An Odd Reversal

I’m getting more and more depressed about my job. I teach kids, and in the past, I always felt a bit sad about the world we are leaving them, but also hopeful because they are resourceful and full of ideas and energy.

I’m beginning not to feel that way, and I wonder if it’s me or them.

We did a short exercise today about “protests” that was part of the book we’re working from. I asked them if they’d ever been to a protest, and we’re long past the Greta Thunberg effect so I wasn’t surprised when they said ‘no’. However, I then asked them if they’d heard about any recent protests and they still said ‘no’. Seriously? It’s the top of all the news cycles everywhere, the protests over the war in Gaza. Students are blockading themselves in schools, and it’s happening right here, too. This is maybe their older brothers or sisters, and they’ve heard nothing? And have no opinion?

In another class, we didn’t talk about anything important, but between themselves they were bitchy and mean. I can’t seem to help one student integrate. He doesn’t make it easy on himself, but they are so very evil to him that it depresses me. He’s oversensitive and weird, and instead of helping him out they pile it on.

I know ‘that’s just kids’ but it’s not all kids, everywhere. It’s not obligatory. In my last group, there was a young man who stuttered. Everyone helped him out, letting him calm down and feel okay about whatever he was going to say. To be fair, he was a different sort of kid. The boy who stuttered was one of those who been sent by his family on a boat over the Mediterranean. He was from Sudan (i.e. he had ‘real’ problems, although it’s unfair to judge how someone feels about their own personal history.) This boy is from Poland and feels so very, very sorry for himself that he can’t be with his other friends. He’s utterly impatient with himself and everyone around him, and unfortunately, we don’t teach patience in my school. We should, but we don’t.

My group doesn’t know that they’re going to be split up at the end of the school year, and they think they are going to spend the next four years together as a group. They can’t figure out a way to be nice to this kid? Who, by the way, wrote an essay in another class saying he wanted to off himself, so we’re meeting with the school nurse and his parents this week. I hope he survives the weekend.

I just want to cry. I don’t feel well about the world and there seems to be no respite. My students seem to be selfish, incurious, and some are just downright nasty. I have one girl in my group who I’ve never seen smile. Not once. And she’s supposedly in love.

This is an odd reversal for me because I used to be a believer. I used to think that we had a chance, as a human race. This particular batch of kids is making me feel like a fool.

It can’t be that bad, can it?

I wonder how much of this is becoming an old fart, but I don’t think so, or don’t think it’s entirely that. I don’t know how to truly understand these kids who spend up to ten hours a day on their phones looking at things that, in the end, make them feel stressed, unworthy and ugly. It’s not for nothing that all the tech creators forbid cell phones for their kids.

Okay, speaking of the kids, I have to organize a class for them tomorrow. Today is rainy, and Foro and I are just hanging out. It’s nice to have a stuffed cow to remind me not to get too down. A bit of cute never hurts.