Can't Fight the Moonlight

There are forces in this world that teachers just sometimes can’t work against. From my own personal experience, I firmly believe school vacations, the weather and the full moon can all have their effects on both students and teachers. While teaching in Vermont and Colorado, I’ve been able to predict Northeastern blizzards and tornado weather approaching by the ‘squirreliness factor’ of my kids. Tonight I’ve got a new one to add to my list. There is something undeniable about the power of the full moon. This month it seems to have turned my last class on a Friday night (usually a bit chatty, but relatively focused) into a bunch of little crazy aliens. (They said they were not people but ‘ETs’—not me.) At first I thought it was because it was just Friday night (our class is 7:45 to 8:50pm). Then I thought that they might be getting some kind of buzz from the second-hand smoke coming from the pool hall upstairs (it was almost unbearable—I swear the room was hazy because of it). Then I realized vacation was a week away and some of them had had a big test that week (or the week before). I kept thinking, “WHAT’S GOING ON!?”

As soon as I walked out of the school and headed home, I realized the sky was very clear and bright. That contradicted another theory I’d had--that perhaps a storm was coming. I wondered for a moment, and then I saw it…the bright, full moon. Interestingly enough my other three classes today had been rather mellow, but as soon as the sun set and the moon came out—so did the craziness! Walking home…I felt the big puzzle of the day had been solved. I smiled and laughed. I was glad I hadn’t really gotten angry at my kids for their disruptive and out-of-sorts behavior.

My point for sharing this story is that my class was actually quite unruly and I was very perplexed during the class. They managed to get some work done, but there was far more laughing, talking (in Korean), screaming and squealing ( while running away from and killing the invading insects) and interruptions than I should have allowed. I gave them warnings….I added three minutes of time after class… but nothing had any effect. I could have yelled at them and given them a more severe punishment, but I chose not to. I could have been angry at them for misbehaving and being rude or disrespectful, and I chose not to do that either. Honestly, they were so wild and silly; I couldn’t help but laugh at their antics and found myself drawn into it. There was one comment made that even brought tears to my eyes. I couldn’t figure out what was going on, but it was something that just sort of had its own energy and momentum.

Having moments of pure joy and ‘wild-crazy-silliness’ are so rare for these kids in school, I find that most of the time, I quickly choose to surrender to those precious moments. Walking home and seeing that bright moon and feeling my heart and mind still filled with their laughter, I realized I was happy I hadn’t tried to ‘control’ the situation tonight. I would have lost anyway—you can’t fight the moonlight when its wild energy has already soaked into the brains of a group of pre-adolescent aliens! ;)