Rookie Mistake

Wednesday this week came in with all of its mid-week force and punched me right in the gut with a no-tardy party during second period and a particularly bad blend of lack-of-spring-breakness. During my second hour, all the students who hadn't been tardy once last trimester got to skip out on their classes for that hour and go see a ventriloquist perform up in the front auditorium. Meanwhile, I was stuck with all the children who'd been left behind, and they all came into class with a definite agenda.

"Mrs. Meidell, since no one is going to be here anyway, can we just play games the whole time?"

"No. Sit down and do your work."

"But Mrs. Meidell, we NEVER do anything fun in here. And besides, if we read Freak the Mighty today, then all the other people who aren't here will get behind."

"That's too bad for them. They'll have to make it up."

*pout, pout*
*lots of off-topic talking*

"Hey guys, QUIET."

*more talking*

And that's how the period started. Later on, amidst many grumbles and mumblings, we started to read the next chapter in Freak (side note--up to this point, I never had a single complaint when we pulled out the books to read. In fact, I was pretty sure they all were really liking it. Maybe that was my first rookie mistake.)

At the end of each chapter, I pause for a few minutes to discuss with the students what has just happened and to talk about some of the important ideas the narrator brings up. In this particular instance, the narrator's best friend had just made a statement to the effect of, "Pain is just a state of mind. You can think your way out of anything--even pain." After referring the students back to the line, I asked them to raise their hands if they agreed with it, and then had them raise their hands if they disagreed with it.

NOT A SINGLE STUDENT AGREED WITH IT.

Seeing as this was unprecedented (all the previous classes had been split 50/50), I was taken aback. I decided to hear them out, so I invited them to share with me their reasoning for why they disagreed.

"Mrs. Meidell, Ms. So-and-So [the health teacher] told us that it's NORMAL to feel sad once in awhile. She says we can't be happy all the time."

"Yes, I agree with her. But that's not quite what this quote is trying to say. Freak is talking about pain here, not sadness."

"But Mrs. Meidell, we HAVE to feel pain sometimes. Ms. So-and-So said so."

"Okay. I understand that. All Freak is saying here is that our minds are capable of some pretty great things, like numbing us from physical pain sometimes."

"But that's just impossible. Our brains are wired so that we feel everything. And besides, Ms. So-and-So said..."

Well. Apparently that health teacher taught a very convincing lesson. Still trying to save the floundering discussion, I decided to share the reasons why I personally agree with the statement. I tried using the example of a headache: "You know when you think that you might be getting a headache, and the more you think about it, the worse your headache gets?"

"Well duh, Mrs. Meidell. You're THINKING. Of COURSE that's going to make your head hurt."

"Okay, I'll use a different example. Have you ever felt like you're getting a sore throat, and the second that you really started thinking about it, it just seems to get worse and worse?"

"I thought you were talking about pain that's GOING AWAY, not getting WORSE."

Okay, at this point I'm starting to get noticeably frustrated. And that's when my brain jumps to the first connection it can make:

"Fair enough. Well here's an example that you might not know a lot about, but there's this thing called hypnobirthing. It's where a pregnant mom can hypnotize herself while she's in labor so that she doesn't feel the pain of childbirth so much."

And that, my friends, is when (pardon my language) it all went to hell in a handbasket.

I will never, ever live down that discussion. Now, for the rest of their lives, these kids are going to remember me as the teacher who taught them about hypnobirthing in the 7th grade.

[Random Side Note: after mentioning that a couple of my sisters have tried hypnobirthing, one of the boys in the class frankly informed me that my sisters really hadn't hypnotized themselves--that, in fact, the doctor had given them a big shot without them noticing.]

Some days you just can't win.