(I think it’s safe to say there’s a generation gap there)
At the last school I was at, there was a really young faculty. I mean really young – the average teacher at that High school was around 27 years old. Even though I really like everyone I’m working with, the first thing I noticed was the huge change in age differences. Teaching in a suburban area with not many colleges around means that theirs definitely less rotation of teachers, and the average age of the faculty is probably closer to 41.
It’s not bad at all, but it is a little bit of a culture shock. At the last school, all of the teachers would get together and talk about our weekends, swap dating stories – and nothing off limits. At my new school – lunch room conversation has been relegated to potty training, gardening techniques, and the more than occasional gripe about students. I’ve been trying to keep it to myself all month, but I won’t lie – I hate hearing about potty training, diapers, dr’s appointments for kids, etc. Not to mention the negativity I hear vented in there about students/parents, etc. I miss the days where I went in to the teacher work room and felt like I was escaping the stresses of a bad day, and walked out feeling ten times better.
What’s funny is that I’ve slowly migrated through the teacher work room to sitting towards the younger teachers, or the male teachers. Simply because they’re the only ones who have conversations that don’t involve adolescents or things that I won’t experience in another 20 years. Today, I had a 20 minute conversation about Jon Stewart with some older male teachers, and it was the first time in two weeks that I didn’t walk out of the work room thinking “I’m so glad I don’t have kids.” I won’t lie – it felt amazing.
I don’t mean to complain about the age gap, it’s really not bad normally. It’s actually been awesome hearing some of the stories that the more experienced teachers have the share, not to mention that without their help the past few weeks my classroom would have exploded. But sometimes, I do wish there was a rule in the lunchroom limiting how much time gets spent on conversations either being really negative or about things so unthrilling as “potty presents.”