Popular when I don't want to be...

One of the hardest parts of teaching is being on the inside of issues. Up until this point in life, with a few minor exceptions in college, I haven't exactly been in the inner circle of social, academic or otherwise issues. I'm an easy person to leave out of gossip or interesting conversations.... hard to believe I know but it happens. Something I found especially being on an athletic team is that when cliques form, they tend to not break. Particularly with girl cliques. Being a teacher is like automatically joining THE most popular clique. A clique I'm learning, I'm not processing well. Knowing things about my students is like being popular in a way I totally didn't mean to be or really want to be. I'm pretty sure I found out why I did a good thing in not becoming popular today.(Read, it never would have happened and I'm totally ok with it) It makes life hard. It makes your actions conflicted. In my personal life, I don't tolerate things like what my kids are doing. But this isn't my personal life, this is my professional life and I have to see these kids every. single. day. I have to give them a clean slate no matter what. no matter how upset I am with them or what they did out at recess. Once 2:30 hits and they leave, it's over. Done. I'm not the kind of person that can do this easily. I don't know how to "forget". With my "good" kids, its so easy to forgive the little things they do like talking in the hallway because I know they'll make it up to me in class with their learning. With my not so "good" kids, its so much harder. What I learn they do out at recess affects their learning and the learning of the other kids because they are trying SO hard to make it up that they end up just talking or because they missed the instructions distract other students from their work. I don't get this balance. I don't get how to treat them like nothing happened. There is a reason I never should have been popular and I get it now. It has to do wit the fact that I shouldn't have this insider knowledge. It scares me, it's unknown and I don't know how to leave it at the door.....