Our National Tantrum
I love my students. I always have. It's what brought me back to teaching after my long side trip into ministry, and it's what's kept me teaching through steep professional learning curves, lay-offs, underemployment, and problem students. That last item is what occasions this post: some students are hard to love. And yet I love them all the same. Teaching music in elementary schools, I see all age levels from kinder to tween. Over the years, I've created my own categories to help me deal with discipline problems. Some children are attention-seekers who just want to know the teacher cares about them. Often I can channel this need into performing a simple task: have one of them be the first to model a clapping game with me, and they'll be on board for the rest of the lesson. Others are looking for the firmness they don't get at home. I have to be stricter with these children than I personally like to be, but so long as am intentional about tamping down any...