Too Much Fun

Algebra 1. They had an open book/open note quiz. And 6th period only had 10 students in class (of a class of 13).

The picture at the top of this post isn't the classroom I was in, but it is similarly situated. While most of the class was in the front two rows, there were three boys who were kind of isolated. One was in the seat nearest the door. One was dead center in the room. And the third was opposite the boy who was next to the door in the back. All three boys had no neighbors in any adjacent desk.

With such a small class, I didn't expect any trouble during the quiz, and there was none. After they finished, they were to work on a worksheet that the teacher said they already had.

I can be lax after quizzes. So long as they stay silent, I won't bother them. Some students do work for other classes. One girl pulled out a book and read. One boy took out paper and started drawing. Another boy put his head down on his desk and slept. I wasn't concerned about any of this.

But those three boys. They had nothing on their desks, and they were way too entertained. They weren't close enough to talk, so they weren't, but they were eyeing each other. And giggling. Getting up to "sharpen a pencil" (read: steal another's mechanical pencil so boy can't do work). Getting up for hand sanitizer.

I approached. Where were their worksheets? You know, the worksheet that was the assignment after the quiz, the worksheet that I told them about before the quiz. The worksheet I was again reminding them of.

Oh, that worksheet? They never got one.

Time to go looking...

The teacher's desk had a pile of various worksheets on it. I took a peek at another student's, and soon enough I located more copies. I pulled them out of the pile, turned around...

And suddenly the boys were in their backpacks, pulling out... the worksheet. I guess they did get one.

I approached the boy in the middle of the room. His worksheet was completely blank. Well...

"I already did it."

Me: "It looks blank."

"It's done. At home."

And he proceeded to spin a tale of how he had two copies and the copy at home was done. So he didn't have any work to do in class...

The other really good thing about such a small class: this whole incident (with student names) got documented in the note to their teacher.