Frazzled

A teaching candidate came into the office the other day looking like they were about to throw up. A young energetic woman with a degree in elementary education, she was trying out what was meant to become her new class. Actually, she had not even taught a single lesson yet, she was observing another teacher handle the class. With what seemed like a mixture of fright, surprise, and disgust, she declared that this was not for her. The students are 3 year olds who have just joined an organized school for the first time in their lives. When she walked into the classroom, her blond hair and blue eyes seemed to induce the children to became hysterical as they started to assault her, hitting her on her thighs and back. Even the admonishments in from the local teacher in Chinese couldn't get them to stop, apparently. The children, in essence, were feral. The scene was like something out of Lord of the Flies.

We talked about it for a little bit, going over how she had never seen kids this crazy. We talked about why and how they had gotten this way. My thinking was something like: why would they be any other way? They're 3! They're each an only child, coddled constantly from the moment they've been born, torn away from parents not 3 weeks ago to spend all day long with a stranger. And now we had the gall to introduce a foreign stranger into their lives... With time, however, I believed they would adapt.

It's amazing to think about the way an education forms a person--not just in the knowledge they amass, but in the more simple and more complex ways in which they speak to one another, act in groups, follow leaders, and strike out on their own. When our teachers with the youngest age groups get some of our 2 and 3 year olds, that first week is an amazing challenge. Then you set up routines... for everything. For every moment of their lives. And the kids start to enjoy this repetition, and can control themselves. You can even start giving the little guys minor responsibilities, and let them teacher one another as much as you're teaching them anything.

Unfortunately for the candidate--who, I am almost certain, would eventually come to do an excellent job with the class if she stuck around--I was able to see in her frightened eyes that feeling I once had standing in front of a room of young people, bouncing off the walls, with no safe harbor of common language to run to. After seeing kids at that early stage, what miracles there are that teachers can turn surly mobs of young ruffians into functional citizens over any period of time, much less just a few years.