2003-11-11 - 5:36 p.m. - making a little difference

It was so good to sleep in a bit this morning, despite my kitten waking me up a couple of times by walking on me or licking my face. I just love relaxing mornings where I can make a cup of tea, look at the paper, check out my email and wake up slowly. So that’s exactly what I did on this Veteran’s Day. I also got a bunch of grading done (which I was behind in), took a nice walk and am planning on seeing "Pirates of the Caribbean" in a couple of hours. It’ll be my reward after doing a bunch of schoolwork on a day off!!!

In my Literacy class, we’ve been learning about the teenage brain, and I’ve shown them a couple of videos from NOVA and Frontline on it. They literacy skill part comes in where they have to take notes during the video and then write a summary afterwards along with 3 different types of questions we’ve been learning about and a main idea statement.

I learned that the teenage brain undergoes rapid development in the prefrontal cortex during early adolescence. Because this part of the brain is also in charge of orchestrating other parts of the brain, it makes sense why teenagers often do some really stupid things at times despite their intelligence. I guess this would explain some of their behavior, but there is still so much we don’t know and so many environmental influences – it makes for a real interesting topic to study and discuss.

And it was interesting I was in the midst of presenting all of this to my students when two senior students of ours did a real dumb-ass thing last week. They are both captains and two of the best players on our water polo team that had made it to the state playoffs. We had a game on Fri. afternoon and if we won that, we’d be in the semifinals for the championship. Well, these two boys decided to skip class in the middle of the school day, go off campus to smoke some pot, and then return later on only to get caught….all just two days before the playoffs!!! How stupid is that! And these guys are seniors – not early adolescents! It was interesting because just the weekend prior to this past one, I had ridden down to a game about 1.5 hours away with their parents! I was going because I do the stats for the team. The parents were saying how both boys had been pretty easy to raise and hadn’t tested them much prior to this past summer, but since then, they had really been pushing the limits. Well, they certainly went over the limits last week! I was so disappointed in them and really felt bad for the team as well who needed them to win. The funny thing is, only one of them fessed up to the deed while the other one admitted he had skipped class but hadn’t smoked. Since they had no pot on them, they couldn’t really do anything. I don’t know about doing a urine test for drugs – I’m not sure what the legalities are of that and getting consent and all that.

In any case, I wrote them both an email the other day. I’ve never had either of them in class, but I told them how I had enjoyed watching them improve and build on their water polo talents since their freshmen year. I told them how I had always been impressed with how they handled themselves at water polo matches, but was very disappointed with the choices they had made last week. I said that I knew it was hard to talk with parents at times and that often you feel like they have no clue as to who you are. I also said that senior year is a critical time in their lives and that they will be making decisions about college and their future that will have long term effects. Since there’s so much to think about, it is often stressful and makes you want to just escape from it all. Sometimes poor decisions are made, and when you do that, you mess up opportunities and possibly close the doors on some of them. I advised them to find somebody to talk with – another relative, a coach, a neighbor, a teacher – someone with life experience to help guide them with their decisions and help them work through their problems. I basically told them that I’d hate to see them blow their potential, and they both have so much potential. I ended the email by telling them to learn from their past mistakes but not to dwell on them. Today is a new day and they need to make the best of it.

Yesterday I received a response from one of them. He thanked me for my email and said they realized that they had made a bad choice. He told me they were getting help and were focusing on getting back on the right path. The thing that really warmed my heart, (and this is slightly paraphrased) is when he said that when good people like me recognize the potential he has, it is uplifting and encourages him to strive for what he can become.

Just reading that made me smile and think that just maybe I made a little difference the other day.

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