8:35 a.m. - 2005-10-28
Teachers Gone Wild
Tonight I have to take my students swimming. We are "encouraged" i.e. "required" to don swim wear and be in the water. Already, there is one teacher who is REFUSING to do so, and I don't want to be all whiney about it. As a former lifeguard and swimming teacher, it seems kind of wrong if I refused.
However, there is something VERY wrong about being forced to parade around with your thighs and armpits and feet and whatnot exposed to a group of children who are supposed to see you as "Miss Jessi, the teacher". It's like, once they've seen the area of you that is right below your butt cheeks, everything is different.
EVERYTHING.
The age old divide between teachers and students, such that students up until a certain age are convinced that teachers live at the school and have no life activities outside of their students, is there for a reason. We seem invulnerable and like everything is under control because they never see us fight with our mothers or unsuccessfully balance a check book, or have two inches of leg hair because life is just too damned hectic to squeeze shaving into the schedule.
I'm not saying kids shouldn't see teachers as real people or anything. I'm all for teachers admitting when they're wrong and when they don't know something. Even sharing about their lives and families a little bit. But flopping up and down on a diving board in front of them.....sigh.
