Swapping Names

I am on winter break this week. As is my custom, I will save the stories from last week for when we return to school in January. And so normally I'd be on the "summer schedule". 

But, as luck would have it, on the day of the chair throwing incident, I happened to have written a whole other blog post earlier. Obviously, a student throwing chairs is way more interesting. Rather than deleting this post entirely, I figured it would keep until school was on a break. 

It has been a while since I worked at the alternative education center. The kiddos I knew are now gone, replaced by a whole new batch of students. 

It was the Friday before Thanksgiving break. I had certain expectations going into the day. So, none of what happened truly surprised me.

First period. U.S. History. The students had a chapter to read and questions to answer. I was supposed to read the chapter with them, but immediately upon them entering the classroom, I knew that that wasn't going to happen. They were shouting out insults at each other, and I wish they had been just using F-bombs. The terminology they used was much ruder.

And then a couple of the boys were playing sounds out of their computer. It started with the Taco Bell bong, but it was soon audio clips of people speaking. Over and over a woman said something about her chest. There was some swearing as well. 

I was irritated. 

It didn't take long for me to figure out who was playing the audio clips. The boy who was doing it said his name was Ubaldo. His "friend" nearby was Verne. ("What kind of name is Verne, anyway?" he asked.) 

For other reasons, I went and looked over his shoulder. I was checking out the questions he was supposed to be answering.

In Google Classroom, the assignments posted automatically attach the student's name. So, I glanced at the title for the doc the boy was on, and it said his name. Verne. 

Yup, he was trying to confuse me by swapping names with his classmates. 

This is a very old trick. And, as I've noticed many times, they are very bad at it.

The next time Verne played an audio clip and I growled at him, he made some comment about himself being Ubaldo. 

Me: "Uh huh, okay, Verne." 

And then he knew. He had failed at getting me to believe he had a different name. 

I doubt that he really cares what I wrote in the note to his teacher. And I'm pretty sure Mr. T will not be surprised at what he got up to during class. But it's a little win for me, anyway.