On Being Young

Being a young teacher is a dual-edged sword. There are several teachers under 30 on staff at my school, and I've spoken with most of them about the ups and downs of being young educators.

A vast majority of them, simply due to the fact that they are teenagers, want to be older than they are. That's completely natural and understandable, and I remember feeling that way when I was in elementary, middle and high school. But they are so overfed with the MTV definition of "older" and "cooler" - namely, drunk, naked and partying all the time, that they don't have adults who show them that, "Hey, you know what? You can be adult, and cool, and not have to be a wastoid." It's been remarkable to be of late how much they feed off my reaction to situations. The word "shit" slipped out of a student's mouth earlier this week, and I counted 5 heads (out of 8 in the room at the time) who immediately whipped their heads around to await my reaction.
It's beneficial to have strong familiarity with the internet, cell phones, and all the other techno-devices they seem to be handed the day after they come out of the womb. The kids know I'm good at picking out the ones who are texting in class, and daily I hear, "Oooooh! Sniped!" after I ask someone to put away their phone.

But being young also means that the kids don't necessarily give you the automatic respect they give my colleagues with gray hair and wrinkles. It means that some seniors, and even some juniors, who have been in the building for a longer time than I, feel they own the place, that they are the Big Men On Campus, and that they own the place more so than the rookie teacher. That has certainly caused some friction between me and several students throughout the year.

But that above paragraph relates to me, being a male. The junior and senior boys give me a whole lot different crap than they do the young women teachers. To me, they feel the need to testosterone-up, and show that they are tougher, meaner, and stronger. If they only knew what "strong" really means.
The girls, by contrast, really don't give me much sass. I think that the female equivalent of the male testoneroning-up is to be catty and bitchy. So that's the shit they give the young female teachers.

The young female teachers, unfortunately, get it from both genders. There are plenty of boys who make inappropriate and chauvinistic comments to them on top of the attitude they get from the girls. But there are certainly those boys who have crushes on these teachers, and the teacher can say, "Well, I'm really disappointed in you," which is far worse than anything I could ever say.

"Wait until your third year," a colleague advised me. He argued that at that point, I'll have been in the school as long as any of the students, and that I would have interacted with (either in class, in the hallways, or on the sports fields) with a vast majority of them. I'll have a reputation in the school, and while there will always be those boys who try to show me up with their excessive displays of testosterone, those numbers will most certainly decrease.

Overall, though, I'd say the pro's definitely outweigh the cons when it comes to being close to the age of my students. To be an adult figure in their life who they don't mentally clump together with their "out-of-touch" parents is of great benefit to getting them to succeed through the tumultuous years that are high school.