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Bravo. It is exactly as Cameron Schaefer writes here: Life’s about choices. A refreshing reminder.
I was speaking with a friend of mine the other night about the topic of personal responsibility. Specifically, we were talking about how North American society seems to have decided to give up on personal responsibility. No where am I presented with more blatant proof than on the schoolyard.
Incidents happen on fairly regular basis at a school. By “incident”, I mean arguments between children, name-calling, pushing, hitting, exclusion, gaining up on each other, yelling at each other, etc. During any given lunch monitor duty, I have at least one, but usually several more, such incidents to deal with. Children come to me complaining that so-and-so called them a name, hit them, pushed them, won’t play with them, won’t stop following them, won’t leave them alone, has stopped talking to them and on it goes. In those scenarios, I can usually tell pretty quickly who is the instigator and who is the victim. I can also usually tell when it is a case of a fall-out between friends and when it is a matter of “enemies” (as great as enemies can be in elementary school) getting into each others’ space. But it doesn’t matter what the incident is, and it doesn’t matter what kind of clash it is, for uniformly, when I am being told what happened, it is always the other person’s fault.
“But he said you hit him. Is that true?” I ask.
“Well, but he was calling me a name!” Bobby will say.
“That’s because you wouldn’t stop following me!” Bobby’s former friend, Teddy, will say.
“You didn’t have to call me that name!” Bobby will protest.
“And then he hit me,” Teddy repeats, trying again to tell me what happened. “And it wasn’t fair, because I didn’t do anything to him.”
“He called me a name!” Bobby will add. “And all I was doing was trying to play with him, because he said he would play with me this recess!”
“I didn’t want to play this recess!” Teddy will say. “Tell him to stop following me!”
“Tell him to stop calling me names!”
I usually try to cut through the argument before this point is reached.
“Guys!” I say. “I don’t want to hear it. It’s really simple. Bobby, I don’t want to hear again that you were hitting someone–”
Bobby will try to protest.
“And Teddy,” I will interrupt before Bobby has a chance to speak. “Don’t call him names.”
Teddy will usually mumble something like an agreement.
“I need you guys to give each other space this recess. Don’t go near each other–”
Protests usually erupt at this point.
“He was the one coming near me!” Teddy will cry, at the same time that Bobby says, “If he hadn’t [some obscure and heretofore unmentioned offense here], I wouldn’t have had to!”
“Guys, seriously,” I say. “Just give each other space. You don’t go near Teddy, and Teddy, you don’t go near Bobby. I don’t want to hear anything more about anyone hitting someone or calling someone names. Understood?”
By this point, usually there is some level of begrudged agreement.
I’m sure that you’ve caught this, but not once did either child admit that they had done something. They didn’t deny having done it, but they never admitted it, and the implication in their words was that they never would have done it, if the other person hadn’t done something first. There is no indication that they accept that what they have done is wrong, and no indication that they realize they can control their own actions, or, regardless of what the other person does to them, that they can avoid escalating the situation simply by choosing to do what is right.
Oh, do kids ever have a handle on justice and fairness. Oh, do they ever. But it is always justice for themselves and fairness in their own lives.
I have accepted that this is normal for kids. In psychology, there is whole stage of development devoted to the time when children finally learn to think about things from another’s perspective. Rather than automatically assuming that the way they think is the way everyone else thinks, children begin learning that people see things from very different perspectives, but until they have a very firm grasp on this (and even sometimes long after this point is reached), they still think about things primarily as how they apply to themselves. And that’s fair. But our job as adults is to teach them how to consider other people. Our job as adults is to teach them how to take responsibility for their own actions. Our job as adults is to teach them how to make good choices.
We need to get there. We need to be teaching our kids this. Imagine what our society will look like when no one is willing to stand up and take responsibility for what they’ve done. Instead of having only the occasional person refuse to admit when they’re wrong, or refusing to apologize, or blaming everyone and everything else for what has happened, it would be everywhere. Oh I shudder to think of the chaos that would be.
What do you think about all of this?
I’m assuming this is a question I’ll get asked eventually, if teaching is the direction I go in. It’s something I’ve thought about in generalities and with ideas and impressions, but not something I’ve actually vocalized.
I explained here my reasons for why I didn’t want to be a teacher, but I haven’t written my reasons for why I do want to be a teacher.
I am most interested in teaching at the primary level (that is, kindergarten to grade 3). The word I would choose to describe teaching at this level is: discovery. At this age, children are discovering everything. Everything is new and exciting and interesting, and being a part of this discovery process is very refreshing. I have a brother who is currently 11 years old, and I remember him being at the age where every concept was new. And of the day camps I’ve volunteered/worked at, it is always so much fun watching these kids discovering new things.
Kids have entirely different ways of reasoning things out than what we learn as adults. I think, in a lot of instances, adults listen to children and just assume they aren’t being logical or making sense, but the truth is, their path of reasoning has just taken a different route from what we expect as adults. I think it’s so interesting hearing the reasons behind the conclusions children arrive at.
I also think that I would make a good teacher. I know that I can be patient with children, to listen to their stories and to adjust my teaching style to how they are learning. I think that I would be able to understand how they were learning and teach accordingly. My experience at the camps and with my youngest brother has also prepared me as far as maintaining order with a group of children.
I know it would be a lot of work, but I know also that I would enjoy it, and I’m pretty confident that the kids I would be teaching would be able to learn and enjoy the material as well.
I’ve been doing a lot of research into teacher’s college lately.
I was convinced from about grade one to grade eight that I wanted to be a teacher. I didn’t really think about my future an awful lot then, but when asked, that was my answer. From grade nine to the beginning of grade twelve, I was convinced I wanted to be a computer programmer. In grade twelve, I realized that I liked English an awful lot better than math and computers, so I decided that I would apply to University for English. But at that point, I wasn’t thinking as far ahead as a career. I just knew that I loved English. I didn’t think about teaching again, because English was the stereotypical degree for those people that didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives, and then what does one do with an English degree but teach? All of those snappy little phrases, like “those who can’t do, teach”, turned me off even further from teaching. When I would tell people what program I was in, their response was uniformly, “English, eh? So what are you going to do with that, teach?” And my response was always to list off the people I knew of who had English degrees who did things wildly different from teaching, and to explain the merits of English, that it provides an excellent foundation for whatever direction you choose to go in. I always felt like I had to defend my choice in English, to somehow prove that this area of the humanities was just as valuable and intellectually difficult as the other areas, and even math, engineering and science.
My conclusion now is that the programs truly cannot be compared. English requires a completely different way of thinking from math/science/engineering. I will admit that the latter group of programs are significantly more work intensive. English is primarily consumed with reading, and the occasional bouts of crazy-constant writing. But at the same time, since English is something I love, the reading and writing do not feel like work. I suppose if someone was in English and really didn’t like reading, this would be a lot of work that they would find overwhelming. However, I digress.
The point of all of this is to explain why it took me so long to even consider teaching. Most of the people in my classes are going into teaching because that’s what you do in English, not because they actually want to. I was determined not to go into teaching just because that’s the next logical step. So in this determination, I looked into nearly every other possibility first. But now I am looking at them all side-by-side and truly? Teaching is the thing that excites me most right now. It’s very possible that this will change again, but at least now I can truly say that I am pursuing the option of teacher’s college, not just because I am in English and not because I can’t think of what else to do with my life, but because it is something that I want to do.
I decided that it was time to make a little change. New feel, new format, new address — same me.
It’s time for me to get serious, too, about my future. I have been refusing to believe that my undergraduate career is coming to an end, primarily because that means I have to start thinking about my life further than just the next day or the next assignment. I remember being in high school, even in first and second year university, and I had my whole life planned out (my “five year plan” as my best friend Heather used to tease me). I’m not exactly sure when, but sometime in between the end of my second year and the beginning of my third, my “five year plans” fizzled out. I’m not exactly sure why. I guess I just lost interest in “knowing” what my future was going to be. It probably also helped that several plans I made got completely scrapped when a) I changed my mind, or b) circumstances didn’t work out the way I expected. But I am now in need of a five year plan, because my five year plan from the end of high school is just about to be finished.
And so, in no particular order, I present to you the options I am considering for my future:
a) working at Random House in New York doing their associate program,
b) going to Trinity Western University in British Columbia for seminary school,
c) working and living at home for a year and applying to teacher’s college,
d) working and living at home for a year and applying to graduate studies, or
e) completely blowing off any sense of responsibility and work ethic (not to mention cash) I have and traveling the world.
I think we can safely cross off the last of these options 
. As much as I want to travel, as I have said, my wallet wouldn’t survive the trip. Also, I think I’m ready to start a career of some description. I don’t think I would pursue option d. It would be very interesting and I have always maintained that I wanted to pursue an education higher than undergraduate studies, but I think I’m going to need a break (and again, the whole wallet thing) before I consider pursuing that.
One thing I am noticing as I go along is that this choice is becoming clearer the closer I get. We were able to briefly catch up with an old pastor of ours last summer, and when I expressed some doubt as to what I was going to do in the future, he gave me some encouragement and then told me that God best directs what is already in motion. It doesn’t matter what direction God points me in, I’m never going to get there if I don’t start walking. And sometimes he waits until I do start walking before he points me in the direction he wants me to go. It has been of great encouragement, especially now as I see the truth of it. The closer I get, the clearer my decision gets.
And on that note, it is time for me to get moving
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