Bouncing Off the Walls, What have we Done to Our Kids
After decades of practicing law and dreaming about returning to the classroom, it was finally going to happen. As much as I enjoyed my first experience teaching as a long-term substitute, getting a state certificate to teach required two more years of undergraduate credits. Getting a law degree required three. I opted for law school.
For years I was in legal heaven, building a large practice of clients I could both represent and counsel. But after decades in the courtroom, I was ready to go back to the classroom. Teaching children with behavior disorders and learning disabilities had been rewarding and I wanted to see if the techniques used to win over a recalcitrant class of 4th graders in the 1980s would still be effective today. After completing the arduous certification process I was ready and with a serious shortage of teachers, I was assigned a 4th-grade class of my own.
To say things had changed would be an understatement. Even before I learned the names of my new little charges, I was sent to supervise a massive schoolyard filled with unfamiliar faces, open gates, and too many nooks and crannies. As a lawyer, it felt like an open field of landmines and traumatized, hyperactive children, running in as many directions as there were feet. Dozens of 1st-grade girls immediately surrounded lanky legs, desperate for attention…
