Hormones
And the prize to "hardest thing about teaching middle schoolers" goes to... (drum roll)... "Hormones!" Yep, hormones make it very hard to teach them. Now, hormonal issues in 7th grade are very different from the ones that a high school teacher might deal with. We don't have to deal with sexual harassment or sexual tension. In 7th grade, kids have started experiencing sexual impulses, but they aren't really aware of what they are, so they don't act on them. No, the main hormonal problem that affects my ability to do my job is "inconsistency."
A 7th grade classroom is the most inconsistent place on the planet. More unstable than the most volatile substance, more explosive than the Balkans, more unpredictable than the "end of days..." You never know what you are going to get. One day a student will come to class happy and ready to learn, and the next he is bouncing off the walls. Not just that, but one moment he will be happy, and the very next second his mood has him going through a radically different emotional state. Now, take that child and multiply it times the number of kids you have and then you will have an average pubescent classroom dynamic. Or even better, don't multiply it, use it as an exponent.
Not only do hormones make kids moody beyond reason, but they are physically... odd... at this time of their lives. I teach the stage of life where girls are all taller than the boys, in 7th grade even more so than in 6th. Many of my students' bodies are developing faster than even they are aware of and they haven't taken the necessary steps to adjust their behavior with them. They are clumsy in their new proportions. They don't realize that they should probably start using brassieres. They think that they can do things that would have been fine to do with smaller bodies, but desks and chairs and playground equipment are suddenly more fragile than they were a year ago.
And, of course, with physical change comes the inevitable preoccupation and insecurity about self-image. Girls feel like ogres; boys feel like imps. Each deals with this in their own way, either by capitalizing on their "weaknesses" and "strengths" or lashing out against them (by lashing out at others).
My memories of 7th Grade are miserable, but now I can see why that was such a hard age.
A 7th grade classroom is the most inconsistent place on the planet. More unstable than the most volatile substance, more explosive than the Balkans, more unpredictable than the "end of days..." You never know what you are going to get. One day a student will come to class happy and ready to learn, and the next he is bouncing off the walls. Not just that, but one moment he will be happy, and the very next second his mood has him going through a radically different emotional state. Now, take that child and multiply it times the number of kids you have and then you will have an average pubescent classroom dynamic. Or even better, don't multiply it, use it as an exponent.
Not only do hormones make kids moody beyond reason, but they are physically... odd... at this time of their lives. I teach the stage of life where girls are all taller than the boys, in 7th grade even more so than in 6th. Many of my students' bodies are developing faster than even they are aware of and they haven't taken the necessary steps to adjust their behavior with them. They are clumsy in their new proportions. They don't realize that they should probably start using brassieres. They think that they can do things that would have been fine to do with smaller bodies, but desks and chairs and playground equipment are suddenly more fragile than they were a year ago.
And, of course, with physical change comes the inevitable preoccupation and insecurity about self-image. Girls feel like ogres; boys feel like imps. Each deals with this in their own way, either by capitalizing on their "weaknesses" and "strengths" or lashing out against them (by lashing out at others).
My memories of 7th Grade are miserable, but now I can see why that was such a hard age.
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