listening to: Poor Scouser Tommy, via the official Liverpool FC website. pretty funky lyrics for a football cheer. think the local schools have alot to learn when it comes to cheers. =)
was waiting at the bus stop today. saw a guy behind me, from a local secondary school. pretty sure he was in lower sec... still in shorts, he was. he was smoking, which shocked me personally, and his conversation was sprinkled liberally with hokkien.
after i got up on the bus, i was thinking to myself... you know, these are the kind of people i am expected to reach out to when i become a teacher... or, now as i type and think... even now, if i come across them.
i've always had abit more passion for the quiet ones, because that is who i was/am. i believe that i could have achieved and learnt so much more, and become so much more, had someone challenged me when i was younger. not challenge, as in confrontation, but challenge, as in to hone, as iron sharpens iron. to bring me out of my comfort zone, to find the limits of my talents and abilities. army finally did that for me, but it should have been done so much earlier, and school is one place where it could have been done.
but what can i do with the destructive ones? the ones with a dim view of authority, who take pride in rebelliousness, who insist on standing out in every negative way possible? i was thinking about this on my bus ride...
it's an attention-seeking thing, i'm sure, though i have no experience and authority to back me up. challenging authority, mocking the values of the day are the easiest ways to gain notoriety and a certain kind of respect, and my gut feel is that these actions stem out of a lack of self-worth and identity. so i guess a solution would simply be to engage them as people. consult their opinions on things - try and get reasoned opinions out of them if they spout anti-authority rhetoric at you. learn about their lives, relationships and interests as if it were something tremendously important to you, and not just as if it were important, but because it is important.
i categorise people whom i meet and see, and i interact with them accordingly. and the way i act with different groups of people is painfully obviously different to me, and it ashames me, because it seems like such a judgemental thing to do. how do i break out of this?
