From this past Wednesday until late last night I was fortunate enough to travel with the 8th graders I work with to Washington, DC for their end of the year trip. First off, it is pretty wild that the end of the year is approaching so quickly. There are only about fifteen actual school days until the end of the year and I don't find myself elated as I have been in years past. Sure, I'm excited about traveling some, being outside a lot, writing a bunch more, that sort of thing. I'm also starting to realize that in less than a month, all but a few of the most important people in my life will no longer be a part of my life.
And I'm really quite sad about it.
That is not what I'm here to write about though so I'll avoid that tangent for the moment. Right now I'm here to talk about grown folks and how they treat young folks.
Upon arrival at the Westin in Tyson's Corner, Virginia, I could tell that the place was a bit fancier than I would have expected. They however were not too fancy to accept school groups and we were not an exception to this rule. They were however, poorly trained on how to work with young people. When we pulled up the doorman and acting manager immediately were outside, causing a ruckus, scolding our students for being too loud when in reality our students were really being quite exemplary in their behavior. The manager was walking around, shaking his head, talking about how many other guests there were and how loud we were being. He then had the audacity to grab the shoulder of a child who tried to walk through a turnstile door.
Who the hell do you think you are?
So I grabbed his arm and told him to not grab the arm of my students. His response, anger. Clearly, he wasn't used to people actually standing up to how he treated children. And our students were too damn polite to say anything to him. I'm not too polite though so I was happy to butt in.
I'm tired after this trip from the enormous amount of energy the students had but I'm substantially more tired of how adults treat children. I saw children being scolded for fiddling with their hands, for talking too much, for playing, and even for laughing. I'm not talking being scolded for doing these things unreasonably, I'm talking being scolded for doing these things at all. Not running around and causing a scene playing, sitting down and playing cards playing. Not laughing like hyenas and causing a disturbance laughing, happy, friendly laughing.
We as a society expect children to act in a manner that is not conducive to their natural inclinations and then we have the gall to act as if they have somehow wronged us or wronged society when they do not comply to our own personal expectations. How dare we.
Here's what I saw in Washington, DC. I saw more children holding doors than adults. I saw more children saying thank you to people who sold them things, served them food, or held the door. I saw more children not talking at the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial than adults. I saw more proof that adults need to take a serious look at themselves before they scold another child.
Children don't need to grow up, adults need to start growing down.
