Bridget O'Donnell

Me, age 6. But don't be fooled: behind that gap-toothed smile is a devil in disguise.

I have a confession to make: I was a brat in grade school.

In Kindergarten at St. Michael Catholic School, it was almost guaranteed that you could find me sitting in the corner on a daily basis. My teacher, Mrs. Pavelek, frequently sent me there because I never shut up.

That same year, I stole toys from class, Latchkey and even store displays. My mom, a city prosecutor, gave me a tour of a jail cell and told me I’d end up there if I continued my thievery.

In first grade, I got a C in conduct.

At the end of recess on a cold day in second grade, our principal, Sister Dolores Ann, pulled me out of line and took me back to her office. She wrote me up because I was being too loud.

And in fourth grade, I got a B- in conduct because I did self-assigned art projects in the middle of other classes. My teacher that year once endearingly referred to me as a motor-mouth.

This confession comes about after recent encounters with difficult students. As you know, I am an English teacher at Luoling Primary in Shenzhen, China. Each week, I teach 15 classes — 10 fourth grade and 5 third grade. Each class contains around 50-60 students, of which there are bound to be troublemakers.

For the past six weeks, I’ve had my ups and downs — mostly ups — with these kids. I’m consistently impressed with their English abilities and their motivation to learn, even if they do talk a lot in class. And sometimes I even have to hide a smile when the bad kids get up and do silly things (i.e. dance) when they think I’m not looking.

But then there are days like today when entire classes are borderline chaos. In one class alone, I had a kid make another kid cry by shoving his desk backwards into his stomach, and at least three incidents where I had to take items away because students were throwing them across the aisles to each other. In the class immediately after that, the TA had to literally drag a kid on the floor and out of class because he was acting up.

Dealing with incidents like these can be frustrating, but as a teacher, the show must go on for the students who want and need to learn. As a former brat, I have a new found respect for those teachers who were able to keep class going, despite constant interruptions from misbehaving students like myself.

(And for the record, I became so focused on getting straight As that I completely reformed my ways by the time I hit middle school. To this day, I am not the loud kid that I used to be.)

In closing, to those teachers and principals I gave headaches to — Mrs. Pavelek, Mrs. Wielgat, Mrs. Vendetti, Mrs. Anderson, Mrs. Lazone, Ms. Papa and Sr. Dolores Ann — I apologize. And if you too were a brat in grade school, I encourage you to do the same.

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