I know I said I was going to make things happier for you to read. I really should have saved that, because this was about the worst class I’ve ever had. I’ll even go ahead and give you a glimpse into the future and let you know that I have not had a class as bad as this since either.[1]
There were kids who just wouldn’t stop talking and were distracting others. That was the problem with most of the class.
No, I take that back. The problem with most of the class stemmed from one kid who was walking around like he’d already joined a gang and didn’t have any reason to be at school because his drug money would support him for the rest of his life. The real problem was that everyone else in the class was watching what he was doing and would either laugh about it or come up to tell me what this kid was doing.
This kid was sent to the office pretty early in the morning. I’d like to think that I have enough patience to deal with kids who have attitude problems. But with the sheer amount of his actions, I couldn’t get the other kids to pay attention. So I sent his work up to the office with him. I know that some sort of legal guardian had to come to the school and talk with (I’m assuming) someone in the office.
It got to the point with this class that I had to stop teaching so I could get them to calm down. I’d also been told that the class had been behaving badly for subs, so I told the class that if they behaved for a sub that they liked then the teacher would ask that sub to come back and the sub would actually do it.
You’ll never guess what happened. The class started to behave. It was amazing.
The day wasn’t all bad though, even before that conversation. Throughout the day there were kids trying to get everyone else to pay attention, or at least be quiet so other people could pay attention. There were kids who called me over to their desk so they could get more instruction on something they didn’t understand.
And remember the wannabe gangster? At some point during the day the office sent him back. I’d sent all of his work up with him, so there wasn’t anything left that he hadn’t already seen. Well, he didn’t cause any more problems for the rest of the day. He didn’t even freak out when I went over some of his work with him and showed him which problems he needed to do again.
I think this was the most interesting note I ever left for the teacher. There’s no way I wouldn’t tell her about the problems we had that day. But then at the end I told her that I’d love to come back and she had a great group of kids.
Weird, I know. With the way the day started I never would have thought it had a positive outcome.
- I promise, the next entry will be a happy one. I looked on my calendar to make sure. [↩]