Shifting Back to Real Life

Those who know, do.  Those that understand, teach. --Aristotle 

My heroes, reading their hard work!

You haven’t really lived until you’ve danced with 12 year olds to “Gangham Style,” many of whom are Korean, and not only know all the words, but also know what all the words mean.

It was the last dance of the session, the last night of CTY, and unlike the first dance where I just watched, this time I went out on the grassy dance floor and jumped around to “Call Me Maybe.” It was a telling moment, trying to convince eleven year olds to dance awkwardly rather than stand around awkwardly.  I’ve never danced with my students before, but then they also aren’t usually allowed to call me Meghan, a privilege which my CTY kids have enjoyed for three weeks.

I’m not Ms. Short here—I teach in shorts most days, eat lunch with all the kids, and don’t try to be a strong discipline force with them.  But I’m certainly also not Meghan, not really.  I’m still their teacher.

The same way that the dance was one of the strangest things ever—it included a moment where we tried to figure out how to dance to “I’ll Make a Man Out of You,” from Mulan. (It was also the moment I realized that I’ve gotten used to making up motions to songs for kids in MetrOrange on Sunday mornings.)  The dance was a bunch of twenty and thirty-somethings bopping around and being a little crazy and trying to convince the kids to be just as crazy.

The whole experience of CTY has been a little crazy.  It’s 11 year olds I’ve been discussing Sir Gawain with and talking about deep messages in fairy tales.  Senior high level material and analysis, essay writing, all coming out of fifth and sixth graders.  They’ve also said things like, “When we were younger, we might’ve thought life was like a Disney movie, but now we’re old enough to know how the world really works.” Andi—the best TA I could’ve asked for—have watched them try to their hand at flirting a little bit in the last week—pushing and teasing each other the way only middle schoolers do.   But they also cried, “Eeeewwww” anytime a film clip we showed—cartoon or real live action—included kissing.  We did almost a semester’s worth of material, a semester of bonding and socializing and crammed it into only three weeks. 

And now it’s over, when it barely seems to have begun.  It’s been an intense three weeks—seven hours of teaching the same kids for fifteen days.  It should’ve been long enough to identify my teacher persona—somewhere in between the Ms. Short I am at the public school and the Meg I am the rest of the time.  So maybe Meghan is the middle ground—maybe Meghan is who I was to those kids and that sort of solves any issue I’m kind having.  And it’s not as though this whole thing is keeping me up at night, but at this point my teacher persona is something I’m usually pretty comfortable with and sure about.  There was a moment though last Thursday night that I realized it had slid away a little bit.  Maybe while I was doing the Macarena with the kids or dancing and singing to “If You Wanna Be My Lover,” and trying to encourage them to do the same. 

No matter who I was to them for those three weeks they’re on their way home now.  I hope some of them will finish their hero stories and send them to me, once we’ve all gone back to real life where kids mostly just know Ms. Short.