Today I taught a class of first year high schoolers. I usually dread this class because the students are in the A class. At the high school there are several different classes: A, B, C, D, E, and M. E students have a concentration in English. M students have a concentration in music. D students are probably the smartest and hardest-working students in the school. That leaves the A, B, and C classes. They aren't at the top of their class, they don't care about English-- most of them have bad attitudes (Granted, I have about five students in my class of fifteen that do their work and pay attention most of the time. These students keep me from unleashing my teacherly wrath on the rest of them). So class is usually a trainwreck: students don't bring their books; students play with each other's hair, markers, and miscellaneous other school supplies; students laugh and talk LOUDLY while I'm trying to lecture; students sleep and don't bother to finish their worksheets. This is what goes on in a normal class. Their behavior was bad enough to warrant the creation of-- dun dun duuunnn-- a seating chart! Gasp! So for the past two class periods I've had the students in a seating chart so that they are most decidedly not sitting by people they normally chatter with during class. Today, however, their behavior was exceptionally intolerable.
I lectured a little on time language and how to talk about how long something takes (using vocabulary like "half an hour," "an hour," "over an hour," etc.). Then I handed out a worksheet with ten or so questions requiring a short answer. I usually walk around the classroom to check their work and answer questions. Today some of the students got smart and decided to put tiny post-it notes on my back when I was talking to another student. I think they got five or six on my back before I noticed (they're clever little devils). Finally, I realized that when they were tapping me on the back they weren't merely trying to ask questions. I pulled one of the post-it notes off of my back, shot a steely glare at the nearest perpetrator, and slowly ripped the post-it note into tiny pieces. As I tore the post-it up in front of them, they gaped at me like, "Woah, she means business." Then I swiftly walked to my desk at the front, pulled the rest of the post-its off my back, then went around the classroom and confiscated the rest of the post-its (which I think three students had. Man, those kids are clever. And evil). The rest of the class was relatively quiet. |
Name: Ruthie