Taught two classes of the same material today - first class was elementary students, second class was middle school students. First class was fine, the kids were cute but a little shy. Second class was the dreaded middle school class, sullen kids who refuse to answer questions and can’t pay attention to a goddamn word I’m saying.
Two weird moments for me - One kid walked in and I swear I’d seen him before. But, I teach in a building where 500 kids run around so having the sense that I’d seen him before was nothing new. I constantly see kids I don’t teach and some even wave to me.
Then, in class, near the end, the kid just bursts out with “Teacher, I think I’ve met you before.” Despite feeling the same way, I chose to play it dumb and act like I had no idea what he was talking about. In the end we both concluded that it was the first time we’d met (he even went so far as to say that he’d never seen me before today, yet still felt like we’d met before). Still, weird.
Then, second moment was during the group project. I had the most extreme sense of deja vu where I was standing by a group, listening to their questions. I remember very clearly that the deja vu kicked off because one kid was erasing something in his book and all of a sudden I felt like I’d been there, like I had a dream about this before and the exact person who was next to me was the person I’d seen even before I met her, the kids were in the same position, and the books were the exact same books. It was completely surreal and then it was over and I couldn’t help but think that I must be pretty freaking insane.
Teaching kids has made me slightly bonkers.
