Keeping Up With the Smart Kids

By A.E. Bayne

I am sitting in my assigned spot, in the midst of a six hour seminar on teaching honors level English, in a room filled with years of scholarly intellect and insight. The topic – analyzing poetry at the college level with students who are on track to take AP courses during their senior year in high school. Why am I, an eighth grade teacher, worried about how a twelfth grader might analyze a Shakespearean sonnet or a ballad by Keats? Well, my dear friend, in this day and age it is vital that children be guided through the honors system just as they cope with raging hormones that cause them to act the fool for the rakish boy or comely girl down the hall. That is why I am here, in this scholarly environ, to learn how to move them from knowing to understanding; or, more commonly known as passing the AP English exam with a grade of three or higher during their senior year in high school.

Terribly interesting as this might be, the thing I find most compelling at the moment is the fact that not one of us in this room, no matter how professional or educated we are, is a bit different than when we attended that very same institution. When we are confronted with an overwhelming sense of inferiority among our peers, we defend with tenacity. Consider the question one rather scholarly twelfth grade teacher raises about the definition of antithesis presented by the facilitator.

“Why I thought that antithesis was a negation that presented itself to prove a point, such as, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country’.”

Wherein, the facilitator throws out a term to define this quote that no self-respecting eighth grade teacher would attempt to drill into the noggins of his or her hormonally challenged pupils. And just like that, an eager young teacher from the eleventh grade supports the facilitator’s assertion, giving the classic Miltonian example of antithesis from Paradise Lost, but flubbing it at the end as if she is not quite sure of herself and is terrified to be wrong in the eyes of her peers.

It is in this hesitation that I recognize her insecurity, and acutely feel her painful need to be accepted as a fellow scholar in what should not be a competitive, but rather a collaborative, environment. Here, where we all come to the table with years of schooling and professional development, years of experience and age, in this place that should be as far removed from high school as the cliffs of Dover are from Delaware, I find myself reflecting on the very familiar need to prove oneself as ‘more than’. In this bright, articulate, qualified woman’s very insecure comment lies the true future for these AP, IB, and honors students – a life of fear of making a mistake, fear that one is less than one’s peers, fear of being ‘normal’. I can recognize the desperation in her voice, pushing her to appear better than her peers, her clever dialogue climbing a ladder whose top she cannot see, and I feel pity for our students who are about to embark on this path.