Children or Adults

So I have arrived at something of a dilemma. It's a good one, though.

My career was greatly influenced by an administrator at my first building. The man frustrated me at times. Yet he was a principled advocate for the students, and I could not have navigated some of my most frustrating relationships without keeping lessons from him in mind. This administrator had a purposeful habit of using the word "children" whenever he referred to our students. Never "kids." I remember one time that he remarked on the devastating power of thoughtlessness or mean-spiritness to our students: don't forget that we might be the last adult they every talk to. A bit macabre? Perhaps. But he came by it honestly.

Even teaching seniors the past six years, I've kept in mind that they are children. Someone's children. At times awkward children. Children who, with mixed results, are trying on the language and mannerisms of grown ups. Children.

In the past year, however, I've engaged in dialogue with my old choir director, and when I complimented her on how I was impressed at how she was a teacher of children more than a music director, she responded that she never thought of herself as a teacher of children, but a teacher of adults-in-training, and that treating her students like adults was what motivated her to do what she did.

Now that I'm entirely with upperclassmen and now that I'm wrestling with frustration at the demeaning attempt by my leaders to water down and make less rich the students' experience, I'm wondering if I need to shift to my choir directors' mindset.

I remember two years ago I taught a large (34 students) section of AP sophomores. As a gimmick to elevate the atmosphere of the class, I never used the students' first names, referring to them instead as Mr. or Ms. It was the best relationship I ever built with a class.

So, when semester two starts, marking the 2nd half of my juniors' high school odyssey, I think I'm making the switch to Mr. and Ms. It's time to deliberately show them that I am treating them as adults. But I'll be lying, because the whole time I know they're children, and that all I do for them must be guided by the conviction that they are children. I'm interested to see how the shift goes.