Thursday, September 3, 2009

Sisyphean Seating Chart

It's the second day of school. And I was bound and determined to get that seating chart right.

I don't know if I mentioned this yesterday or not. Getting all the students seated alphabetically was a challenge. The online roll was down (they were upgrading the system), so I had to use the roll sheets that they had printed out before school began. Unfortunately, by 1st period yesterday those roll sheets were already out of date.

As the school year begins, students request schedule changes. And things get modified for all sorts of strange reasons. So, 1st period I had two students on my roll who were no longer enrolled, and three students who were in the class but not on the roll. Eek!

Today I placed the "new" students in the proper place by their last names, but that meant that the entire class had to shift (yesterday I just added them to the end, seating them after the Zs). They wondered why, so I explained. I told them that getting an alphabetical seating chart as students were being added and dropped was a Sisyphean task. As these were 8th graders, I had to explain the reference.

Just when I thought I had gotten it right, I hit two other snags. First, there were more schedule changes. And second, a couple students who had been seated in the back needed seats closer to the board (vision issues).

So, I got those squared away, and then 6th period I had this joker who thought it was a good idea to play around while I was trying to present the lesson. He couldn't be trusted with a seat near the back. No, he needed to sit near me.

Okay, so now I give up!

No comments:

Post a Comment

I appreciate your comments.

I respond to comments* via email, unless your profile email is not enabled. Then, I'll reply in the comment thread. Eventually. Probably.

*Exception: I do not respond to "what if?" comments, but I do read them all. Those questions are open to your interpretation, and I don't wish to limit your imagination by what I thought the question was supposed to be.