Hallway Conversations
"Hey, so wanna tell me what happened?"
"We were just playing around."
"Playing around?"
"Yeah."
"And then what happened?"
"His croc fell off, and I kicked it around a little." He paused to look around at the other noise coming from the room, the students outside wandering, and the newly-working in the hallway students.
"Hey, focus, focus. And then what?"
"He grabbed me, and I punched him."
"Dude. Listen. I get it." He was only hardly making eye contact with me now. "You gotta be careful."
"I know."
"For a bunch of reasons, really, but after what had just happened to both of you last week, you both could have gotten in a lot of trouble."
"I know."
"If you feel like you are getting into that place again, you just gotta walk away."
"It just happened so fast."
"I know." A student had passed by; the conversation hushed. "Listen. You know I'm not mad, right?" He barely looked around. "Right?" He nodded. "I just need you to know that I care for and worry about you; I don't want you to get be getting into any more trouble, dude."
"Okay." I stood up, and he followed.
"Thanks. I appreciate you."
"Walk with me."
"Why?" He groaned - knowing that this is my secret ploy to get students to move and work to talk to me about things. He's been around me and my room and my teaching long enough to know the secret tactics.
"Because I need to talk to you, and we can't do it here." We walked, the student trailing a little behind, towards an open spot in the hallway - where no one else was within ear shot. After school, this is a little bit easier. "What's going on?"
"With me? You're giving me the resting bitch face look all practice."
"Have I?"
"Yeah. You just literally keep staring at me like this." He proceeds to make the exact face I have unconsciously been using his direction all practice - through each and every speech he had given in his practice round - one of mostly disgust and irritation.
"I'm not meaning to, you know. I'm literally just upset. I don't know why for whatever reason I am deciding to take it on you,"
"Is it because you have high expectations for me?"
"Maybe. I'm just a little off."
"I'm a little off, too, and I told you that before practice."
"I know... That's my bad. I don't mean to put this sort of pressure on you, and I have no idea why it's something that comes out solely at you, but it does. And I'm sorry." There was a pause. "I was not a good coach to you today."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, clearly, I have been making you feel some pretty negative feelings for literally reasons that are basically out of your control - your bad day, my bad day - and I am taking those things out of on you because I don't think practice is going well. And you're not to blame for that. I shouldn't be making it feel as though you are. So, again, I'm sorry; I was not a good coach for you today."
"I don't know what to say." He finally spoke up after a bit of a long pause. "Thanks I guess."
"I'll do better."
"What's going on today, dude?"
"I'm just stressed. And sad."
"I noticed. I also got an email from the counselor about you." He just looked up at me with his eyes getting a little more red and blurry. "Do you want to go back to talk to her about the things you're feeling right now and what's going on?"
"I'd rather talk to you."
"Do you wanna to talk right now, or can it wait?"
"Right now."
I looked around the room - trying to find a space in a room full of noisy and nosy 7th graders to have a private conversation with a quiet, clearly struggling 7th grader.
"Can we go sit in the hallway?"
"Sure." He kind of slogged and moped out into the hallway; I followed. I had an entire class of students inside, doing whatever they feel the need to to do at the beginning of class, and a student sitting on the hallway floor in tears. I sit down across from him, positioning myself directly in front of the door to somewhat monitor my class while also giving this student the attention he clearly deserved and needed at the time.
"What's up?"
"My dad told me that my mom might have cancer and might need surgery to get it all fixed, and I feel sad and I don't know what I can do about it." Goosebumps kind of ran through my body.
"Wow. I know that can be hard."
Another student walked towards me from inside, "Mr. Kascak, can you..." They cut themself of mid-sentence, noticing what was happening in front of them.
"Thank you," I acknowledged as they walked away.
"My dad wasn't gonna tell me because he didn't want to stress me out, and my mom obviously didn't want to tell me, he continued, playing with the plastic tip of his shoelace, picking at the falling-off plastic and rubber from other pieces of his shoes, counting to make sure there were the same amount of loops laced into his shoes.
"Are you glad that he told you?" A former student - one of those ones who always find a way to get out of class to come visit - started walking up behind me.
He saw what was going on, and simply said, "Oh. I'll come back later."
"I mean, yeah, I'm glad that they told me; it's just really hard to deal with."
"I can only imagine." There was a pause as a few students shuffled into the hallway, noticed the conversation and walked away. "Is there anything you feel like you need or that would help you today?"
"I don't know."
"The counselor sent a little list of things: going to the gym, sitting in her office, getting a few fidgets to help get your mind off it." A different student was now hovering over me.
"I think going to the gym would help a little later."
"Okay, you let me know when you want to go, and you can; I know your gym teacher is around."
"Okay." That was the last thing he said before he got up to walk inside - more calmly and settled down than he was five minutes prior. I looked up at the student hovering over the last bit of that conversation.
"Can I go to the bathroom?" They asked.
"Sure."
These conversations that happen under the watchful eyes of peers and cameras - right in the middle of the hallway - have this underlying sense of urgency, importance, and necessity to them: "we need to have this conversation now, and it needs to happen quickly."
Suddenly, the "teaching" fades away; the classroom, and your lesson, and whatever objectives you wrote on the board become irrelevant. The real teaching is happening in that hallway, sitting on the dusty tiled floor, asking a student to be intensely vulnerable.
And then there are some conversations that aren't meant for hallways - conversations that are meant for closed doors, that are meant for late nights after practice, for long days after school when they are waiting get picked up, for when they take a break from class in tears, for when they storm into your room and sit in a corner just to have a moment to themselves. And those conversations have no business being shared.
