Mommy, Can I Have a Dollar?
The other day my high schoolers started to jokingly refer to me as their mom… which brought up an interesting dilemma. What is my role as the teacher? Am I part mom, part educator? Or, do I just focus on the academic education of my students?
In a way, this dilemma is less of a problem at the elementary level. I expect the 1st grade teacher to act in some ways like a mom or dad: give students a hug when they are having a bad day, taking care of their knee scrapes on the playground, making sure they have on their gloves, hats, and coats before recess.
But what about for those of us who teach the higher grades? Am I their MOM? Do I want to be? Do I have to be? If I think about the ages of my students and my age, it actually makes more sense for them to be my friends and/or boyfriends than my children. (A thought brought to my attention multiple times by the other writer of this blog. Thanks Josh for the creepy dreams!)
Everyday I find myself attempting to redefine my role. I want to be the strict teacher, looking out for their academic well-being, leading them on the path to knowledge. Then I do something like let them borrow a dollar for lunch… or remind them that they have a meeting with so and so at lunch. It gets even more complicated when I think about the juniors. I am their class sponsor and every time they do something good, I want to give them a hug and a gold sticker, and every time they do something bad I catch myself saying “I am so disappointed in them, we will have a talk today.” Those are the kinds of things I do for my real children. So why do I do them for these 17 and 18 year old students. It’s almost like I have 40 children: 38 from 8am-3pm Monday through Friday and 2 that I have 3pm-8am Monday through Friday and weekends.
So what’s the solution: I don’t know. That’s right a teacher doesn’t know the answer. I want to be a mentor, someone that my students can gain knowledge from, but also be there when they fall down and scrape their knee. It’s a constant redefinition game. Maybe this will get easier once I start to age out of their generation. Or maybe that’s when I will want to be more like their mom, yet fight against the idea.
All I know is that there must be a combination of both roles for this whole process to work. Teachers cannot be completely disconnected from their students, but at the same time, cannot be too much of a parent. They have to take responsibility for their own lives at some point.
So for now, I will let my students borrow a dollar for lunch, praise them when I hear they did something good, give them candy on their birthdays, and scold them when they do bad (even if it’s not in my class). I will be their second mom, their mentor, and their friend. I will try to be everything they need. And I will try not to have any creepy dreams about students being the only guests at my wedding (true story, had a dream like that a couple of weeks ago, talk about creepy, not even my mom was there).
Leave a Reply