This is me? Confessions of a Punk Ass turned Schoolteacher.

(Origionally published in HTML in 2004).

Maybe it’s the weather, sweltery hot and humid, constantly threatening to break into thundershowers in our normally dry and mild climate that has brought the devil into my kids. Or perhaps it’s that the end of the school year is in sight and they care less and less about these mundane class matters when visions of endless days of freedom lurk in the back of their collective consciousness. Or maybe something, something besides the kindergartners, is underfoot (one of the disadvantages of being tall and teaching elementary school, is that it’s so hard to see the kids before you step on them!). Regardless, the munchkins have been turning into monsters lately, meaning that I, in my role of omniscient teacher with infinite patience must discipline them.
I must discipline other people? Such a bizarre and ironic situation has never occurred to me before. Me, a disciplinarian? Is this some sort of divine sick joke?
To start off, you should know that I was suspended from preschool on multiple occasions. I don’t remember for what, but I think it had something to do with "inappropriate language”, and the unfortunate habit I had of picking up other children who were smaller than me and not listening to my commands, and carrying them to the place I wanted them to be (and really is that such a crime?). In my father’s office all through my youth there was a picture of me in this period, in a clown suit, on Halloween, sitting on a chair, looking longingly at my preschool friends who are playing and having fun. I was stuck there, on the “Thinking Chair”, ostensibly thinking about my actions, and not thinking about how I immediately go and repeat them as soon as I scooted my little butt off the chair. Yep, you can tell from the picture that’s exactly what I am thinking about.
Later, in elementary school, I spent a lot of time in the hall, also “thinking”. Or in my room “thinking”. Maybe all these years of thinking have given me some special skills that have continued to enlighten me until adulthood, or maybe it was just time wasted feeling self-righteous, angry and frustrated with the stupidity of the people meting out punishments on me. Actually, maybe one of the causes of my iconoclassicism and total lack of respect for authority figures, was the number of times in my youth that I “served time” for “crimes” committed by quieter, cleaner, rosier cheeked and bow bedecked classmates. My parents had a particularly persnickerous system for punishing misbehavior: I had to go to my room and think of a punishment appropriate for the crime. Can you imagine sitting in your bedroom debating between whether you’d rather get spanked or go without dessert for a week?
In high school, I got in trouble my first term at school. I got caught sneaking into a boy classmate’s bedroom. It’s not what you think, I just wasn’t thinking that their rule was even worth dealing with, and that their artificial constructions of verboten space and unrestricted space were arbitrary and useless. Of course I hadn’t read theories of architecture at that time, but I knew they were lame and stupid. Then I got caught smoking, and then I took the fall for a friend who couldn’t get caught smoking again. All these things resulted in lectures from teachers, letters to and lectures from my parents. The number of times people told me that I shouldn’t smoke cigarettes made me so much more determined to smoke, that it made it almost impossible to quit, even when I really wanted to. I just couldn’t take their self important attitude that they were right about my life. It took a friend betting me he could quit first, and that it was “Ok” to fuck up and smoke. Suddenly I could quit because there were no rules.
College was no better, I got caught by the cops driving my friends car which happened to have a trunk full of beer. Despite being searched illegally, and having an of age person in the car, I lost my license for a while. Instead of stopping barrowing friends cars, or stopping going on beer runs underage, I got smarter about how I did it, and figured out ways to get the hooch delivered to me.
Now I am ostensibly a responsible adult; the idea being once you’re an adult they can’t hassle you about the small stuff, and you should be too smart and careful to get caught if you’re up to the big stuff. Social pressure instead of punishment is the method of choice to control and modify other people’s behavior. For some reason it has fallen upon me to discipline other people’s children.
It feels so wrong to me to discipline: I of all people know the futility of discipline in terms of changing the feelings that caused the behavior. Receiving punishment just makes me want to not get caught, and doubly determined to try to get away with it again so I can snub my nose at the authority figure. My students must feel the same way. Also, being someone whose lack of respect for authority figures and rules runs so deep that I must mentally prepare before going to file paperwork in city offices, or go to the police to get help, being thrust into the role of an authority figure is the strangest thing ever. Now I am what I disrespect, commanding futile, useless actions from others. In my experience, inspiration and drawing antagonists into discussion are the most effective methodologies for behavioral change; telling people what to do or think, especially after you criticize them, and make them anxious and angry just doesn’t win their hearts and minds.