Teacher vs. Friend: A Balancing Act

I am a young and relatively 'hip' teacher. I like being on good terms with my students but I am not about to be walked all over. I am all for mutual respect. Mutual. So often student expect me to bend to their every whim, and I mostly will, on the condition they in turn make my life easy. If you are incessant, annoying or can't catch a hint, we gonna have a prollem.

The best compliment I have received to date was from a African American (this is a relavent detail) student named Josh. He is a big person with a bigger personality. I am constantly asking him to be quiet, or pay attention and I am often met with attitude. Attitude is something I don't do well with. Mostly because there is only enough room in my class for one attitude and that's reserved for mine. So when it is directed at me I call the student out on it. Well Josh can handle a little backlash and one day after finally getting him to submit to the class routine he said 'Ms. Kern. You're like a black lady. Like, sometimes I'm scared of you, like I am of black ladies'. No sarcasm, best day of my life. 

I have decent rapport with my students. They say hi in the halls, they aren't afraid to come ask for help or favors and they often tell me how much they like my class. This is awesome, but I am a firm believer that being friends with students in a convenience, not a necessity. So, I am not afraid to be the 'bad guy'. 

Example: sometimes I have students come crowd around my desk. Scratch that, I ALWAYS have students come crowd around my desk. Sometimes it's for homework help, or they were absent or they just want to talk and see what my opinion is and sometimes they just plain try to irritate me. Seventh period, there are about 4 boys who've made it their mission to accomplish the latter.  

Recently, right at the end of day, one of those students decided to allow his natural idiot to squelch whatever critical thinking skills he might have possessed. This is a common occurrence amongst ninth grade boys. This particular student shut off all mature thought to the point where I had to (through a series of events and poorly thought out actions on his part) end up writing him up to the VP and he had to have a talking to.

Yes. I'm one of those teachers. 

I don't want to incriminate this student and I am all for letting water flow right under that bridge, especially since he came and apologized before school the next day and I thought we were all good. 

Seventh period rolled around and all his little buddies came in and said 'MS. KERN. How could you?!' Then he came in and was all moody and didn't speak a word the entire time. All his little friends were super quiet too. They raised their hands when they had something to say and when I told them to sit down they did. It was heavenly. The boy in question was acting like we had just gone through some nasty break-up and he couldn't even bare to look at me. All I could think was 'HALLELUJAH'. This is the best they had been since I started teaching their class. Then once the bell rang for the end of school, they all left immediately. No hanging around messing with my stapler, no taking forever getting their stuff together, they were gone before I had a chance to tell them I would see them tomorrow. I have yet to feel bad about their reactions.

This is a lesson every teacher has to learn for themselves. There is a fine line between teacher and friend. Teachers care about their students more than I think they will ever realize. We notice when they are picked on, or struggling and we live to see them succeed (especially in our subject). Consequently, friends do all of those things too. The difference is one is an authority figure and has the right and duty to discipline as necessary. Being a young teacher, this is a hard balance to find let alone maintain and feelings are bound to get hurt in the process.

But dang it, I got 120 too-cool-to-show-emotion teenagers to write some incredible love poems only to have them follow up with equally awesome spoken word poems. Experiences like reading and responding to all of those makes being their teacher worth every minute.