For the first time, people are trusting you with their children's future. Suddenly, you are an adult who is in charge of a classroom and what goes on in there. It is both exhilarating and terrifying. It is empowering and daunting. And that combination of excitement and terror makes for some crazy power struggles in the classroom.
One of the first things you've got to do as a teacher is decide how to practice your authority. If you've only ever been a student, I'm going to tell you something about your teachers that may shock you. They were terrified sometimes. And depending on how much experience they had and what kind of students they had in class, they were possibly terrified more often than not. Now, being terrified can make teachers do crazy things. If I, as a teacher, am terrified that my students will see through what feels like a phony facade of my authority, I might react a little bit crazily. I might be angry when they do any little thing wrong. I might arbitrarily enforce or create rules for my classroom because I feel threatened. And I did all these things my first year of teaching. Because I was terrified.
This story is one of the first examples of how I stopped being quite so terrified and learned to laugh at myself and let my students do that to. It can be terrifying to be laughed at by teenagers unless you've learned to laugh at yourself.
But really, this is actually just a story about me turning into a dinosaur.
Shortly after the school year began came the dreaded day. Picture day. One nice thing about teaching school is if you hate your ID picture, you get a new one the next year. Since this was my first ID picture as a teacher, this felt like a big moment. After I got this card I could get all the cool teacher discounts (that are always at places so expensive that even if I use my teacher discount it still doesn't fit in my budget) and I could feel more legit.
On picture day I shepherded my students into the art room where the photographer was and waited for them, one by one, to get their pictures taken. Once it was my turn I dutifully smiled and hoped they would come out alright.
Now here's the thing, my pictures came out GREAT. In fact, one of the best school pictures of me ever. There was just one small problem. It was my name.
My last name isn't easy. It's fairly uncommon and is always mistaken for Jorgensen. If that was the mistake they'd make, I'd have rolled my eyes and moved on with life. If they'd gotten a step closer and put Yorganson, I'd have let out a small sigh and said "next year". But they didn't just change my name into some more recognizable and common.
They made me a dinosaur. And not only that. They made me a married dinosaur! In the scenario created by this ID card, there is a Mr. Yorgsar somewhere out there that I come home to every night. Maybe even little Yorgsars.
Shortly after getting this mistake of a card, the principal assured me they would make a new one with my correct name. But I decided this was too good. I shared it with my students. And they loved it. It was even crazier than the nickname they had given me...
Yep. You read that right. Miss Yolomcswaggins. Middle schoolers .
Now obviously, getting these great nicknames and letting students laugh at me didn't change everything. They didn't suddenly respect me totally, I didn't stop losing it at them every once in a while. But it was a step. Honestly. Humor is the way I deal with difficulty. It's a gift (and a curse). And when I can bring humor into my classroom and allow my students to see that I can laugh at myself (my current way of doing that is by using hilariously outdated slang and pretending I'm cool) my students see that I know that I'm human. They accept my authority more readily. So there you go, use humor to create authority in your classroom.
Well. Humor and dinosaurs.
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