-cut issue because of my mistake with the other girl.

I have some time breathe from everything – Ole Miss, graduate applications, studying for the GRE, grading, etc. – over the next few weeks, but all the sudden the easiest part of all, the actual in-school teaching is taking a turn for the worse. I hope that’s an aberration and doesn’t become the rule, now that we’re really getting into the grind of the school year.