One company's hiring manager asked me why I only want to work with advanced 5th grade students or older and whether I meant "advanced" in English fluency or generally academically advanced for their grade. His inquiry was a pivotal prompt to further claim vital aspects of my identity through my response:
Although there are always precocious exceptions to this rule, my preference for working with grades 5 through adult is specific to one universal developmental milestone: In general, students' ability to perceive and articulate the existence of the "gray areas" is fully intact by grade 5. The world is no longer black and white. Ideas no longer need to be exclusively polarized into good and bad, right and wrong, safe and dangerous, desirable and undesirable, to ensure the students' logical foundation. I have devoted my life to finding the hero in the wounded villain, the teacher in the enemy, the value in the deplorable, the beauty in the mundane, the order in the chaos. I naturally desire to maintain this frequency in and out of the classroom. The meticulous study of grand exceptions to blanket establishment is the way of the revolution. I wish to share this capacity with students who are both able and driven to understand how two seemingly opposing ideas can be equally true about one thing.
Regarding my preference for "advanced students," I am primarily referring to advanced emotional maturity with deep listening skills: intuitive awareness of social nuances and ability to self reflect. In my experience, so long as a student is conscious of, and authentically curious to explore what is behind and beyond what is presented on the surface, advanced English proficiency is of secondary importance.
Here is an example of the kinds of discussions I live to facilitate. The monthly novel was "Milo: Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze." The main character has a bit of a nervous break down in a haunted house in front of his crush and all his friends, needs his dad called to pick him up, and is very embarrassed the next day. Students were asked to consider how they would react if it were them. My cherished 5th grade student surprised me by saying he would not be embarrassed at all. He informed me that the true reason for haunted houses is to give people an outlet to express all the fear they feel they cannot express in their day-to-day lives or talk openly about the specific reasons for. "Instead of admitting the real reasons why we're scared, like about our required military service, we can just say it was the haunted house." he explained. "All my friends would be totally okay with freaking out completely and being as emotional about it as we want, because we all understand how to use a haunted house to 'say' what we can't say." This awareness came completely from him. It might have been one of the most abundant moments of my teaching career to hear this young boy bring such perspicacity to the table.