On the Down Low

Friday. Fourth period. AP Spanish V: Literature and Culture. 

The AP tests are over. So, the AP classes, effectively over. The lesson plan: "They can have free time". Fair enough. 

Sra. K was on campus in some meeting. Her other classes had a student teacher, who was also in class but off duty. He had had his classes create a "thank you" poster for Sra. K, with the kiddos writing little notes to her. He showed the poster to period 4 and suggested that they might want to do one as well. They agreed. 

A group of girls decorated this poster paper attached to the white board. (Then they got off on a tangent of one of the girls wanting an arm tattoo, and one of the boys wrote on her arm in ink what she was thinking about, and a discussion ensued on whether she should get the actual tattoo or not. "I just turned eighteen. I need to do something crazy.") 

I was about to suggest that the kiddos start writing their messages on the poster when the door to the classroom opened. Sra. K. 

Um, oops. This was supposed to be a surprise. 

Sra. K had returned to class to retrieve her charger for her computer. It took everyone a few seconds to clock that Sra. K was in the room and the posters on the front board were clearly visible. Once they figured it out, suddenly several students were just casually leaning up against the board in the front of the room. 

Sra. K? I don't think she noticed. 

She was preoccupied with getting her charger and getting back to the meeting. She talked to a couple students, talked to her student teacher, got what she needed, and she left. 

The students relaxed. I started directing them to go up to the board and write notes to the teacher. They went up in groups, got the poster done fairly quickly. 

And then the kiddos went back to not doing very much at all.