Middle School Students

I recently started working in a middle school. I now spend much of my day surrounded by preteens. They are a funny and weird species, let me tell you. One minute they are giving you the evil eye and making you feel about the size of a pea, then the next minute they are begging you to show you the latest dance move or walk them to their next class. I feel like I'm still quite unschooled in middle school ways, and I'm definitely on a steep learning curve. Entering into teenage land is complicated stuff. Being the recipient of their preteen angst is even more complicated.

Simply observing their interpersonal social interactions is much less complicated. That serves as pure entertainment. Just today I overheard a group of about four or five girls talking about "Joe." It seems that Joe is a bit of a Casanova. He spent much of the afternoon asking out through the bulk of the seventh grade girl population. From what I could gather, no one took him up on his offer. Not a very successful Casanova, but one nonetheless. The girls seemed both titilated and repulsed by this behavior. A pretty reasonable response in my book.