When Your Students Are A Couple

Photo (c)2016 DW Davis

Do you like my little helper? He’s a cute little guy, isn’t he? His belt with the big buckle is a wrist watch.

This little panda bear doll belongs to one of the boys in my third period class. It was given to him by one of the girls in my third period class. The boy has carried it around with him all day, every day, since she gave it to him.

The two students are “dating.” I don’t know how much actual going out on dates they do, but they are a couple according to middle school etiquette about such things. Both are well-behaved youngsters, get good grades, and refrain from public displays of affection – as far as I know – while they are at school.

Now and then I will bring the little panda up to the front of the room and let him sit on the table. Today I thought it would be fun to set him up at my laplet and let him watch the Pandacam at the National Zoo. That is where the young lady bought the stuffed panda for the young man.

The rest of my students get a big kick out of the way I treat the panda as though it were real, small but real. When they ask me why, I tell them I am doing grandpa practice so when I have a real grandchild I’ll already know how to act. When I say that one or two of them volunteer to be my grandchildren.

Sadly, some of my students are already being raised by their grandparents because their parents are too wrapped up in living their own lives, too strung out on drugs, or worse, in jail, and cannot be a mother or father to them. The pressure on us as teachers to fill the void can be daunting. The important thing is to let them know we care.

I think I do that in one small way by showing care for the little panda bear. Perhaps in the students’ minds they think that if I can care about a silly little stuffed bear, how much more I must care about them.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted educator