New Athenian Academy

I love running into students outside of school.  Really I love to play with kids.

Whenever a teacher runs into a student in, say, a grocery store, two things follow.

Surprise

I imagine that a statement something like “Holy crap, I didn’t know my teacher existed out of the classroom” runs through their head.  For whatever reason, students really think that I live in my classroom.  My fellow teacher and I had a running joke that we had a trap door in the floor of our classroom (which was a modular unit) that lead into a bedroom.  We took our showers in the locker room/bathroom and ate our meals in the teachers lounge.  We never left the school property.  Our fantasy world became fairly elaborate with decoration ideas and appliances.  Overall students are very surprised to find me out of the school.

Embarrassment

The second emotion that arises is always embarrassment.  Students get this look of panic on their faces.  As if I am going to tell a horrible story about them or rat them out for their cell phone use in class.  And they should worry, because I never fail to bring up something.  Now don’t get all upset.  I do it in jest.  A bit of fun.  Usually the parent already knows of the transgression anyway.  But it never fails, the student gets embarrassed.

At an appropriate amount of small talk, we part ways.  But that’s not the end.  The next morning I make it a point of mentioning to the entire class how I saw “Timmy” or “Jane” at the grocery/movies/etc.  It always brings more embarassment.  So much fun for me, and full of red faces for the student.

All this happens because students cannot conceive of teachers outside of the school.  To that I say, “Okay Jane, since I cannot exist outside of my classroom, I will make sure to embarrass the crap out of you when we happen to notice each other in public.”  I love playing with students!  Really makes my week!

Filed under:
Uncategorized by Tobe