Where will my strength come from?

The last time I wrote, I mentioned about the infringements that go in the school I teach...

Here's the latest dose that totally and utter did it for me. For the first time, I wondered if I got into the right profession. Is teaching really the best way to reach out to these kids?

... a fifteen-year old boy walks up to a teacher and asks her

"Hey, Miss! What colour is your bra?"

In the disciplinary room, he complete denies it...

... It's administration & filing time at school. All the kids have to make sure they have their task sheets up to date and ready for 'audit'. Some kids are missing work because they have left it strewn on the floor (worse yet, possibly aimed if for the bin - totally plausible). So boy raps violently on the door and when answered, asks,

"Hey! Can I have the papers - and hurry up with it!"...

... In a class test, a boy is reading a section of the newspaper as the test is in session. His legs are cross and is leaning back - looking like he would be more comfortable in a cafe. When addressed, he completely ignores the warning until the newspaper is confiscated. As I put it on my desk, he goes and takes another section to read. ZERO.

... Later in a class assignment, I rove around the classroom to make sure they are on task. When I see him - the same boy from the above infringment - he takes his tasksheet and tears it into bits in slow-motion in front of me. Perhaps to prove a point, from not having got the reaction he was look for in the spelling test?

... This might not seem so uncommon but ... thinking that I do not understand any chinese, boy initially tries to ask questions in mandarin to tease. Of course, I understand them enough but play dumb in an attempt to deflect, defuse and re-focus him on his work. Upset, he begins swearing at me and using vulgarities directed to my "mother" - alot like "ya mama" insults.

That day, the class apparently set the record for making not one, not two, but THREE teachers completely lose it. And I'm referring to veteran teachers...

Of course I ask myself, "How am I ever going to get to these kids? How am I going to fill up their tank? Will I have enough in mine to give to them?"

Where will my strength come from?

INFRINGEMENTS

In the last five days of work...

... a boy has walked out of class while I was in the middle of presenting my lesson.

"John, you need to be at your desk. Please go back to your seat now."

"Okay" as he proceeds to walk right out of class with a following of 2-3 curious boys who were "helping their friend".

... in the middle of a lesson, a fifteen-year old boy decides its cool to hang from the ceiling. He climbs up the window levers and "hangs out" as if he were doing pull-ups. After being called down and told that it was dusty up there anyway, he repeats this action ten minutes later.

... a teacher looks directly at a group of girls chattering away while there is a lesson in session. Their reply, "Whatcha' staring at, huh?"

... two boys get up from their desks and run around the class. The cause, one of the them has aggravated the other who was in a terrible mood and is about to get pummeled. After diverting them back into their seats, Nick gets up walks across the row and give George a couple of fists and a shouting match ensues.

... two boys return from the disciplinary room, amuse themselve by playing hacky-sack with the whiteboard duster and hits me in the arm. Should I send them back to the principal?

... in that same class session, a boy sits at his desk and spits not once, not twice, but four times in the classroom.

... I have been called names, been wolf-whistled at and even leered at by the high-school boys. "Hey Teacher, you are damn sexy!"

... a dustbin got thrown onto the door of the teachers' workroom and then the door banged at till the perpertrators got a reaction - us opening the door, to find that they had run off.

For all of these infringements, I have no idea what disciplinary actions can be taken or genuinely enforced. I wonder if teachers nowadays have no more authority to discipline and am beginning to weary about the future prospects of the kids and society in general. These will make up our masses in ten years. God help us.

Meanwhile, I think I will need a deep trough of emotion to stay loving to these kids.

NOWADAYS...

... the things on my mind in no particular order, are:

- a wedding and its details
- a marriage and its necessities
- a teaching career and its workload
- Kairos; a world missions course

Which doesn't leave me much time for
- health and fitness in the gym or on the courts
- some friends
- spending time with God :-(

something has got to change soon.