As many of you unfortunately know, "Jersey Shore" is a show that is extremely popular among preteens and teenagers. In a nutshell, you find average Americans in their early 20s, the ones who passed notes in class rather than listen to anything, give them alcohol, put them in a luxurious house and watch how they create disturbing love triangles and waste money. They don't even try to act and make even the most mundane human interactions overly dramatic. Their Jersey accents are supposed to make them sound exotic (I suppose) to the majority of Americans, when really it only makes them sound like young and ignorant Americans; in short, the people on "Jersey Shore" completely embody the American stereotype that is held around the world. Absolutely pathetic. But enough about my rant on the TV show.

Last Friday, my 8th graders were promoted to high school. I remembered that: I felt a little sad that a phase of my life was over, like I ought to cry, but I was too excited for summer and high school to feel much remorse. I was mostly concerned about being gutsy enough to ask my crush to dance (I did, he said yes, but I asked so late into the song that we danced for 30 seconds). My 8th graders were ready to leave middle school, very ready. They could hardly listen so that they would know what to do come promotion night.

My school has a tradition of making a human tunnel for the 8th graders to go through at the end of their last day. I expected a stampede of ecstatic students. I got a dribble of students, boys and girls crying. I kept telling them that they would be back in a few hours for promotion and that they would be dancing together later that night. It didn't seem to make a difference. I suppose I'm a little cynical because I kept thinking of "The Wizard of Oz:" "Lions, and tigers, and bears--oh my!" except I changed it to, "Girls and hormones and tears--oh my!" I had thought that the 8th graders hated middle school, but after Friday, I now think that they are just great actors who aren't ready to take the big step to high school.

The promotion mass went beautifully. I didn't see anyone cry, but I was up in the choir loft. The dance went very well, too. For the most part, 7th and 8th graders danced in this bear-hug huddle. Right as the last song was being played, the first 8th grader started crying. Minutes later, she was bawling. For 15 minutes after the dance, the 8th graders wouldn't leave: about 90% of the class was crying and the other 10% felt like crying, but couldn't. Even one of my tough male students was crying. What was I doing? Cracking jokes to lighten the mood. I reminded them that they could skype, facebook, and that they would probably text each other before they even made it home. Really, all of the crying was a gross exaggeration.

Which brings me to my point. I told my boyfriend about all that had happened and he summarized it succinctly: they are Generation Snookie: everything is overly dramatic. He added some other Snookie characteristics that made his argument all the better, but I'll have to ask him to go over it again.

As a teacher and future parent, I will do my best to prevent these "Snookie" characteristics.