A Beastiary for the Modern Classroom

There is a certain order to everything in the universe.  Beginning teachers or substitutes that have never done the job before may think otherwise, walking into a classroom populated by modern teenage beasties.  It looks like utter chaos to the casual observer, and it is.  But there is an underlying order (kinda like some of my sillier corkscrew-shaped paragraphs with all the purple-paisley prose and over-long parenthetic expressions).  You have to recognize the critters for what they are and then, you may have a chance to deal with them.

First on the list are the dominant predators, the bullies, the snarks, and the outright evil ones.  The most important battles you have to fight as a teacher are the ones for dominance in the classroom.  The teacher is rarely the dominator, and usually the dominatee, so you must proceed with great caution.  At the top of the pecking order are the Pepsi People.  I call them Pepsi People in a Coca Cola World because they are mainstream, but slightly different than the usual.  Actually, since most of these are actually female, we shall refer to them as Pepsi Girls.  They are the ones that usually dominate the modern high school classroom.  Their parents have enough money at least to buy them home computers and digital cameras so they can post pictures of their bare behinds on Myspace and Facebook.  They enjoy showing off boobies too, if they have them already, which they usually do.  There are a lot of prerequisites to being a Pepsi Girl.  It also helps if they are a cheerleader.  In Texas, cheerleaders sometimes run not only the classroom, but the whole school.  They put the pep in Pepsi.  In fact, many of them suffer from an excess of what I like to call Cheerleader Pep-itis, a dread disease that makes you strut, bat your eyes at boys, and give stupid answers to the teacher on purpose, because it is so not cool to be, like, you know… smart.  A teacher who gives one of these detention or, heaven forbid! a failing grade, will soon be facing parents who will make you recount every last detail of she-said-you-said-and-her-last-words.  The parents may be secretly on your side, but they are afraid of her too, and they have to say and do the right thing, or there will be trouble at home.  Pepsi Girls are large and in charge, even when they are little-bitty young things with a big mouth and cute behind.  You mostly deal with Pepsi Girls by letting them have their way… or by standing up to them and being told by the principal privately that you have to let them have their way.

Snarks can be girls, but this sort of foul American predator is usually a boy, usually on drugs for attention deficit disorder, and more often than that, the kid all the other kids in class would point to as the one in charge of the class.  Granted, he usually is the one that holds center stage the longest with his repetoire of snappy comebacks for teachers like, “Yeah, whut…?”  But they do actually yield to Pepsi Girls on all occasions when the two species come into conflict.  They are the thin, wired boy most likely to get up and dance for the class for no particular reason, or the fat one that sits in the far back of the room even if you assign him a seat in the front so he can continually interrupt lessons on helping verbs with helpful comments about the size of somebody’s mother’s body parts.  They are also the child most likely to disrobe completely in the middle of class, or hit the teacher in the back of the head with a large, juicy spitball and then claim that it was an accident, and besides, Jorge did it anyway, not the one that stands accused because you saw him chawing the wad of paper to make the spitball.  On many occasions I greet this kind of child at the doorway at the start of class with a detention slip and a magical pass to the office to talk with their good friend, the assistant principal in charge of discipline.  They will say, “WAITTAMINNUT!  I haven’t done anything wrong!”  To which I must answer, “Yes, that’s true, but I decided to give you detention anyway for the evil plan I can see you have already formulated in your head.”  To which they will reply, “oh… Okay.”  You can only win by getting them out of your classroom.

My favorites, though, are the Invisible Kids.  These are the kids that can sit in your classroom all year, and when they leave, you will no longer be able to remember what they looked like, sounded like, or even smelled like.  They keep it all in.  The only time you really have any trouble at all with them is when you ask them a question and actually expect them to say something out loud as an answer.  The only thing you will ever get from them is a note that says, “I can’t talk today.  I have acute larnigitis and can’t talk at all.  Ask me the question after school on Thursday, and I’ll tell you then.”   They never cause noise or disruption in the classroom.  They are more often the victims of the Snarks or the Pepsi Girls, and you really can’t blame them for trying to keep their head down and the big red target off their back.  I like them because, if I put in the work to draw them out, they are usually real people with actual lives.  They can be interesting and funny.  You never realize it in class, but these are also the kids that understand your jokes, and laugh at them with their friends at the mall after school is out.

I could go on and on with specific examples of all of these varied middle school anniemules, but it is a premise that is probably already starting to bore you.  I have that effect on people.  After all, I am an English teacher.  But let me leave off by saying, I’m really going to miss this job when I retire soon to drool in the corner at the local mental health facility (or become a Walmart greeter if I can manage to mindless smile).  It’s not the same when you are not the everyday teacher and get to know all the Pepsi People, Snarks, Bullies, Invisibles, Tecky Trekkies, Gomers, and Goths by their first names, and sometimes their middle names too.  I do hate them all, especially on Thursdays… but over time you learn to love them all too.