Zombies

What amazes me in teaching is the amount of influence one is entrusted to have on their students. Teachers and administration have so much power while a child is at school. Certainly, there are school boards with their standards and evaluations, working on getting all the educators on one page, and if someone did something plain obnoxious it definitely would be known rather soon...but still. People are not robots and every teacher is a little bit biased. What if it's not a little in some cases?

I've had several job assignments when I spent as long as three weeks with the same students, being responsible for all the lesson plans. Not even a single person asked what we were up to in class.

Today I was working with a teacher who asked all the students who got the right answer to clap their hands above their heads, snapping their fingers in between the claps. Someone had the balls to ask why she makes them do that...besides some of the serious pedagogical reasons...because she can. How egoboosting is that.

I was a witness to a disciplinary meeting in our Middle School's gym the other week. All 7-graders were seated on the bleachers. To get the students on track our principal played a little game. He would ask the crowd to clap once when he crossed his hands and tap their foot whenever he did a vertical motion with his hand that in my head really asked for a high-pitched "chu-chu" accompaniment. There were about 350 kids in the gym with 5-6 adults standing directly in front of them all in a row. The doors were closed. We stood still, making sure everyone complied with what they were told. 1-2-1-2. Just like a small army, the kids clapped and tapped their feet amazingly in synk. If they wanted to, they could start a coup right there and run over all five of us before someone even got a chance to get out a walkie talkie. Instead they obediently moved their bodies. 1-2-1-2.