Today I had my last class with the kids from my high school. It was ambivalent. Very nice and rewarding but also very intense and full of shouting too. We had some activities together and they went by just as you would expect some 4th graders to react at 2 PM after a day of classes. Nevertheless, at some point, close to the ending of the day, they all broke into a noisy mess. It was more than I could normally handle. And I showed it to them by ending everything we were doing. They immediately noticed and I could read on their faces that they were sorry. But I couldn't just leave it at that. They wouldn't have learned anything yet. So I went on and after some moments of complete silence, I told them what I felt. That I was sorry we had to end our meetings like that... being upset and not happy and thankful. And then I let them go home. So they started packing their schoolbags and then they slowly left the room. I started being disappointed that they didn't really feel sorry for what they did for leaving like that.
Some minutes passed and while I was thinking about what had just happened questioning myself if I did the right thing, the door opened slowly and, ashamed, all the children stepped inside and told me with a cute guilty face that... they were sorry. One of the girls was teary and that moved me very much. It made me almost cry. They did learn their lesson in the end.
Sometimes it's all about taking the right decisions at the right time for people to learn something valuable. So today, I was the bad teacher, but that moment when they came back regretting, that was one of those moments you can only see in movies:)
