Today's Takeaway: Be Cool

I went, during my extended lunch break, to go talk with the really-good teacher who I'm kind of trying to use as a mentor. I had had a really tough first four periods, and it was hard for me to leave my classroom; I really wanted to stay inside and hide. That is often the case--that is often what I want to do. My algebra classes had wobbled toward anarchy. My geometry classes had gone only slightly better. Well, the first period of the day (geometry) went well,  but the second geometry class is filled with ... We are doing constructions, and there are kids just bubbling over with attitude. Constructions should be fun, can be fun, but there is a growing sense, in that second geometry class, of "This isn't fun!"

So I went to talk to this other teacher, and I mentioned the problem of students not really pushing themselves to do this work. And he said something along these lines: "I tell them, 'If you do the work and get this stuff early, this will be a fun class. If you don't, then you'll be miserable, and you won't get my jokes.'"

We talked about a few other things, but what occurred to me at that moment was: He's COOL. He's cool, and I always wanted to be cool. I managed to say this out loud, I said: "It's all about being cool, and a part of me doesn't want to be cool! Why wouldn't I want to be cool?!" He laughed--He had mentioned earlier "selling it" to the students, and now he said, "Yeah--You've got to sell it to yourself!"

I want to go full out lying-on-the-therapist's couch here though and suggest that this is a deep-seated issue. I'm going to admit, right here, that I got ditched by a couple of social groups back in seventh grade, and at some point then, without realizing it, I may have given up on interacting with people in some major way. I'm going to further expose myself and say that my father is, for whatever reason, kind of on the hermetic side, and manages to interact with people as seldom as is humanly possible while maintaining a position as a university professor.

There is a letting-go that needs to happen here. I don't know what, exactly, I'm letting go of. But I think it's a way-of-being. I think the way-of-being I've unconsciously adopted, especially around large groups, is a walled-off persona that obsessively avoids any and all potential rejections. "I can't be seen as trying to be cool," is what guides many of my actions, "because if I do, I will fail. Better not to try."

I have to let go of this and try. That I haven't done this on so many days is at the bottom of my lack of success as a teacher. (Of course, tomorrow I could think it's something different. We'll see.) It's been largely unconscious up until now--I haven't even been able to identify it. On days when I'm in a good mood, I forget about it. But on other days, it is front and center--I just hate people, dislike the kids for the potential rejection they have ready for me, and walk to the front of the room like a wounded animal, looking at them with pleading eyes, begging them not to pick on me.

It's not working. That goes without saying.