Tweens

Tweens, that delicate age between 11 and 14 right before the true teenage years begin. An age that is rife with emotion, and turmoil. At this age their minds expand so that they quickly become smarter and more knowledgeable than anyone else around them. To cross the tween is to evoke its wrath. The female tween is often angry and will quickly attack. The male tween is prone to more attention seeking behavior, for example yelling rude comments at its educator. (Me) These are the complicated creatures I had the pleasure of spending the day with.

Today I was in a 7th grade English class. As the students entered the room they were to pull out a sheet of paper and respond to the writing prompt that was on the white board. The prompt was: if you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why. I told them they had six minutes to complete this prompt. As I walked around the room I noticed that most of the students only wrote one sentence to answer the prompt when they were instructed to write a paragraph. When I pointed this out to one of the female tweens she growled at me. Growled at me, like a dog growl. I pretended I did not hear it and moved on.

I asked of anyone would like to share their prompt and it was amazing who fast everyone put their head down. I could almost hear them saying “don’t make eye contact.” I called on a few tweens only to be told with vehemence “NO.” I decided to try the growling tween. I called her by name which surprised her, I love seating charts, and she growled loudly at me again. I was not sure if I should send her to the office or the vet.

Latter in the day we were listening to the story they were reading in their literature book on CD. As per the lesson plain left by the teacher I was to stop the CD and engage the tweens in discussion about the story. After several failed attempts to do this one tween says “will you please stop stopping the CD we don’t need you to explain it because we already know it.” …sigh…