Today

Today

Andrea looked around the classroom. Not one student looking at her. Some at their workbooks, but others their backpacks, other kids, their fingernails. Mostly bored. This was not the class structure she had imagined when she went into teaching. Nor that she’d encountered over the past years.

She’d had some challenging classes since she began her career, but until lately, never bored. Lately she had been wondering if she was the problem. Every year she’d get a brand-new batch of students, all the same age as last years were, and the year before. Some so “goodie two shoes” it was hard not to laugh, some so troubled they needed a guiding eye on them every minute just to get through their day.

But whatever this was, it was getting worse every year. She had always been up for the challenge, but what kind of challenge was this? What kind of challenge where you feel boring, where you had to teach important things to human beings every year no matter what, and they were bored.

She had finally decided it was her. The teaching methods she had learned fourteen years ago worked so well, fourteen years ago. But the world had changed fast, much faster than she remembered from her own youth. Or maybe it was the same? She just hadn’t noticed because the things required for her to know then, they were so different from what the students needed to know today.

Standing up, she rang a bell to get everyone’s attention. “I have a question. There are things you all need to learn this year, and we will learn them. But today, today I want you to tell me what it’s like, right now, to be eleven and twelve years old. Anybody want to start?”

Twenty-two hands went up.