Tough Love

The most heartbreaking thing happened to me last Friday: because each and every student in my 8th standard boys class - the devious yet endearing lot - lapsed into repeated bouts of violence, I absolutely lost my temper at their lack of decorum and they really lost their temper back. Class ended with me storming out, telling the boys not to bother coming back to class, and them yelling back that they didn't want class anymore. I regretted the shouting match as soon as I got home and realized how much I actually do love them (I have told Milly so many times that, for the first time in my amateur teaching career, I will most probably shed tears on my last class with these rascals), and the fear that they would actually not come back to class and outright reject me took over for the rest of the weekend.
Well, I sheepishly walked back to Bajipura today for my afternoon class, and lo and behold! All of my students (I mean all of them), were waiting for me in their seats. In true form, they all aloofly asked me what I was doing coming to class when I had threatened that I wouldn't, and I (childishly) reciprocated by asking them what they were waiting for since I obviously wasn't there for class, and things were really tense. Then as soon as I put all of their notebooks on the table, they eagerly jumped out of their seats, laughed, grabbed their notebooks, fished spare bits of chalk out of their pockets for me to write on the board with like they always do....and then the impossible happened: THEY WERE BETTER BEHAVED THAN THEY HAD EVER BEEN BEFORE.
We had such a wonderful class, our mutual affections are rekindled, and GOSH have I learned a big time lesson. Kudos to Meghan for patiently telling me so many times how very forgiving children are - my boys really just left the past in the past, better than I was able to do. So me possibly (probably) crying on my upcoming last class - the three day countdown, yikes! - still holds, but I am so grateful that my relationship with my students has been healed, and made stronger. And, well, let's be completely truthful: absence really does seem to make the heart grow fonder...