Oh no!! :eek::eek:
The world is spinning out of control. No wonder the financial markets are going crazy. 
I personally don’t see what the big deal is and I think a lot of you guys are overreacting. That’s not to say, obviously, that he should go to the high school every day and leer at her or whatever, but visiting isn’t a terrible thing that should be avoided at all costs, just don’t go out of your way to talk to her and put distance between you two if you do talk (make sure she doesn’t jump on you, rub your hair, that sorta thing) so she’ll get the message you have no interest.
I personally have about 5 girls aged between 12 and 14 who have huge crushes on me (I’m 25 and English teacher in Japan, go figure) and it’s certainly a situation where I can’t avoid them (being a required class and all) but it’s not a big deal, I just don’t encourage them in any way.
Just play it cool, don’t encourage the girl, and the crush will go away soon enough. No need to rearrange your life over it, but do indeed be careful (gods know you don’t want anyone suspecting there’s any sort of relationship, physical or otherwise, going on) but believe me, it’s even worse in Japan, where guys twice my age routinely date high school girls and they look at all gaijin (foreigners) as being perverts, so definitely put out the vibe that nothing’s going on
That’s an entirely different situation to the one in the OP; the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organisation are a charitable group helping and mentoring kids reach their potential (especially in cases where the kid might lack a stable role model or positive influence in their life).
Not the same thing at all as someone in their 20s still hanging around with kids in high school, IMHO, and you know it, Stranger.
[hijack]Welcome to the dope! I sent you a friend request[/hijack]
Yeah, that would be me. Though I’ll pass on the hairy ass part, thanks.
As I said, an 18-year old palling around with a 14 year old needs a little counseling, I’d say. What, were you playing DnD with him while he sipped on his sippy-cup of chocolate milk and you knocked back a few boilermakers? If an 18-year-old is hanging out with my 14-year old very often, I’m going to have a talk with that 18-year old in which I will explain, while he gets new stains on his underwear, the consequences of his failing to find himself a new BFF.
My brother is two years younger than I am, and we went to the same high school for a year or so, during which he understood that though I loved him like a brother, he was not to talk to me during school hours, hang around with my friends in the building or otherwise attach himself to me or my friends in an attempt to be cool. If you would have given me your comedy routine about “helping freshman feel at home,” I would have laughed, and so would my brother have. Only a very insecure H.S. senior needs to spend any time with someone three or four years younger than himself, and I don’t even know any who would, other than as a (hired) baby-sitter. Now that I think of it, my mother would hire 16 year old girls sometimes to sit for us when my brother was as old as 10 and I was 12. I resented it, of course, but I should have simply thought of it as a chance to hang out with my new bestest friend.
The bit that bothers me is
because this isn’t just a gesture but a fairly involved physical exercise that would require a certain degree of compliance from the OP. Wouldn’t it?
How very, very weird! Sad too… My sister was two years behind me in school. She provided me with seemingly endless supply of girls to take out, and I returned the favor by introducing her to any guy that might have captured her interest.
While our two social circles weren’t exactly the same, they certainly overlapped. Two years isn’t much difference in the normal way of teenage thinking.
I will agree with those who think it’s odd to return to your high school during class hours. My old school would not have permitted ex-students to return and wander around the halls. Maybe if you had a written invitation from a teacher, for a specific time/date/class, you could have showed up at the office, got a written pass and done whatever. Otherwise, you’d have been tossed out or they would have called the cops to do the tossing.
This was the exact same situation with myself and my younger brother (2 1/2 years younger than me). It also encouraged him to get his own friends and be his own person, too. Sure, I was there if he needed me, but it was made clear to him that he was not to try and hang around with me or my friends for the hell of it during school hours.
Whether the OP has any designs on young girls or not, as an educator I’m really against unauthorized adults wandering around in a school building.
Let me describe the process for an adult to come visit the high school where I teach:
- The security guard at the gate will stop him, ask his name and his reason for wanting to enter the grounds. The guard has a list of people who have appointments. If the visitor has no appointment, the guard will ask over his radio whether to permit entry.
- If there is no reason the office personnel consider valid, entry denied.
- If entry is granted, immediately upon entering the building, the visitor must go to the office, sign in, and receive a visitor’s badge.
- The visitor remains in the office area until the staff or faculty member who the visitor wants to see comes to “claim” him.
- The visitor must return to the office, return the visitor badge, and sign out before leaving.
At no time, are visitors permitted to just wander around the building unescorted; nor are they left alone with students (except students who are the vistor’s own children).
We are in the middle of a (somewhat underfunded) construction project now. We’ll have additional layers of security when it is done. The architects have done a fine job of designing a secure school that doesn’t feel like a fortress or a prison.
We have many responsibilities as teachers. The safety and security of the students while they are in our care is at the top of the list. We aren’t here to provide a social life for nostalgiac or lonely graduates.
If there are schools that do permit former graduates to come, hang out, and just socialize with students and staff, then I believe they need to rethink their procedures in today’s world.
At my old school, I’m pretty sure this was okay. I mean, we had a guy sitting at one of the entrances who was supposed to check badges of teachers (students didn’t have them). Technically I suppose you could just walk in if you were confident enough. It was a really small school in a tiny town where pretty much everyone knew each other, not really the lockdown situation you’re describing. Maybe things have changed since I went there, but I don’t think so…
Heh, I split the difference between you two–my little bro was 2.5 yrs younger than me, and while we had some friend overlap we also made a point to have separate circles of friends and not interact too terribly often.
It’s nice to have two pools of guys when you’re getting a pickup game together. (since he was a letter athlete and I was a band dork, the teams were pretty even despite the age differences.)
Meh, I don’t think I ever saw freshmen/sophomores as a monolithic group–like any other group in high school, some of 'em were older than their years and some were younger. I had no qualms about people like prr thinking I was off for hanging out with younger kids, but that was mostly because those people were going to find SOMETHING to pick on the band geek about.
Back on track–I never went back to school to see friends, now that I think about it; only to see teachers who were mentors/friends. Of course, my high school had a security policy similar to Scumpup’s and nonetheless the receptionists would always let me in and the teachers I was coming back to visit always welcomed me back, probably because I didn’t abuse the privilege, visited them during their study hall periods or (as with band coaching) was there for a reason, etc. There are few things more helpful for a struggling college-age man-child than the teachers he respects most treating him like an adult (and by extension, teaching subtle lessons in how to be one), at least for the kind of guy I was. YMMV.
I wonder if it’s a cultural difference because I went to a smalltown (graduating class 90) high school with grades 7-12 in one building. I certainly remember having the same feelings about the 7th-8th graders that some of you guys mention (they’re babies, get them outta here), even the ones I was coaching in band and whom I’d pal around with when they hit 9th grade and were marching with the rest of the varsity band.
Possibly the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been were the two times when someone inappropriately young had a crush on me. One was a 7th-grader when I was a junior. The other was a 4th-grader when I was in the 10th grade (due to our busing, the drama club stayed after school for rehearsals and then rode the (later) elementary bus home to my town.). In both cases, ignoring the girl eventually after a month made them go away. On the other hand, I wish I’d’ve been more aware when the senior in drama club was hitting on me when I was a freshman–I was about two-three months away from really grokking the scene.
I’m curious as to whether Scumpup has any thoughts about the way my school handled it–summarized as “you could come in if the teacher wanted you there or was willing to speak to you at the time, but you couldn’t just feck around unescorted.”
Perfectly acceptable.
Since she’s not really crushing… no big deal. Concerning you occasionally visiting your old high school… no big deal.
From the Big Brothers & Big Sisters of America website:*Spending Time with Your Little:
Once matched, Big Brothers and Big Sisters develop friendships with their Little Brothers and Little Sisters. Whether playing a computer game or simply hanging out - you bring magic into the life of a child. It’s that simple.
School-based matches meet in schools for just one hour each week during the day. They do projects together, read in the library, eat lunch, shoot hoops and more.
Community-based matches are flexible and will fit your busy schedule. Bigs and Littles hang out in the community and go to museums, sports events, movies, and more. It’s up to you and your Little!*
Now, if this were the o.p.'s only social outlet, if he was there on a daily basis, or encouraging inappropriate relationships you might have an issue to take up. But that doesn’t appear to be the case. So, no, I don’t “know it.”
Stranger
I expect BB&S’s are given the usual background checks and clearances expected from anybody who wants to work with juveniles. They are a charitable agency working hand-in-hand with the community and the schools. They aren’t bored, relatively recent graduates coming to the school just to hang out with their friends.
I generally agree with the things you have to say, but you’re off base on this.
What I don’t understand is how someone has the opportunity to socialize with someone at the high school. I went to a rural, small town high school with a graduating class of about 100, and there is no way on the planet you could come walking in there unescorted- alumni or not . You checked in at the office, went in to take care of what business you had, then got out. I graduated in 1988, long before Columbine or the current fears of kidnapping/molestation were rampant. While in school, I had no opportunity to chat with a visitor there. I had classes every period, and even study hall was an attendance taking event- you went to a lecture hall and had study period, you didn’t get to just sit in the cafeteria or whatever and chat with a visitor. Lunch time was held in the cafeteria, period. If you were a senior and had permission from your parents and from the school, you could leave on your 30 minute lunch break, but that was it.
Even things like band practice after school- when practice began, you were there practicing, not socializing. I just can’t get my mind around when someone would have the opportunity to just sit around chatting with a visitor while still in high school. Weird, IMHO.
And at my high school, you could eat lunch wherever the hell you wanted (apart from a few places, like the gym and the music wing), as long as you cleaned up after yourself.
It is perhaps worth noting at this point that my high school wasn’t exactly public. Students didn’t pay tuition, but you also had to apply to get in, and the acceptance rate was a good deal less than 50%. As a consequence, school wasn’t just “get up early 5 days a week for 36 weeks for 4 years, then get the degree and the hell out of Dodge”. There was and is a sense of community, because for a lot of people, TJ was the first place they had real friends. Sure, visitors have to sign in when they enter, and sign out when they leave, but the school trusts that people won’t be doing anything inappropriate, and in return, we don’t walk into everyone’s classes and disrupt the lecture. I walked into Choir because I’ve known Mr. Frels for four years and I know he won’t mind and will be able to continue conducting with a side comment to the class making fun of me. I wouldn’t walk into the middle of any other class, unless I saw that there was a discussion or study hall going on, and when teachers aren’t occupied with a class they’re pretty much always happy to take a few minutes to talk with a former student.
Your mileage may, and obviously does, vary, but that’s the attitude at my high school: come visit, we’d love to hear what you’re doing. With the obvious subtext of ‘but keep in mind that this is a school, so don’t be too obtrusive’; I don’t just go wherever I want to, and I judge carefully when I should enter a classrom that has the door closed (the vast majority of the time, I decide that I shouldn’t interrupt, and either wait a while for a better time or go somewhere else).
I’m trying to follow along with your reasons for visiting your high school, but this post leaves me confused. You say that you “don’t just go wherever I want to”, but it sounds like that’s exactly what you’re doing. You’re walking the halls (alone?) looking for classrooms to enter – for what purpose? If your former teachers are happy to talk to former students when they’re not busy with a class, then why are you dropping in on them during class, whether the classroom door is open or not? And if you’re not dropping in to talk, then are you there to silently observe your teachers teaching their current students? Again, why?
These aren’t meant to be rhetorical or antagonistic questions; I’m genuinely trying to understand what it is you do after you’ve decided that it’s an appropriate time to interrupt a class. Is this when you talk to your teachers and if so, does the teacher tell the students to take a break while you two chat about “what you’re doing”, or do you direct your conversation towards your students because your have something specific to say that somehow benefits them?
Some of what I wrote was kind of confusing. I walk the halls looking for a few of my teachers, some of whom will have class, and some of whom will not. For example, in the Syslab, Mr. Latimer usually has class, but he’s virtually never actually lecturing, and I’ve never seen that door be closed, so I feel comfortable just walking in. I’m not interrupting anything. Sometimes I’ll enter a room where a discussion is going on (rarely) and simply sit down and observe. A few times, yes, the teacher has told the students to work in groups while we chat, and I’ve never remotely gotten the impression that anybody is annoyed that I’m here, in the room at this time. A couple of times I’ve been asked for my perspective on what they’re talking about, because the teacher knows me and knows that I’ll almost certainly have something new to say.
Basically, my teachers want to talk with me when I’m there if they can, and if there’s some discussion going on, they’ll either include me in it or talk to me afterwards, when they were already planning to have the class start doing something else. Again, I’ve never gotten the feeling that the teachers or students consider it a bother to have me come in. There are only a few times during the year that alums are likely to visit, so it’s not as if people are walking around constantly or even frequently. If I went to college near my high school I wouldn’t visit any more often than I do now.
!!!
Holy crap. I know there’s probably a ton of Syslabs and a ton of Mr. Latimers in the world but unless I’m mistaken I think you went to the same high school I did! Especially considering how you’re talking about the rules for returning students and all that.
Sorry for the thread hijack, but seriously! If I’m right, what a small world.