Thursday, December 11, 2008

Day Two

As sometimes happens, as I was leaving yesterday the secretary told me that they were "retaining" me. The teacher called. She was going to be out another day. Which gave me day two in that self-contained class. Oh goody.

I didn't have new lesson plans, but I had enough to work with, so I cobbled something together. Yesterday hadn't been too bad. Today? Today they went crazy.

They started the day with an essay. Yesterday? No problem. Today? They were having none of it. I had to threaten to take away their movie (they get to watch a movie to end the day) before I could get half the class to do their morning work.

And still it was a trial to get them to do anything. I had two girls who refused to not write on the board. One boy got called up to the office, so he had to kick the door open (he was not in trouble; he was going home early) and make a big commotion as he exited. Then two other boys mock attacked a third boy in the class. A couple times.

It was like being in a special ed classroom, except that when they would do work, they had no trouble with it. They just spent so much energy avoiding the classwork. But when I would explain the assignment to someone, the student would catch on right away and do the work correctly.

I understand why the teacher needed two days off. I don't know how she deals with these people every day.

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