A Burning Question?

7th grade science. The teacher had a meeting for the last period of the day, so I came in to cover on my prep period. As he was on his way out, the teacher warned me that the class could be a little difficult, and I was to leave him the names of any troublesome students.

Surprisingly, they managed to settle fairly well, although many weren't getting all that much work done. Too much talking. After they "finished" their warm up, I was to explain their assignment. I passed out the paper...

"Where do babies come from?"

The boy was on the other side of the room. I continued to pass out paper.

Now, while this is not an unreasonable question, the timing was awful. The class was loud. I was in the midst of getting them ready to do the next thing. And reproduction was not the topic for the day. So, I ignored the boy.

I finished passing out their paper. I turned on the projector (this was the sort of assignment that needs an example). But before I could get going, the boy doubled down...

"If they don't want us to know, why is this in our textbook?"

The boy held up a page showing... well, it's a life science class, and the end of the book has a unit on organ systems. I'll leave it to your imagination.

I picked up the standards for "causing a disruption" and gave it to the boy. (Standards are where they make them copy lines as punishment, in this case for disrupting class.) Then I attempted to explain what they were expected to finish by the end of the period.

Some students will do anything to get out of doing work. This boy was an amateur.