Not Everything Has a Like Button

A few posts back I wrote about how my 7th graders have a fear of substitute teachers and that when I probed them a bit to find the underlying cause of the fear, it came down to a feeling of worry over whether or not they would "like" the sub or not.  I've been thinking a lot about the importance students place on "liking" or "not liking" a situation or a person. I think the world lately may be placing entirely too much emphasis on this like thing. 

It would be easy to blame Mark Zuckerberg and his blue thumbs up button, but then I remembered an axiom of communication theory: Media is a reflection of society. Society has embraced this one- dimensional evaluation of something. Either we like it or we don't. And we like the like button.

I suspect this narrow emphasis on "liking" and "not liking" is causing middle school kids a good deal of anxiety. What if they don't like something? It is a great unknown. You're supposed to like everything, right? And if you don't, then what? There is no thumbs down button. 

It was so much simpler when I was a kid. I don't remember anyone asking me, with any emphasis or frequency, whether or not I liked something. No one asked me if I liked my sixth-grade teacher Sister Mary Bernadette. It didn't occur to me to like or dislike her.  She was simply there, all six feet of her, in her black sensible shoes and her snowy white peach fuzz that trailed down both layers of her chin. She was my teacher, I was her student. She taught, I learned and we kept it at that.  No one asked me which TV shows I liked.  We all watched Good Times, Happy Days, Welcome Back Kotter, M.A.S.H  and every Peanuts holiday special.  No one asked if I liked visiting my grandparents for a Sunday dinner of ham, mashed potatoes, green peas and pearl onions. The dinner and the grandparents happened whether I liked them or not.  The burden of judging something or someone wasn't there. And I was empowered, in a way, because I was not attached to this feeling that I was somehow a victim if I did not like something.

The other day one of my students was splayed across a table and down onto his chair like someone had removed all the bones in his body. It was last period and students were nearing the deadline on their last graded assignment for the year, which was to read four short stories and write a very brief summary and opinion of each. They had three weeks to get the work done and lots of classroom time and support. This assignment was a little different because I chose the reading. (They usually choose their own books and stories.) The splayed boy had completed no work on the assignment and I had tried every technique I knew to motivate him. I knew he had the reading and the writing skills, he just was not doing any work. 

"Tell me exactly what the problem is here, and be totally honest with me. Why are you not doing the assignment?" I asked.

"I don't like it." It was a mumble because his face was mashed into the table but I understood it.

"Don't like what?"

"I don't like the stories and I don't like writing."

So I was wrong. I still had one more technique. The drop-the-reality-bomb-and-walk-away method. Use sparingly. Carefully and wisely consider the student. Sometimes works.

The bomb: "That's okay. You don't have to like it, you just have to do it because it is your final grade. Suck it up, buttercup!"

He did it. It wasn't stellar work, but he did it. Was it because I took "like" out of the equation?  Did he "not like" the buttercup rhyme? I don't know. I don't need to know. He sat upright, found his strength, and persevered.  And I like that.