Like Ripples in a Pond

When working with middle schoolers, it can feel like nothing you do matters or has any effect at all. “Homework? What homework?”

“Test? What test? When did you say we had a test?” 

“Nouns? When did we learn about nouns?”

So much of what we say and what we teach goes in one ear and out the other. But wait there’s more… You spend hours prepping, teaching, grading, and reteaching concepts. Most of the time you feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day . . . stuck in a bad day, FOREVER. We look for the positive and hope for a better day, but it’s really just the same thing all over again.

“Hey, Ms. Foreman!” An 8th grader greets the teacher next to me. 

“Hey, baby!” Jennifer Foreman, the 7th grade English teacher at my school, welcomes the student with a smile and a hug. “Good mornin’.” I walk in the room to see controlled chaos and a line of 7th and 8th graders forming at her desk and stretching out into the hallway. They continue to come from every homeroom, like the ducks at the lake swarming a bag of bread. That is until they realize that there is no more room in the already full classroom.

Ms. Foreman greets each one as they filter through the line on the way to their homeroom. She takes time from her busy morning and an already full roster of students to talk with each one.

Watching this hectic scene, I feel the need to tell you I could only handle being in the madness for a brief moment before I excused myself to go back to my room. Students continue popping their heads in to greet Ms. Foreman on their way back from breakfast.

It also should be said that these 7th and 8th graders are out of their homerooms just to hear “Hey baby! Good mornin.”

Now, every one of us teachers work hard to meet the needs of our students, taking into account the diverse ways they learn (visual, auditory, kinesthetic). We develop our strategy and teaching style. We spend hours after school prepping for our lessons and what we will teach. And those are good things to do!

However, what these kids are really watching for is who we are and how we treat them. The truth is, they don’t remember a lot of what we teach them. (Just ask any teacher ever.) But what they do remember is how we make them feel. They remember who we are. That is what we are imparting to our students at the end of the day.

The reason half of the 8th grade class would filter through Ms. Foreman’s already full classroom each morning is simple: They felt loved. They remembered the kind face that greeted them each morning in 7^th grade, and they came back to continue the tradition.  Most teachers (me included) would say that it’s inconvenient to deal with the chaos of an incessant line of middle schoolers who are loud and obnoxious much of the time. Many of us would tell those students, “I have lessons to prep, roll to take, and a million other things on my to-do list. This is not your homeroom. Go to class.”

But Ms. Foreman doesn’t. She understands this is the bright spot of their day. It makes all the difference having a teacher who cares about how their day is going and the everyday little events that happen in each of their lives.

Remember, love is the first weapon we have in our arsenal to fight the darkness invading our culture. Yes, the occasional piece of information might find its way into our students’ scrambled brains, but it is who we are that they absorb. In the end, we reproduce who are, not what we know. We as teachers have much we battle, and the first thing we need to be armed with is love.

Our kids come to us with a great deficit. We may not see the effects of what we do in test scores or on a report card, but we’ll see it in the connections we make and the love we give. It’s up to us to model care and love. For many kids, we may be the only representation of what love looks like. It’s up to us.

You see, we’ve been given this opportunity to be in front of these kids every day. No one else is going to show up to do it. YOU, dear teacher, are the one God has placed in your classroom, in your office, or on your bus. You are the one who will make the difference for that one child or, in the case of Ms. Foreman, half or more of the 8^th grade class. She not only inspires me, but she also challenges me to be a better teacher. To me, this teacher is what love looks like.

She is The Foreman Effect.    

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