Chaos Theory at Play in the Middle School: A Redeeming Vision

Abstract

I am a romantic. Each day I wake eager, excited to get to school. What happens inside classrooms has always been tremendously compelling to me. The dynamics of exploration between student and teacher, student and student, student and subject have the potential, at any moment, to become perfect epiphanies. During my 7:00 a.m. commute, I imagine the day will be spent working to ensure that lessons and units reflect an understanding of developmental theory and brain research about the way humans learn or that the various teams in the Middle School will create perestroika and reach across departmental boundaries to plan interdisciplinary units or that the parent education series I have been working toward to help parents with this very challenging age group will materialize or that I will be able to help each teacher to move closer to fulfilling his/her potential as the penultimate Middle School teacher. The reality of the day, however, sometimes intrudes on my vision. 8:05 I receive a frantic telephone message from Vicki, the fourth-grade science teacher, that the sheep hearts for the dissection unit were delivered and left out in the sun by the back door of her lab. The area is beginning to smell like a charnel house. Three parents are on their way to help the class with dissections: Two are surgeons, and one is the head of the school’s board. One of the surgeons departs in a huff after calling into question the judgment of the maintenance man who left the specimens in the sun. I spend twenty minutes mollifying Hubert, the head of maintenance at the school, who overheard the surgeon’s parting shots. Note: Call the parent volunteers to thank them for their time. Send a gift to Hubert. 8:30 Word comes in from several parents that students have been spotted trudging along Harvard Ave., a very busy thoroughfare, after their bus broke down. Jumping into my car, with visions of the school’s attorney dancing through my head, I race off to the bus. It is clearly out of commission. It’s belching smoke. But Junior, the driver, is unconcernedly lounging against the front bumper smoking a cigar. Being a quick thinker, he had telephoned his roommate, a foreign exchange student, who was planning to rendezvous with the Middle School riders several blocks away in his subcompact Yugo. Frantically backtracking the missing students, I catch up with them in the parking lot of the school. They are shaken but intact. Note: Call the owner of the bus company.