The Joys of Working with Teens

I love my job.  Partly because I work with an incredible team of professionals.  We are a co-op, so we are our own bosses, and we treat each other well, have high expectations, and know how to have fun.  What more could you ask for in a boss?  But the other reason I love my job is I love the teenage mind.  With all its weird logic patterns and inconsistencies.  Here are two recent situations that made me laugh:

We start every morning at Avalon with an advisory check-in.  I share an advisory with Carrie, my job-share partner.  We have 21 kids in grades 9 through 12.  We will have these kids their entire Avalon high school careers, so we get to know them well.  The check-ins range from serious social issues to something such as "What was your best Halloween costume ever?"  This week is Service Week, where all 'normal' learning (and normal is extremely relative at Avalon) is suspended and each advisory undertakes a week long service learning project.  Our advisory is working with the St. Paul Park system, doing some gardening and other clean-up.  So we started the week with a check-in about parks.  Here's how the conversation went:

Me:  Ok, how about for a check-in...What is your favorite park?
Student:  No!  How about what's the weirdest thing you have ever found at a park?
Advisory:  yes!  No! favorite park!  Weirdest thing!

A debate breaks out, which actually, I love.  They are engaged and energized.  But then...

Carrie:  No- favorite park.  I don't think I want to know what kind of weird things you have found.

A student eagerly raises his hand to start the check-in:

Student A:  A baggie full of toe nail clippings!

Carrie:  Wait- it was your favorite park!  Not weirdest thing!
Me:  Wait!  Why would anyone put their toe nail clippings in a baggy while they are in a park?  But let's get back to favorite park.

Student B:  Ok, I have a favorite park.  Three bottles of urine!

A chorus breaks out:  Ha!  What?  How did you know they were urine?  Smell test?  Taste test?

Me:  Wait!  Why would someone bottle up their urine in a park?  Isn't that one place you could probably just let it go...

Student:  Hoarders, Gretchen, hoarders.

Eventually the conversation does come back around to favorite parks- and they have some nice ones, from the corner park with a wicked playset to Glacier.  All in all, that 20 minutes of advisory check-in time is some precious moments.  Seriously.  I love the window into the teenage head.  And soul.

The second conversation happened after I had busted two of my senior guys coming back late from Open Lunch- a privilege they currently were not supposed to be enjoying, it having been revoked for issues earlier in the week.  These two guys are great kids, but seniors, and close to the end, and feeling the need to stretch their legs a bit.  But I busted them and I was pretty frustrated with the amount of time I was needing to spend re-directing them that week.

Me:  Guys.  This is getting really old.  I am moving beyond frustrated.
They offered some excuses, which even they knew were lame and we went back and forth for a while.  It started getting a little tense.  Then:

Senior 1:  Wait.  Gretchen.  If you could do what you would like to do to us right now, would you get fired?
Me:  Good question.  Yes.
Senior 2:  What would you like to do?
Me:  Well.  You asked, so....

And I told them.  But I don't think I want to put that in print.  It wasn't outrageous, just honest.  And they laughed and realized how close to the end of  my rope I actually was.  Their attitudes changed, I got something that seemed real close to an honest apology and we all went about our day with smiles.

I think in a different high school setting, that convo with those boys could have escalated into a stupid power struggle which would have gotten us all nowhere.  But since I have known these fools for years and I do respect them and trust them and know that they do make good choices 90% of the time, we were able to get to a place where we all understood each other and figured out how to keep working with each other.  At least for the time being.  Still five weeks to go.  Hoping I never have to do what I told them I wanted to do. Cause I would get fired.  Which in my case would mean I'd have to help fire myself.  And I would.