Staff only: Peer pressure - which way will they swing?
It struck me at a parent-teacher meeting the other day that we teachers view people's kids from a privileged vantage point.
They arrive at our place for first year, all tousle-headed and gap-toothed, eager to please and full of the wonder at having a team of teachers to deal with instead of just the one all daylong.
From that first day to their last, we observe them, in loco parentis but seeing more, as their uncomplicated and accepting personalities get sucked into the primordial soup of classroom life when peer pressure kicks in.
Which way will they swing, we ask ourselves -- towards the dossers or the workers? We see them competing with each other to be the coolest; the kingpin in a coterie of slackers.
On the other hand, maybe they're part of a peer group that makes a virtue out of the status traditionally conferred on the despised geek; the pariah who represents social suicide to be seen walking home with.
This year I have seen personality changes so extreme, from one month to the next, that they would have Maureen Gaffney scratching her head in bewilderment.
Witness the reserved and studious Martin; last year he was the only boy in the history of our school to remind me at the end of class that I hadn't given any homework.
On another occasion, this paradigm of meticulousness helpfully suggested that I make good on that threat last week to give the class a test.
Then one day he woke up, came to school and surprised himself by laughing along with the messers at the back of the class.
Now if you ask him for his homework or to explain that last point you've just laboured to death on the blackboard and it's all 'whatever', 'I dunno' and 'yeah, so what?'
However, on the other extreme, there are those who settle in more slowly and don't quite 'get' my style of teaching (ie. my jokes), not to mention my subjects.
Sometimes, after a month or maybe a year, it all suddenly kicks in. I look with pride at these converts to the Grade methodology; satisfied individuals, heads down working, young folk no longer perplexed by my exacting standards and my unquenchable desire for academic excellence.
For three long years I battled with a boy, you can call him Al, who, although of a nice respectable middle-class family, chose to hang around with the notorious ringleader of the town's busiest team of vandals.
The transition from primary-school sweetie to the post-primary apprentice of a seasoned thug caused his mother a lot of concern.
His homework became increasingly patchy until his exam results inevitably plummeted.
So how come Al's top of his class this year? The answer's simple enough -- last May the bad influence got physical with our Deputy Principal. Both he and Al sat their Junior Cert but only Al came back.
There is nothing as satisfying as sharing a success story with a relieved parent and a successful pupil.
- E Grade
