So Hot

Today's repost from December 5, 2018 is about current slang. Because I don't often really pay attention to the terms the kiddos use, but I do hear them. Enjoy.

World history class at the continuation high school. They're doing a unit on the Holocaust. They were working on a vocabulary assignment in Google Classroom.

Because it was the continuation high school, most of them weren't doing much of anything. I was doing my usual rounds, trying to get them to make some sort of progress.

I came up on one boy who was on his phone. I questioned what he was up to. He told me that he had started the assignment, but when he opened his Google doc, his assignment had disappeared.

I completely understood. Trying to troubleshoot the problem, I asked the usual questions. He opened the Google doc to show me his assignment wasn't there... And his assignment popped up. His work had saved.

"It made me so hot when it wasn't there. I wasn't going to start it over."

And my ears perked up. "Hot"? He meant angry. Mad.

I did not know that hot was now a synonym for mad. Okay, then.

And, wouldn't you know it, other students used hot to mean angry that same day. It came up a couple times. The usage makes a certain amount of sense.

So, as you go about your day, see if you hear someone using hot to mean angry. I'm curious as to how widespread this now is.

Disruptions

Monday at the continuation high school. They had a video. (This was the Monday before the election, so it was about the candidates.) 

First and second periods had gone smoothly, so I had established a routine. I introduced the video, explained the assignment that went along with it (notes followed by three questions), and then I started the video. While watching the first ten-ish minutes, I input the roll (I had two computers going). Then I stopped the video so we could do the notes together before continuing on. 

Third period. A couple of the boys greeted each other in chat, but it wasn't anything major, so I didn't think anything of it. Then I did my intro and started the video. 

We were a couple minutes into the video when one boy turned on his mic and made a noise. 

I looked up from my roll taking to figure out who it was. I went back to my roll taking.

The same boy turned his mic back on and played music. It was something with a strong beat. 

I muted him. (It's a simple thing to do. Usually they mute themselves. And once muted, only they can unmute themselves. But I can mute them if necessary.) 

He turned his mic back on and the music was still playing. 

I muted him again. 

We did this one more time. I was just about ready to stop the video and warn him that disrupters would be removed from class (I have the ability to remove anyone from the meet) when he logged out. 

That solved that problem. And with the attendance software I have running in the background, I have a record of when he was there and when he left. 

But, of course that wasn't the only issue. While that boy was entertaining the class, the class was on the chat, commenting on it all. 

A1: who that

i hear a cat

im very confusion.

A2: lol

J1: lmaooooo

A2: im ball of confusion

hate that song

so

god

damn

much

A3: lmfaooo

A1: love is a b****

thats a pretty good song

very soothing

J1: oml

L: *choke me like you hate me*

A1: ew

J1: stop

A2: WAP

J1: lol

J2: lmaoo

J1: you are me

A1: 1v1 mw

J1: i am you

A1: j1 1v1

snipers only

A2: everyone lets play duck duck goose

down?

L: j1 2 good

Rather than come up with replacement names, I've designated them by their first initial. And since those initials repeated, I just designated them 1, 2, or 3. 

With the loud boy gone, I could deal with the chat. I typed in that they needed to stop playing around and that the chat thread would be reported to the teacher. Then I delivered my coup de grâce. I disabled the chat. 

At the beginning of the year, I lamented the goofing off via chat. I came up with a solution for the class I was in that seemed to work. Since then, Google has added a couple dandy little controls for us meet runners. There's now a little "switch" I can toggle to take away their ability to use the chat. 

I had no more issues while the video was playing. (Then I had to restore the chat so the kiddos who were on task could answer my questions, but by then the problem was solved.) 

And how do I have such a precise transcript of the chat? I took pics on my phone so I could email them to their teacher. Because, I don't threaten things I'm not going to follow through on. 

Becoming Routine

I was back at the continuation high school for the first time since the new school year began. It had been late February the last time I was there. (The last continuation high school blog post before the shut down is here.) 

I was covering a teacher I had covered many times before. (I've subbed for all the teachers there.) It did not look like she'd been on campus since the shut down, but that's getting to be kind of usual now. Not many teachers are coming to campus. 

But apparently the teachers at the continuation high school haven't been taking many days off. I was told I was the second sub they'd had this school year. 

I could kind of tell. They weren't sure how to log me into the teacher's Google Classroom. And I had to ask for a Chromebook and bell schedule. 

I've subbed enough days now in this virtual thing that I knew what I needed. And I got to the school with enough time for everything to be good to go. 

The day went smoothly, actually. While I didn't have access to the Google Classroom to make sure the kiddos were working, I had the meet links and all the information to describe the assignment. If they didn't work, it was on them. (I imagine they worked like they generally work. Some got a lot done. Most didn't do anything.)

It was weird hearing little kids running around outside. There's an elementary school across the street, and they've been using the campus for the students that they do have. (There's a day care kind of thing going. Mostly the elementary kiddos are at home as well, but some families need the day care, so that option is available. With safety precautions in place.)

Another subbing day during the pandemic. 

Vanishing Students

"Where did you go?" I asked.

"Health office. My stomach hurts. I told you..."

Oh right. Now I remember.

Thursday. Continuation high school. Social studies. Third period.

It was the beginning of the period. I was passing back their atlas pages. They were identifying countries and their GDPs and literacy rates via an online atlas. They'd been working on it a couple days.

As I was passing out packets, the phone rang. I scrambled to answer.

This was when Joey asked to go to the health office. I said sure. At any other moment when I didn't have three other things happening, I would have stopped and written him a pass. If he had waited two minutes, I would have been able to pause to write him one.

But by the time I was done on the phone and the packets had all been passed out, he had already gone. And I had forgotten giving him permission to go.

Joey hovered (rather than sitting). He walked out of class. He came back with food... (I assume he had a stomach ache like Russell did.) This is normal stuff for the continuation high school.

As I went through the roll (before Joey got back, after the crazy of starting class), I noticed that two students were missing...

Aaron and Joey had been sitting next to each other. Joey returned. Aaron did not.

Did Aaron ask to go someplace? Did I forget?

Aaron never returned. And I didn't write him a pass.

So, at the end of the day, I talked to the attendance clerk. Apparently, Aaron had been hanging out in the main office during class. I definitely didn't give him permission to go to the office. That I would have recalled.

Sigh.

Aaron has been difficult as of late. Some students just don't go to class. They're on campus, but they find other places to hang out. (He could have totally hung out in class and did no work. It's not like many of his classmates were actually working.)

So, the attendance clerk marked it as a cut. Because, that's what he had done. I'm pretty sure.

A Bad Combination

Sometimes students fight. But more of the time, students mock fight. That is, they go at each other as if they were going to hit each other, but they pull punches and they're laughing about it.

Stopping a mock fight is usually simple. I tell them to cut it out.

With Jordan and Daniel, it wasn't that simple.

Monday at the continuation high school, I was covering the social studies class. They were supposed to be reading Martin Luther King, Jr's Letter from Birmingham Jail. Mostly they were playing Krunker.

Fifth period. Even though Jordan and Daniel sat a distance apart, they found excuses to get up and "attack" the other. Or, they both got up and pounced on each other.

So, I kept having to intervene. It was annoying, but it didn't escalate any further.

Tuesday at the continuation high school I covered an English class. Guess what pair was in third period together.

And it happened again. They played at fighting. I told them to cut it out.

Then something unexpected happened. I was asked to cover the social studies teacher's class fifth period as she had an IEP meeting to attend.

Deep sigh. I knew that meant Jordan and Daniel again.

Alas, this time it escalated. The boys sat next to each other. And while I stood over them, Daniel "punched" Jordan in the kidney.

Daniel felt my kicking him out of class was unfair as Jordan had "slapped" him in the face in the second that I had turned away. I wanted them separated, so sending them both to the same room would have defeated the purpose.

Because the social studies teacher was on campus, I wanted to let her know what had happened. It turned out she has the exact same problem with them. She doesn't let them sit together because of it.

Thursday at the continuation high school I covered the computer class. Guess which pair was in fourth period.

So, seriously? These two kiddos have all their classes together? No wonder they spend all day playing.

Jordan and I got into it when I wouldn't let him sit next to Daniel. (I learned that lesson.) At least they didn't attempt to punch each other again.

After that class, I happened to run into the counselor. I asked her nicely if she could possibly in the future maybe make sure those two boys did not have any more classes together. Because, seriously, it was ridiculous.

I wasn't the only one complaining.

Perhaps they might find other outlets for that energy, like, perhaps doing their schoolwork, if only they didn't have each other to feed off of every day (and in every class!). Fingers crossed.

Wasting Class Time

It's been a while since I was at the continuation high school. Not much there has changed.

Graduation is fast approaching. To qualify for the graduation activities, including the graduation ceremony, the students have to have all of their credits posted by sometime this week. (The events of this post happened last week.)

Sixth period. History.

The conversation started with grad night. One girl had gotten her ticket for the festivities. (I'm not sure where they're going this year.) The other two girls in her group were discussing whether they needed to go to school that day.

Somehow, this segued into how many credits they had. To graduate, they must have 220. One was 20 short. One was 14 short. And the third girl whispered to the others how many more she needed.

They spent much of the period discussing how many credits they needed. Then they moved on to astrology (and whether the Aries was compatible with her Capricorn boyfriend--although they weren't certain he was a Capricorn). That led to sex (and which girl was a virgin and which girls were not).

What they did not discuss: the assignment. They spent the whole period, an hour, discussing stuff and not doing any work. You know, assignments that would give them points that add up to credits so they can graduate on time.

I did point this out.

"I only need two credits for this class."

"I'll get it done."

Deep sigh.

I will not be surprised if one or more of them fail to walk this year. But they did it to themselves.

So Hot

World history class at the continuation high school. They're doing a unit on the Holocaust. They were working on a vocabulary assignment in Google Classroom.

Because it was the continuation high school, most of them weren't doing much of anything. I was doing my usual rounds, trying to get them to make some sort of progress.

I came up on one boy who was on his phone. I questioned what he was up to. He told me that he had started the assignment, but when he opened his Google doc, his assignment had disappeared.

I completely understood. Trying to troubleshoot the problem, I asked the usual questions. He opened the Google doc to show me his assignment wasn't there... And his assignment popped up. His work had saved.

"It made me so hot when it wasn't there. I wasn't going to start it over."

And my ears perked up. "Hot"? He meant angry. Mad.

I did not know that hot was now a synonym for mad. Okay, then.

And, wouldn't you know it, other students used hot to mean angry that same day. It came up a couple times. The usage makes a certain amount of sense.

So, as you go about your day, see if you hear someone using hot to mean angry. I'm curious as to how widespread this now is.

Lost Buyout Slip

It was another Thursday at the continuation high school. Buyout day.

(That's the day that, if they get all their teachers' permission, they can skip school on Friday.)

I had a simple request for the students. I would sign their buyouts if they did some work. I wasn't even asking for them to finish the assignment. I just wanted to see progress.

Many of them watched videos or played games all period. So, while it was a low bar, it was one that many students didn't pass.

Fifth period. They spent all week working up to an essay on refugees. (They read articles on Monday, answered questions on Tuesday, and spent Wednesday creating a tree map with all the details they'd need. This school especially scaffolds things like writing assignments so the kiddos could write well academically if only they'd put in the effort.)

I did my usual of walking around and trying to convince students to do something. Anything.

I did find some students working. A few had questions. But the majority of the class wasn't doing much productive.

At the end of the period, I took my stack of buyout slips (I had maybe five) and went up to each student. What had they done?

Those that had given me buyouts had done something. They showed me. I signed.

Then I went to Julio. What had he done?

I knew he hadn't done much. I had spent several trips to his desk pushing him to do something.

He was surprised I had his buyout. He had been looking for it; he thought he'd lost it. So, because he lost it, he hadn't done any work. But since I had it, couldn't I sign it?

Yeah... no. Nope. Uh uh. I had said work = signed buyout.

Sigh. They need that carrot, apparently. If only he had remembered that he had given his buyout to me, I might have seen some work. Ah well.