Christa Allan

Friday morning, at 7:25, I will begin meeting the 125+ teens who will spend five hours a week with me. Some of them won’t spend that much time with their parents in a week, but that’s a story for another post. In addition to the six classes I’ll be teaching (one English I Honors, one English II regular, and four English II Honors), I have a homeroom.

I will probably be assigned a 9th grade homeroom because my senior homeroom graduated at the end of last year.  We generally meet our homerooms monthly with the exception of beginning of the year class assemblies, standardized testing, class officer voting, and any other special events that pop up during a school year. They will be my little hommies for the next four years. When they hatch at graduation, it’s a tender moment for me after having incubated them for so many years.

When I look over that field of faces Friday morning, I always say a (silent, of course, public school and all) prayer for them. Freshmen are the bottom of the high school food chain. They know it; the other classes know it. Years ago, our school started a Senior-Freshmen alliance that starts with freshmen orientation, and then seniors assigned to freshmen homerooms.  The seniors bring them food–always a bonus–and yak with them about all the “real” high school stuff—like there’s no pool on the roof. Sometimes the freshmen ask questions, but mostly they don’t.

Their bodies are a study in panic management. Some of them are coming from a junior high with less than 500 students, some from one with 1,000. We have about 2600 students; overwhelming is an understatement. Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras Day would be runner up to our mall between the change of classes. I’ve watched visiting adults body slam themselves against lockers when the sea of humanity becomes a tsunami. So, to be new, finding your way, can be intimidating.

A few have had the comfortable advantage of older brothers or sisters. A few have the ability to be comfortable if they spent a year studying Italian only to find themselves dropped in the middle of Tanzania. A few have already planned to call a parental unit before lunch pleading upset something or other so they can be checked out for the day.  The rest manage moving with or against the tide, battling lockers they can’t open, not being able to find a friendly face at lunch, and/or discovering the one person that hated them in junior high is now in every one of their high school classes.

The cartoon is one I found when writing this post. It was drawn by one Katie Jordan, also the author of “Fast Facts for Freaked Out Freshmen.” Written in 2004, I think Katie’s probably already in college, but (and sadly) her advice is still timely!

THURSDAY: A TEACHER’S ADVICE TO POTS (parents of teens)