Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Not Going to Move

Today was the first day of school at the continuation high school.  Most of the students in the opportunity class didn't get the message.

I had two students today.

I threw work at them, and they sort of did it.  As the day wore on, they got less and less motivated.

After snack they have PE.  Santiago was at least willing to grab a basketball and go outside.  Carlos needed a bit more persuasion.  After I got them outside, they sat on the concrete steps and refused to do anything.

I considered it a victory to have gotten them outside.  Santiago had refused to do his math assignment earlier.  Carlos took forever to get through his work.  I told Carlos that if he didn't finish it by snack, he'd be outside until it was done.  That got him moving.

I stood over them, trying to get them to move.  There were basketball hoops.  Santiago said that he hated basketball.  Okay then, why don't I get the football?  Nope, he said that he hated football too.

Of course, they had both spent the morning resenting the fact that they had to be at school.  At least they did it calmly.

After they had been outside for the requisite amount of time (I let them off 5 minutes early), we went back in and I gave them the next assignment.  They did it, sort of.

Calls were made to the students who did not show today.  It's likely that I'll have a bigger group tomorrow.  (Insert scream here.)

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like it was a war of wills. I hate that.

    I've only worked at the Extension School (as we call it) twice. Not always the most motivated lot.

    Hope today went better.

    ReplyDelete

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.