I’m sure, with a title like this one, you’re expecting me to unload a litany of problems with kids today. After all, don’t older generations always believe that the “kids of today” are worse than they themselves were? I will admit that I do believe there are some things that are lacking in kids today, but I’ll try not to linger on that line of thought.

     My father and I just returned from a three-day trip with twenty-two honor society students. These students ranged from eleven years of age to seventeen. The hotel clerk who checked us in on Thursday night told us on Friday that she had come back to work that morning expecting to put out fires from complaints about my students. She was amazed that there weren’t any. She said that hotels dreaded school groups because the kids were always awful… throwing chocolate milk at the walls, jumping on the beds, and running and yelling down the halls. I quote, “Your students comport themselves like adults.” Dad and I were so proud, we could have sprouted peacock feathers!

    Students like ours are the anomaly. As I stood in line at the Marble Slab Creamery the next night, two women and three children came in and joined the line behind me. A girl about ten years old took the place right behind me, and in a matter of three minutes, she had elbowed me twice, bumped her rear into mine, and full-on leaned on me two times! I could not believe the women were letting her do this! I had to leave for fear my face would show my disdain and I’d end up on someone’s phone video as one of those women.

    Let me assert that there is nothing wrong with today’s kids.  It is the adults around them that are to be congratulated or blamed for their behavior.  Our kids behaved beautifully because we 1) laid out the expected behavior, 2) let them know that an infraction would lead to a call to the student’s parents - no matter the time- and that student leaving the trip immediately, and 3) promised that that would be the student’s last trip with us should he misbehave. Sound harsh? My favorite principal maxim is this: a person will not change a behavior until it becomes uncomfortable to do that behavior. My job as principal is to make noncompliance uncomfortable.

     The ironic thing, though, is that very rarely do I actually have to follow through on that threat. My second assertion is this: when kids know what is expected of them, they tend to do it. Okay, maybe not chores around the house. In thirty-two years of teaching, though, I have not had to follow through on that disciplinary action but twice, and those two times were years apart.

     The kids of today know facts and processes that I didn’t know till I was an adult. The kids of today look up DIY and teach themselves instruments and art and cooking. The kids of today can make music with as many layers as a symphony. Kids are amazing! No less amazing than they ever were. It’s the adults who have changed. Some are overly cautious, listening to talking heads telling them the world is out to get their children. Others are so absorbed with their own pursuits, games, and phones, that they’ve left their kids to raise themselves. Good parents throughout the generations have always followed their guts, and good kids were the result of testing and trying and finding what works. That takes time and courage.

   I’d like to thank those parents who have taken the time to teach their children that being a part of society has required protocol, that gaining material items is a privilege rather a right, and that decency is always the best option. You are the heroes our world desperately needs!

-        Michelle