The Calm Before the Storm—August at Independent Schools

Let’s have a chat. Teacher to teacher. Come on into my office, make a cup of tea, and just sit down for a few minutes. 

Any day now, a tsunami of children are going to flood back onto your campus. Of course, they don’t all think they’re children. Some of them seem to think they’re 30. But you and I both know that everything we do here is about that most mundane and most mysterious process: growing up. 

I think we are all in the same position on this August afternoon: a mixture of excitement about this new school year’s angels and dreading the haunting of last year’s spectres. We know that this year will come with all of its joys and all of its challenges. We know that we will have students whose spouses will say at their funerals “Mr. Jackson changed my beloved Alex’s life.” We will also have students whose grandchildren will still make fun of that one awkward thing we do in class. But as Carol King sang, you have to take the bitter with the sweet. 

How do you do that? 

Have you read The Teenaged Brain? Amy Ellis Nutt ghostwrote it for Frances Jensen. Ok, you need to read it like… now. The idea is basically that a lot of what we’ve always associated with the stage of adolescence has a neurological basis. Shocking, I know. But the data is there. 

You know that glassy-eyed look that kids get if they smoke a lot of weed—sorry to be so frank—and that spaciness that seems to slowly overtake their engagements with the entire physical world? Well that’s because THC reduces the number of available cannabinoid receptors in the amygdala. In normal English that means, it becomes harder to experience awe from anything other than more cannabis. The end effect here is the human brain quite literally loses its capacity for interest. 

Or you know how teenagers seem all at once deeply insightful and uncrackably shallow? Well that’s because of the way they create and prune white and grey matter at this stage of their life. To put it in Peter terms, teenagers have the perceptive powers of adults but the interpretive powers of children. It’s why you can’t really seem to get one past them, but they often just give you the most concrete interpretation of a scenario. 

Here’s my favorite. You know how you never quite know who you’re going to get on any day? It’s like there are some kids whose whole personalities seem like they’re a toss-up every time they walk into class. Well that’s because while their brain is almost at full adult maturity, the last fifth is where all the self-regulation happens i.e. the Frontal Lobes.

That 20 percent gap, where the wiring is thinnest, is crucial and goes a long way toward explaining why teenagers behave in such puzzling ways—their mood swings, irritability, impulsiveness, and explosiveness; their inability to focus, to follow through, and to connect with adults; and their temptations to use drugs and alcohol and to engage in other risky behavior. When we think of ourselves as civilized, intelligent adults, we really have the frontal and prefrontal parts of the cortex to thank. (pg. 37)

Why am I saying all this? 

Well for one, I think it’s a really helpful way of reminding ourselves what it takes to face the challenges of the year ahead. Call me a hyper-realist, but I doubt many of us teachers need aid looking forward to the good stuff. When kids “get it,” when you see them see each other as people, when they find a passion that opens their selves to the beauty of the world, we all know those moments. I mean, I think that’s why most of us are in this business. It’s definitely not for the fame and fortune. 

But when there’s a student who does not seem to have interest in the subject or to care about the community at the school or even seemingly to care about their own young life’s future shape… It just makes the whole task of teaching harder. We don’t get the gratification of a lit bulb. We don’t get the vicarious accolade of a “I loved that reading.” We simply get the grind of carrying a young mind along for another academic year. That part is hard – we can surely acknowledge that. 

So as we look forward to both the bitter and the sweet of this imminent year, it might be helpful to remember that a lot of the bitter has a neurological explanation – and we can work with it!

But I also say all this because I think it lends a profound affirmation to the craft and calling of education. Of course on its face, we are here to teach a subject; we want kids to know more about chemistry in May than they did in August. And yet, we all know that we’re doing vastly more than that. The chemistry isn’t just the chemistry, the French the French, or the ethics the ethics.

It’s about the formation of a human life. 

We are there to change their brains, and the research popularized in pieces like The Teenaged Brain or Neuroteach or Teaching Minds helps us see how we can do that. But in changing their brains we are hoping to change their lives. We don’t just want them to have a deeper knowledge of our subject – we want them to lead good lives. 

Isn’t that really the goal? The lives they lead. The world those lives change. The unquantifiable impact on history itself. Grand as that sounds, I could not be more serious. We’re changing history here because we’re working every day to form the lives that make it. I mean that. 

We change history by changing brains and this, comrades, is a great mystery. We’re over here doing something magical, mystical, sacramental. We’re somehow changing the fabric of the world, one worksheet at a time. When it gets difficult, we can remember that. When it’s glorious, we can remember that too. 

Let’s just take a minute to sit with that. 

Ok - now get back out there and decorate that cork board. 

Peter Hartwig is Chaplain at Christ School in Arden, NC and a graduate of St. Anne’s-Belfield School in Charlottesville, VA. He received his B.A. in Religious Studies & Classics from the University of Virginia. He then went on to receive graduate degrees from the University of Cambridge (Master of Philosophy) and Princeton Theological Seminary (Master of Divinity). His writing has appeared in Comment Magazine, the Hedgehog Review, and Earth & Altar. Peter’s articles for “The Classroom” address a range of education topics and we couldn’t be happier to have his contributions. Click here to read more articles from Peter.