Remember Those Kids From School?

Something funny happened just before the farewell for the senior students at my school. Part of the farewell ceremony includes handing out awards to top academic, top athlete, and so on. Each of the senior staff is responsible for handing out one of the awards. We are required to give a short speech to go with the award as well.

I wrote the speech for one of my teaching partners the morning of the farewell. I composed most of mine in my head, but saved the actual writing for about thirty minutes prior to the farewell. No problem. What happened in that thirty minutes made me laugh, however.

It seems that we all carry on as adults the way we were as students. At least, this group of middle school teachers do.

Remember these kids from school?

1. There was the kid who never did homework, never seemed to study or prepare, yet always did a good job. That was me the night of the farewell. I wrote out a simple, nice speech that went over well.

2. There was the kid who gets someone else to do their work for them. That was the friend whose speech I wrote for them the morning of the farewell. He botched his speech in numerous places because he did not even bother to read it ahead of time.

3. There was the kid who works really hard, only to get the directions wrong, thus creating panic for themselves. That was our Literacy lead teacher, who wrote out his speech for the right student, but for the wrong award. He had to do his re-write with me. I helped him start the damn thing *L*.

4. Remember the kid who would always say, "I didn't know we had to do this"? Yeah, that was one of our Indigenous Studies teachers, who was lucky enough to be able to modify the speech the Literacy teacher had written in error. Heh. He did a good job, and made the speech his own in that thirty minute window we had.

5. Then there was the girl who always got by on her looks and a smile. She was there the night of the farewell. She came in with fifteen minutes to spare, saw what we were doing, and informed us she was just going to wing it. That is exactly what she did, too. Her speech was not great, but her smile sure was. That was enough, I guess.

It did make me giggle as I observed us as adults acting just like the students we teach. I think, despite the passing of time, our personalities and how we function in group dynamics shines through.