I remember this just like it was the other day. I attended a relatively small private school, in which some of the classrooms contained more than one grade level. I nearly saw my classmates seven days a week between class, church, and extracurricular programs that most of us were a part of. My class specifically contained about four boys, including myself, and the rest were girls. At that young age, we thought of each other almost as enemies and our opposing regime was obviously repulsive!
There was an unofficial competition between the boys and girls when it came to games, jokes, grades, behavior, classroom duties, and privileges. One day, the fellas and I, were just a little rambunctious. We may have not followed a rule or two the first time given, and maybe we did elevate our voices just an octave above the established appropriate level for the classroom. Then it happened! We received that shocking blow to the gut, and damage to our level of pride, when our Teacher not only said that we could not behave, but that the girls conducted themselves better than us!
The girls just looked at us with smirks on their faces as we held our heads down in shame. It was at that moment that we decided that we needed to establish some plans to take the girls down. After school we brainstormed and decided we needed to collect as much incriminating evidence on the girls in our class as possible. We had a special folder in one of our lockers and gave the file a name. In the proceeding days some of the girls got into a little argument and one girl wrote a nasty letter to the other one. After it was read, and an argument occurred, we volunteered to take out the trash that day to retrieve the letter. We made other similar military style details to acquire as much degrading information as possible. We were regular “elementary school espionage agents!” Some malicious notes had to be pieced together and taped back together, others had to be “confiscated” out of bookbags while the owner was distracted, and the details of some missions cannot be disclosed.
As our secret file grew thicker, our taste for revenge caused us to almost get sloppy in our tactics. Finally, that perfect day came…the day when we intentionally provoked the teacher into making a similar statement like she made weeks before. The one where she said that the girls in the class were better behaved then us. We all gave each other that nod, and decided it was time to reveal the “file.” While presenting our entail, the girls began to almost disappear in their seats. We can conclude this with two words “lesson learned.”
Some of the things that we did many years ago in that classroom, may honestly have landed us in jail today. Reflecting on what we did, there were a few “takeaways” that could be implemented in the classroom. They all center around organization; imagine what we could have accomplished if we used our little powers for good over those weeks! We brainstormed, planned methodically, collected and arranged relevant information, classified and stored content, utilized persuasive skills to get a desired outcome, and presented the results of everything we collaborated on. That is Next Level Organization! Sometimes as educators we must simply determine how to redirect and harness the energy that our students produce. That is what makes so many of you Next Level Educators!
The Jeremy Anderson Group