My New Mission as a Teacher

Kids making fun of other kids- how do you stop it? This is the biggest question I’ve faced this past week. Along with student teaching, I also teach the teen class at my church. The grades of students range from 7th grade up to college freshman. As you guessed, there’s a lot of diversity in the class. Their maturity levels are quite different. There is one student in the class who deals with mental problems; he is slower than the other young adults in the class. The other kids laugh at everything he says and always poke fun at the questions he asks. I get so angry when this happens. Why are they so mean and rude to this young man? When he left the room for a minute, I asked the students to stop; just a verbal warning. Even after my strict request, the laughter continued. After venting to my mom about the ordeal, I decided I would see what happened this coming Sunday. To my surprise, it continued Tuesday- obviously not with the Sunday school kids, but with the students at Jackson. They began giving their “bring yourself in a bag” speeches. One student stepped in front of the class and began his speech. He was a very thin young man with glasses and a higher pitch voice. Every note card he picked up shook like an earthquake. You could tell nerves overtook his body. Every time he made a mistake, some boys in the class would laugh. Boy did I shoot them the death-glare! How can I stop this cruel behavior from happening? I flashbacked to my high school days, I was voted clumsiest of my senior class. As you could imagine, I was the one everyone poked fun at. Even though I was the route of most jokes, I never cared. I never felt as if I was being laughed at because I was right there laughing too. I know high schoolers thrive on looking cool and being funny in front of friends, but when does it cross the line of disrespectful? I have no idea how I’m going to deal with this dilemma. Is it even possible? It’s not as if just recently, this “making fun of others” began. How can I get these teenagers to realize the importance of diversity? This is my current mission as a teacher!