Now that we are all but done with the year, my teacher persona is a bit more relaxed – and now with classes of only a few lost souls (who forgot the secret that no one comes to school the last week), I am beginning to see students less filtered. One young man worries me a bit . . . He comes a bit too close to sharing my rather acidic sarcasm. He likes to use language to bite and tease and come close to crossing the line. There are times I think he is damn clever and other times that he just gets under my skin – – and often both of these moments happen in the same conversation. Increasingly, he has grown more daring in being able to tease me and almost blatantly question my methods. I love to have students like this who keep me alive and on edge in the classroom – but I sense that for the next year that he is a senior I am going to placed on that edge quite a bit!
The problem is that he is quite a bit like me – or like I was. The looks are quite different but that same sense of humor mirrors the sense of humor I practiced when I was his age. Back in my day, I could banter with the best of teachers. I was able to push the intellectual and personal envelope with them and still leave them feeling the respect that I truly did have for them.
He can definitly push the envelope with me. It is exciting to be part of the banter. I can only hope he knows who the victor MUST be each and every day of his senior year.