What I haven't learned in nine weeks

I could summarize what I have learned in nine weeks or recap the first term but that seems much too easy so I won't.  Instead I thought I would tell you what I haven't learned.  I am still not sure what makes seventh graders act so strange, or smell like pickles.  I still am not sure why people who hate kids decided to spend a large part of their lives surrounded by them.  I can't really decipher  most of what tenth grade boys are saying except I am pretty sure it has something to do with hunting and girls, or some combination of the two.  I don't really understand why coaches complain about working so hard when the rest of us TEACH for a living.  I don't really know what the teacher's lounge is for, no body ever lounges there, they just gripe. I can't discover how to make my ninth graders study, or remain awake when I talk. I thought it would be easy keeping a professional distance. I am old, cynical, and generally grumpy, but it's not.  I like my kids. I look forward to seeing them every day. I enjoy having them in class, strange isn't it.  I haven't figured out bell work.  The bell rings and no body works and I spend more time taking  it up then if I just tell them to sit down and be quiet.  I don't  know why kids like me. I work them to death, I give really hard tests and I refuse to lower my standards even when I would like too.  I don't really know if I am doing a good job or not.  Every body who has watched me teach says I am great but how would they know, they are only there for a short time and how can I trust them, they aren't teachers.  I want my kids to learn, to grow, to become what they can be.  That is  a hard goal to judge. Sure I can make them be quiet or take notes but whether they are learning or not, I just don't know.  I worry about it a lot. I study every assignment for the elusive evidence that they are advancing. When I don't see it, I become despondent.  Not for me but for them, the world they are on the cusp of entering is a hard one and it will crush them and their youth  with out a backwards glance. In the final analysis,  I think teachers are more like salesmen than you might think. We are selling education to a very skeptical clientele.  To me education is a kind of protection plan for the world and the damage it inflicts. It's not perfect or always adequate but in the balance it's much better to have it than to not. Some of them aren't going to get the protection. I know it and so do you. I wish I knew how to change that, but I don't.