Kids Will be Kids

Being the adult in the classroom can be hard. It's easy to fall into the trap of taking things that the kids do personally. Middle school kids, 12 year olds, do insanely ridiculous things all the time. It's easy to become judgmental. It's easy to get angry. It's easy to hold a grudge. It's easy to forget that they are just 12 years old.

On Tuesday one of the teachers on my team lost her flash drive. It was in her computer's USB drive, where it always is, and then it was gone. She was distraught. The flash drive contained every unit she teaches as well as her graduate schoolwork and everything she submitted for her National Board Certification. Yes, it was silly to have everything in only one place but it didn't matter too much at that point. The only thing that did matter was it was gone and we were pretty sure a student had walked off with it.

After sharing her plight with the students a few of the kids took it as their personal mission to solve the mystery. The teacher involved is well liked by her students, and over the last two days there was a lot of discussion during class about how tragic the situation was.

Today the mystery was solved. One student, perhaps the next Agatha Christie of her generation, started asking around. By lunchtime she had a witness; a young man who had seen a group of kids with a rock at lunch. They were using the rock to smash a gray flash drive. Once the witness wrote the details of the incident it took less than a class period to find the culprits.

By the time I taught my last class of the day I knew what had happened. I was frustrated, angry, and really quite sad. The young girl who admitted to taking the flash drive needed something to save her work on so she took it from the teacher's unlocked, unattended classroom. A friend helped her erase all the documents so she could save her work. I'm sure they were unaware of what hitting the delete button did to someone else's life. I've found that 12 year olds don't usually think past the here and now; what happens next is too far off in the future to consider.

It wasn't until the day after the flash drive walked off that those involved realized just what was on it and what a big deal its disappearance was. Apparently they thought it best to get rid of the evidence and to a 12 year old that means smashing it up with a rock. I wonder why somebody wouldn't just take the thing home and toss it in the trash. That's me being judgmental. I can't believe someone would take it in the first place because really if a student needed a flash drive to save a document I know any teacher could find them one. That's me being frustrated. I think they should be suspended for a day or two. That's me being angry.

I close my eyes. I take a deep breath and recall the day my mother found out I'd been shoplifting. I was about 12 or 13.

Fortunately it's Friday and I have the whole weekend to process the event as an adult so that on Monday we can get on with the learning.