Chaos & Journeys

In response to the following questions from my graduate classroom management class:

What's wrong with a little chaos in the classroom?
Do students think when they misbehave? Do they misbehave for a reason?
What daily factors make your profession difficult...and which facilitate your efforts? Name and elaborate the most important.

I think chaos in the classroom implies something is going on that is unable to be controlled or managed. Don't get me wrong, there are times when there is chaos in my classroom, but these are the times where I feel the most uneasy, where I feel the students are swinging from vines and I need to play the role of zookeeper dangling raw meat in front of them in order to get them to listen. This can be incredibly trying. On the other hand, however, there are times where I exhibit and enforce controlled chaos. This is chaos that I start, chaos that I provoke, through my inevitable tangents or longed-for (but rarely see) heated (or any form of emotion) arguments. This type of chaos can be relieving, where the entire plan is thrown out the window, but where a sense of accomplishment prevails over all of the chaos, sometimes more so than any structured lesson could have.

I think students sometimes think when they misbehave; sometimes they do not. Sometimes students will act out just to get under the teacher's last nerve, because they know they can. Other times, students will misbehave just because it is in their nature to be chatty or to be forgetful of any rules or regulations their teachers or any other prominent member of society has put on them. This latter form of misbehavior is just an act of carelessness, of not thinking "what will happen to person X if I do behavior Y?," something that can be hard for many of us to figure out.

These misbehaviors are what make my profession difficult. The road blocks that interrupt the lesson, the desired plan. However, upon reflection, the bigger picture is what facilitates my efforts in my profession from day to day. What I mean by that is, there may be little road blocks, which may seem like significant brushfires at the time (5 students asking to go to the bathroom at once, a fire drill during a crucial lesson, the student who won't stop talking), but it is the conviction to actually get past the roadblocks and achieve the goal of a lesson or unit, or to wake up the next day and drive yourself back to school at 6:50 in the morning to do it all over again, that really proves the journey worthwhile, despite all the rocks in the road.

While I was writing this, I was thinking the entire time of one 9th grade class I've been struggling with lately. They've been inattentive, rude, bored, lazy, chaotic, all of the attributes a teacher does not want to be teaching to. It's only fitting that we are studying The Odyssey in this class. Because as I am reflecting here, I am comparing myself and this class to Odysseus and his trials from the gods. All he wants to do is make it home, but he has to deal with Cyclopes, Sirens, and ship-wrecking whirlpools. In spite of all this, he doesn't give up and is able to overcome all obstacles and complete his desired journey. I suppose that's like teaching in a way, and we as teachers always have to keep our goals in mind, or we won't make it along the journey.