"Welcome! Now start learning."

Here it is the first day, and the bus ramp and the grounds and the halls are alive again with the roar of teenagers. Just walking through that mob is a surreal experience. In these confined quarters, beginning, for many of us, in predawn darkness, the American Salad is tossed, the Melting Pot stews and simmers, assaulting the nostrils with a cocktail redolent of body spray, perfume, aftershave, bubblegum, with the occasional trace of cigarette (?) smoke; add to that the cacophony of croaking male adolescent voices in various dialects, the delightful squeals of young girls racing to hug someone else they’re happy to see, the squeals modulating into hushed sibilance as they share some sacred secret with a sophomore, the casual and constant airing out of four-lettered obscenities so foul they would bring a blush to a drill sergeant’s face.

They pour through the gates and flood through the halls, some of them quickly transforming their lockers into makeshift make-up counters and make-out stations. Then a bell or a horn or a chirp or a tone will sound, and a cluster of them will break off from the larger pack and make their way to, of all places, your room.

So Happy New Year, everyone! They’re here! What to do now?

You need to be welcoming and not openly territorial, even though they are certainly invading your space. These young humans are giving you a chance to do what you love, so thank God they’re here (at the end of class, I always try to remember to thank them for coming to high school, and I think I’ve found just the right blend of sincerity and corniness to express such a sentiment). At the same time, they’re entering your home away from home, so it’s right that you should have guidelines about their behavior there: They’re transients; you’ll be there all day. “It’s great to have you here today. This is where I work, so don’t spit on the floor.”

Hospitality is vital. The kids are shuffled around all day and most of them are filled with fears and insecurities. In your class, they should feel at home, accepted, appreciated. It should be a little refuge from the rest of the day. Don’t add to their anxiety. For the 50+ minutes you have them, they’ll be liked and listened to. They still have to work and learn, but it will be with someone who cares about them and cares enough about their learning that she’s willing to expend the energy to make it lively and interactive.

But, especially if you look about their age, your hospitality needs to be tempered with authority. Because you’re young, students will want to like you AND take advantage of you. This requires a precarious balancing act. You can’t not be young until you get older and you certainly shouldn’t stifle your youthful enthusiasm, a little death that will happen in its own time.

It will be your job to show them that you can be cheerful, energetic, cool, humorous – all of that – and still be drop-dead serious about teaching them. It may help to think of it this way: You really like your students (this is an assumption on my part, but if I’m wrong, and you don’t, pick another profession now) and you want to help them become better educated, to have all the options that come with a better education. If even one of them thinks you’re his buddy and he can joke around with you in class and say things he wouldn’t dare say in his other classes, the rest of the class will be distracted and not become better educated.

This is where you have to step up and say something to the effect that while it’s okay to have a good time while we learn, we must all respect the process. You’re coming to the defense of all the kids in your class who are looking to you to teach them. You cannot let them down at the expense of those who think your class is the perfect time to take an hour off and goof around. With this approach, you’re not being mean to the smart aleck, you’re being protective of the other 24 young humans in the class.

Let’s face it: This balancing act may take a little time to work out. Don’t give up and quit during the first week. Let the process run its course. Give the sap time to rise up the tree (if, in fact, that’s what sap does).

During my first year of high-school teaching (after 15 years at a private liberal-arts college), I had plenty of trouble in this area, and it wasn’t because I looked young. As a professor, I seldom had to restore order in the classroom. In fact, if students ever really pissed me off, I could (and did) say something blunt and profane and just walk out on them. They’d be much better the next day. The Dramatic Walkout, however, is not an option for a high-school teacher. So sometimes, especially by sixth period, my high-school kids would just really get out of hand. I’d put out a fire on one side of the room only to notice another one had ignited on the other side – and you can guess what would happen while I was putting that one out.

By the last few minutes of class, I’d pretty much give up and go stand in front of the door to prevent early escapeage and, oddly, chat with the rambunctious little bastages, because, after all, they really did like me. One of them, Jessica, a quiet little mother hen who liked to help all her friends solve their problems, said, “Your problem is that you try to be a nice guy, and that’s not going to work here.” That stung. But a whole bunch of 17-year-olds were crowded around us near the door and they all shut up long enough to wait for my answer. I tried this one: “I’m not trying to be a nice guy, I am a nice guy. And if I can’t teach here while being a nice guy, I’ll go find something else to do.” Okay, that was the voice of desperation and stubbornness speaking, but we all heard me say it and somehow things began to change. They had to learn to adapt to my niceness; I had to learn when to explode long enough to protect the Jessicas in my class.

I’ll be back very shortly with more reflections on and advice for the first days of class.

Why Teachers Hate Texting

Good ol' August: the time when teachers start touching up their syllabuses and students begin their summer reading.

Certainly every school district by now has a policy prohibiting the use of cell phones during class, so of course that'll show up on your syllabus along with the penalty for violating the policy.

You'll probably see their eyes glaze over when you bring it up in class. They already know what's allowed and what isn't, and the ones who are going to do it anyway are more concerned about how to get away with it than what the punishment will be should they get caught.

So my plan is to focus more on justifying the policy than threatening them with the consequences. Maybe teenagers in the 21st century aren't sure why it's such a big deal. I mean, come on. They text like other generations breathe.

The following is my effort to explain texting's lethal effect on a learning environment. My students will get a copy of this and I'm putting it on Blackboard for back-up. If you like it, feel free to use some or all of it. Or you could send me yours. Either way, feel free to post comments.

The Texting Problem:

You Must Be Present to Win

For centuries now, classrooms have had four walls, not just out of an architectural necessity, but to provide a separate space for the world of the mind. Those walls remind us that we are taking a brief sabbatical from that world racing away outside the classroom window while we, in our little refuge, ponder the meaning of things, try to make sense of the world and perhaps figure out our place in it.

Texting, on the other hand, breaks down those walls, and the world and its worries come tumbling into our once sacred space.

The best classes are those in which you are so engaged in the material that you lose all sense of time and are startled to notice that class is over.

This feeling – often called the flow state -- is only possible through focus, concentration and participation, none of which is possible while texting.

While the classroom walls are intact, students often find themselves engaged in intellectual, stimulating, thought-provoking and sometimes unsettling conversations that are extremely rare in the outside world. As a teacher, these highly charged conversations, in which I become little more than a bystander or moderator, are my favorite classes. In these, we share our ideas, watch them change and grow, and listen to other sides of issues, to different interpretations and different ways of looking at things. We watch a first-draft whim evolve, through conversation, into a full-fledged idea.

Because texting takes us rudely out of this conversation and into another, it can thoroughly disrupt this powerful way of learning.

My best classes develop a strong sense of community. While we may not all love each other, we adapt; we learn tolerance and respect; we accept that while we might not all like the same books or music, we all have legitimate contributions to make to this team or family or community that has gradually developed in Building 8, Room 226.

But if you’re texting, you are emotionally and intellectually absent from this community and you’re treating  it (i.e., the rest of us) as mere afterthoughts and annoyances. That behavior is rude, disruptive, disrespectful – in a word, unacceptable.

A class, at its best, could be considered a gift or a communal meal. Everyone is given the opportunity to think, listen, share, learn, give and receive; everyone is invited to leave the room a slightly different human than the one who entered it less than an hour ago.

But this simply cannot happen if you’re texting. You should not try to be in two places at once. You have to stay here. You must be present to win.