Profiling

During two college summers, I spurned the boring suggestion of an internship and worked instead at a summer camp on Orcas Island. Rather than building up important professional skills I could later leverage toward a JOB, I opted to flirt with outdoorsy boys and make friendship bracelets. My foresight was and remains impeccable.

This was not the type of East Coast camp where kids stay the whole summer and get tutored for their Bat Mitzvahs in between digital photography class and soccer games. It was a YMCA camp where the favorite activities were the “Dork Dance” and “Get Wet, Get Dirty.” The “Dork Dance” is self-explanatory and uncomfortably similar to my middle school experience.  Surprisingly, the latter activity was entirely PG and involved running into the Puget Sound, rolling around in the dirt and gallivanting around camp screaming in totally appropriate ecstasy (or if you are me, screaming because you’re freezing and miserable).  Everyone (but me) loved it.

This was the type of camp where kids stayed for a week and then left.  By the end of each summer, I’d had something like eight different cabins of ten adolescent girls.  For the first couple of cabins, I felt a close sense of connection to each child.  I knew their interests, their quirks, their habits.  By the end of the summer, though, my memory could manage no such distinction. The kids started to blend into types: homesick girl, skanky girl, shy girl, brown-nosing girl, sneaky girl.  And so on.  There was one of each in every cabin—the flavor of the week—and the group dynamic never changed too dramatically once I got the hang of it.  This profiling of children during their coming-of-age may be insensitive, but I wasn’t a worse counselor for it.  I remembered their names during the week and then forget them as soon as they boarded the bus, sobbing because camp was over.  My memory can only hold so much information; after all, there were outdoorsy boys to think about.    

My third year into it, I find teaching follows a similar pattern.  I love my students, and I love my students from last year and the year before. But with 75 personalities per year, things inevitably start to blend like a watercolor painting. Lines become a little blurry.  As I get to know more and more students, their behaviors, habits and quirks have mostly (mostly) ceased to amaze me. Last night, my roommate told me that one of her students had earned a demerit for doing chest compressions on his backpack. Weird, yes, but simply one kid oddity among so many. Not so original, buddy. There are reoccurring classroom characters, and I can’t help but profile some of the major players:  

The Hot Mess: The Hot Mess is in a perpetual state of disarray for no apparent reason. His shirt is untucked, his shoes are untied and his tie is only halfway around his neck. When leaving the bathroom, he is still buckling his belt.  Despite the air-conditioned classroom, The Hot Mess is always sweating profusely, forcing teachers to discuss who’s best fit for the deodorant conversation.  When asked to pack up his things, half of them wind up on the ground and the sweat just keeps pouring out. The Hot Mess is usually endearing, but also disruptive as his body is never quite still. 

The Lip Glosser:  Or as Tiny Fey coined her:  the Mean Girl.  The Lip Glosser is usually sharp and inquisitive, but is choosy about where to focus the antennae of her brain power.  It may be in class or it may be in the creation of subtly exclusive social groups. The Lip Glosser can be found surreptitiously glossing her lips at the end of class (because it’s worth the consequence) or hanging out with popular boys after school.  The Lip Glosser is precocious, and you can’t help but worry about her.  Although you recognize that you would have been her wannabe prey in middle school, you still kind of love her because she brings up feminism in class.

The Ladies Man: The Ladies Man is usually a good-looking short kid.  While he may be able to leverage his killer looks post-growth spurt, the Ladies Man is incorrect in his assumption that he can do so at barely five feet.  Every single thing he does throughout the day is motivated by a desire for female attention. Behaviors include nods and raised eyebrows in class, slightly-off compliments and a signature strut that needs more practice. At times, the Ladies Man attempts flirtation  on his female teachers; a harsh look reminds the Ladies Man that this is totally inappropriate.  

The Helper:  The helper is motivated by an intense, never-ending desire to be of assistance.  Though this will probably die off by high school, it’s best taken advantage of while it lasts.  For The Helper, there is no greater pleasure than alphabetizing hundreds of papers or running to the front office to get more tissues for his sniffling classmates. The mundane tasks that annoy normal people give The Helper a wonderful sense of accomplishment. The Helper’s hand shoots up when he hears the phrase, “I need a volunteer…”  With no knowledge of the task at hand, the Helper wants to be that volunteer. So. Freaking. Badly.