The aggravations of teen tics

By Cindy Reitzi

I;m a firm believer that it takes all kinds to make a world. I probably have a higher-than-average tolerance for human eccentricities as a substitute teacher. Yet, while we all have our little tics, some teens have predictable,“age-appropriate” tics that invite aggressive teeth-gnashing.

I know teachers have better things to do than expend energy on “minor” irritations, but they are the sorts of things that can build up. Suddenly, out of the blue, in mid-second semester, the teacher explodes – for no reason, students insist – the next time she reaches for an individual paper clip only to pull a three-foot, decorative daisy chain from the dish courtesy of the overly kinesthetic, 9th-grade boy next to her desk; or the next time he finds the stapler empty because another bored teen used it as a Gatling gun; or the next time she needs a piece of tape and finds instead, next to the empty tape dispenser, a tape ball created by some amateur sculptor for no particularly useful or aesthetic purpose; or because it’s the nth time a student managed to bring comb and brush, but not any writing utensil, even though you gave him one the day before (and the day before that…); or because the computer on your desk now doesn’t work because some idly curious soul flipped a tiny, inconspicuous switch on the back that messed up the whole mechanism and sent you into a 45-minute quest to troubleshoot the #@%*&!!! thing; or when some student printed off 50 pages from a porn Web site on a school computer; and if you ask the perpetrators,“why?” “because…” is the lame answer. And then they wonder why you’re getting crabby and stingy with classroom resources.

Reasoning with such individuals is futile since they were in a bored trance when they improvised the decorative art out of your paper clips, tape or rubber bands or were firing all the stapler clips at their friends during group work and, gee, it-wasn’t-malicious- anyway-so-why-are-you-so-mad?

Teachers do learn not to seat “kinesthetic” individuals and idle fingers next to their desks; to hide tape, staplers, paper clips, and favorite pens; or to require teacher permission to print anything. Then students wonder where these ridiculous restrictions come from and why-are-you-treatingus- like-babies-when-we’re-youngadults?

Of course, there are the teachers who get creative, like the middleschool teacher who punished the students who had been sling-shotting paper clips across the room by keeping them after school for weeks (with parental permission) to create a board game, using the rubber bands and paper clips they’d been flinging.Or, if you’re like me, you get … wicked.

I learned over the years to wear clothes with pockets because, invariably, when you place a pen on the desk, poof! it’s gone. I also don’t put my keys down in open view of students (Teacher School 101) because taking my keys would be some student’s idea of a fun joke (indeed, this happened to a teacher I know). I don’t even clip pens to the outside of my pockets anymore since a student picked my favorite pen right off me (you guessed it, I gave him a different pen the day before). So when a veteran teacher came into the teacher’s lounge grousing,“Those darn kids keep stealing pens off my desk,” (the G-rated version) I had complete sympathy.

“You need decoys,” I said smirking. Eyes widening, she grinned. I didn’t have to explain. She’d been known to pull a few practical jokes herself. “I’ll save you some pens and bring ’em when I sub again.”

Next time, I brought a cluster of used pens. Fanning them out on her desk, I displayed the demos like a salesperson closing the deal.

“Now, these are completely dry,” I said, pointing to a pile.“But this baby is sweet,” indicating a pen with a tiny line of ink in the chamber. “It still writes, but just barely.Very frustrating.” Pleased, she wordlessly put her plan into action.

Lunching in the teacher’s lounge the following time I subbed, I asked her how the decoys had worked. Gleefully, she described student frustration when they picked up one pen after another only to have them go dry after a few lines of writing. Chuckling, I had a mental image of the witches from Macbeth, hovering over a cauldron, cackling over their machinations. “They worked great! Now they don’t steal anything off my desk anymore.”

“Behavior mod, eh?”

The student teachers listening in looked puzzled, so I explained the practical joke while other veteran teachers listened approvingly. One of them suggested, in what sounded like one of those ephiphanal teaching moments between puzzlement and pragmatism,“So, sometimes you need to get … evil?” That set off all the certified teachers in the room into wicked cackles of laughter.

Today's Classroom page

March 11, 2007