I was talking with two friends. One is a social worker. The other, as I was before I retired, is a middle school teacher.

“How do you stop bullying?” asked the social worker, who works with kids in the foster care system and is often immersed in the lives of children who are struggling.

“Redirect,” I said, and my teacher friend nodded. “Give them both something else to do. Send one of them to run an errand for you. Call the guidance counselor to come pull them out. Keep them apart.”

The social worker persisted, “Well, what about fighting in class?” 

“Not allowed to touch them. Call the office.”

“Call the guidance counselor for fighting, too,” said my teacher friend, and I nodded.

I added, “Adult anti-magnetism. Walk over and ask them in a nice voice what they are doing. They can’t stand it, and scatter.” My teacher friend laughed. The social worker was a little disconcerted. She wanted to know how we work with kids who need extra academic help.

“Never sit down. Involve the specialist. Walk around and check in,” I said. “Sometimes I had them come in and work with me during homeroom. Set a timer for five minutes, do three problems with them, send them back.”

“Don’t they dislike losing homeroom?” said the social worker sympathetically.

“I tell them I am a really good teacher, and I’m going to help them understand in only five minutes, and I keep my word.”

I didn’t care if they disliked losing homeroom, but I didn’t say that. I would rather help a kid know how to do something difficult. It’s funny how much better a kid feels when they’re not confused and incompetent in school.

The social worker didn’t say anything. But we could tell she was still not understanding.

I explained, “I had 22 kids in a class. 80 total.”

“I had 33 in one class last year,” said my teacher friend. “My supervisor wants me to be meaner.” 

“Meaner?” asked the social worker, her voice rising.

“Teacher face,” I said and my teacher friend nodded. 

The social worker said, “What is that?”

“I apologize in advance for this,” I said and then suddenly turned to the social worker, saying, “And WHAT did you mean by that?” with my full “teacher face” on. It involves the jaw slightly forward, the mouth slightly open with the lower lip out slightly and the upper lip lifted in disgust, the brows slightly contracted, and the eyes hollow. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I was just—“ said the social worker.

“That’s teacher face,” I said, going back to normal, and my teacher friend nodded. The social worker relaxed, suddenly understanding. (I apologized later, and she told me it was perfect.)

The thing is, teachers can make a tremendous difference to kids, but we aren’t social workers. Everything we do to individualize happens in the midst of the massive threshing machine full of moving parts and dozens of people that is a classroom, and on top of that, supervisors who want us to teach to the curriculum so that students can do well on standardized tests.

One thing we don’t have is time, so we have to use short-cuts. Teacher face is one of them. I could get a kid to stop doing something awful with teacher face, all the way across the room, without letting any of the others know I was doing it. And then I always went back to my normal face, which is rather kind, from what the kids told me.