Jumping Into the Fire of First Year Teaching: Relationships on the Line

by Jeff Bloom

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Having had no formal preparation for teaching and then jumping into teaching middle school in New York City was somewhere between jumping into a fire and jumping off a cliff. But, here I was trying to negotiate my way through the foreign territory of middle school teaching. And, if you’re not familiar with middle school, it is a period of time in young people’s development when their brains are highly functional, but with few boundaries, and their hormones are raging. One of my first realizations was that you could be talking with kids who are engaging like adults, then in a flash they’re a bunch of loony little children. And, on top of that, they really, really want to be in control of their own lives, which often may mean that they’d just love to undermine the adults — that is, the teachers — in their school.  

On one afternoon, I was sitting in the the teachers’ lounge with two middle school boys. The presence of kids in the teachers’ lounge was not all that unusual. The school was pretty progressive and the kids liked to hang out with teachers or with other children when they weren’t in classes. They had their own student lounge, but for one reason or another, they’d often sit around with teachers in their lounge, which was a much smaller space than the what the students had. I was talking with the two boys, both of whom I had in a class, while drinking a cup of tea and smoking a cigarette, which was before cigarettes were banished to the outside of buildings. We were having one of those adult-type of conversations, when a boy I didn’t have in classes, walked in. He was almost as tall as me and liked to be seen as a tough guy. As he walked in, he picked up a pair of scissors that was lying on a table, then picked up my teabag with the scissors. As he squeezed the teabag, he looked at me and said in as deep a voice as he could muster, “Bloom, this is your head.” 

One of the initial pieces of advice my principal gave me before that first year began was, “don’t let the kids outsmart you.” That may be one of the most useful pieces of advice I ever got. And, curiously, I got the same advice when I got a Doberman Pinscher puppy several decades after this episode in the teachers’ lounge. 

I don’t recall whether that advice was consciously active at the time of seeing my head as a teabag, but out of that great and creative void we all have came my spontaneous response. I reached out and picked up my wooden tea stirrer, broke off a tiny piece, then held it up, looked the boy in the eye, and said very matter-of-factly, “This is your penis.” The other two boys shouted out almost in unison, “Oh, snap!” The big boy slowly backed out of the room, while muttering insults that just couldn’t out-do my response. 

A couple of days later, that same big boy, came up to me in the hallway, put his arm over my shoulders and asked, “Do you need any science equipment for your classroom? I can get stuff from the the high school, which was two floors above us in the same building.” I told him, “No, but thanks. I think we’ve got enough equipment.” His offer to steal equipment for me was the beginning of a quite decent teacher—student relationship. 

This event was the first major sign or marker of the importance of relationships in teaching. The following summer, I took a 5-week live-in workshop on education with Gregory Bateson. Among many other critically important ideas that we explored during these five weeks, the concept and dynamics of relationships were among the most important. 

What this spontaneous interaction in the teachers’ lounge did was maintain the relationship. I could have dragged him off to the principal’s office. I could have admonished him. And, all of these types of reaction would have destroyed any possibility of developing a good relationship. Somehow, and without any thought, the relational potential was maintained. And, I didn’t let him out-smart me. Luckily, I played his game better than he did. Although this story may seem like I hit him below the belt, so to speak, the whole interaction maintained his dignity and respect. 

When I’ve told this story to groups of teachers, the responses were unexpected and puzzling, if not totally disappointing. Almost every teacher thought my response was horrible and obscene. But, there was no awareness or understanding of the context. This occurred in New York City, in the mid-1970’s. There was nothing particularly shocking or unusual about anything that was said by the student or by me. At least, at that time, this interaction was pretty much the way people related to one another, most often with humorous intent. Were the reactions of the teachers just a matter of difference in time and context? Was it a reaction related to the embedded assumptions about the nature of relationships between teachers and students? Or, was it some sort of shared “morality” about can and can’t be said to children? It was probably a mix of all three, but I suspect more heavily weighted on the side of assumptions propagated by the institution of education. 

Questions to Ponder

The following questions can be considered at varying degrees of depth and from a variety of perspectives. What I find particularly interesting is how my own answers vary and even contradict other answers depending upon what level of depth and/or perspective I take at any given moment. By depth, I generally mean probing more deeply into prior experiences, assumptions, worldviews, social and cultural patterns, etc. By different perspectives, I generally mean the perspectives from different contexts, including the institutional, societal, various personal perspectives, emotional, etc. 

• How would you describe and characterize the types of relationships you’ve had with your own teachers? Did any of these relationships change over time or context? 

• From the perspectives of authenticity (e.g., being true to oneself), expressing or hiding one’s vulnerability, “seeing” one another as equally valuable human beings, dependability, integrity, etc., can you describe the dynamics of a few of these relationships?

• If you are a teacher or a parent, what kind of relationships do you or would you strive to develop and maintain?

© 2025 by Jeffrey W Bloom

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