Two-Faced...

Is it always bad to be two-faced? Or even three-faced, multi-faced, per se...

I definitely have a work face and an "other" face...I spend my days teaching honors and advanced placement high school students...history, no less. This is my first year at the school I'm currently at. I teach sophomores, juniors and seniors. I love the juniors (AP U.S. History), the seniors and I have a mutual understanding that works for both of us (AP European History) but darned those sophomores. I've earned quite a reputation amongst they're ranks. Example #1: Today, at the Mu Alpha Theta meeting (I was blacklisted from this math club, all math clubs really), the students discussed asking teachers math trivia questions on Pi day (3/14) and "pie-ing" teachers in the face if they got the question wrong. Apparently, when the club sponsor asked the sophomores which teachers they wanted to pie in the face, they all viciously shouted, "Mrs Watkins!!!" This lovely gem was recounted to me by one of my moles...actually, one of my seniors students noted above.

The sophomores see me as brutal, the "hardest teacher" in their grade. I make them do too much work, I never cut them any slack ("Can I steal this pencil?", "No, you may borrow the pencil."), my tests are too hard, we work ALL 55 minutes of class, I give homework over the weekend, blah blah blah blah....

Now, I really don't care, for the most part, that they think these things about me. They are fickle, irrational, illogical, subject to flights of fancy (and casual) and just altogether delusional sometimes. They exaggerate and dramatize like it will boost their GPA. They get together and a test grade of 86 (B) turns into, "I FAILED THAT TEST...IT WAS SOOOOO HARD!" Not joking...

Sometimes on days when I walk down the hall past their cluster of lockers and they stop talking and quickly throw on their garlic necklaces and wield their crucifixes in my direction, I just want to laugh and say, look peeps, I'm human! In fact, I'm so human and so not teacher-ly (when I'm not teaching) that my maturity level and adultness is oft-questioned. In fact, a family member recently said to me, in the midst of a card game in which I mercilessly (yet lovingly) annoyed everyone in my special charming way, "I can't believe you are in a position of authority over children!"

Indeed I am. But, that is my work face. I'm not sure it would be appropriate for me to talk to them in my Yankee voice or pretend smack them in the face (with my super hand shield of course) or steal the pillow from under their head just before they lay down or pour a cup of cold water on their head while they're in the shower (I've been clean of this habit for awhile, you can continue to patronize my blog without feeling like you're enabling a freakshow). I mean really, I'm pretty sure they'd prefer my work face to my real face. If I was teaching them how to test the patience of their friends and loved ones, my regular face would be just fine. As I'm not, I'll have to stick with the work face, even if it is tough and leathery!