Missing Initiative

Friday. Fifth period geography. The phone rang. 

The caller asked for a student. He was present. Then the caller explained that the boy's name had been left off of the list of those who were excused for some sort of basketball game, so could I please excuse him? 

I sent the boy on his way. And then I stewed. Because, really? And I need to explain why this whole think rankled for me.

The school has various sports teams. The usual ones. And daily there is some game someplace. There are always students who need to leave a class early so they can go to their game. This is so commonplace that I've never needed to mention it before. 

Usually, what happens on these days is that a student or a couple of students will inform me that they have to leave for their game at such-and-such a time. (It's usually more of an ask. They never demand this.) And I nod my head and say okay and to give me a heads up as they leave. 

What bothered me was that the boy in this case never said a word to me. Because, if he had come to me at the beginning of the period and said he had to leave, I would have said okay. 

In fact, there was a girl who had a soccer match to get to. She had to leave early. And she did. 

But this boy? Had to be called out of class? Didn't even attempt to go before the phone call? Said nothing to me about the game? 

And the idea that his coach had to call me to get the student released just... 

Someone has got to take more initiative if he wants to remain in athletics. It's not my job to remember these things. It's his. 

Of course, this is one of the boys who's not doing much in class and has to be reminded to do his work and not scroll on his phone.

He won't last long in athletics with that work ethic. 

Starting Off on the Wrong Foot

Thursday. Fifth period geography. 

Tuesday had been a scramble. There weren't enough desks for the students. I let them sit anywhere as I hadn't had a chance to set things up. And then they had a video to watch that many of them ignored. 

Thursday was a whole different ballgame. Because I had adequate seats, I had randomized the seating assignments. They had a lot of work to complete, but they had time to get it all done. 

While on Tuesday the class was talkative, on Thursday they were quiet. Most were busy on the 200 point assignment that was due. (They could have started it on Tuesday. Most had.) 

I had two boys having a conversation. About sports. The boy on the soccer team was scrolling on his phone...

I reminded the boy that he had to maintain his GPA to be eligible to participate in his sport. He said he knew this. He said he was done with his work. 

Because I'm going to be covering this class for three weeks, Ms. B had given me access to the Google Classroom. So, boyo was done with his work? I could check. 

He had done about half of the 200 point assignment. Enough to earn about 50%. Which is an F. Fs make him ineligible to play. (And I will track down who his coach is and send them an email about the student's lack of work if that becomes necessary. I've done it before.) 

I pointed out to the boy that he had quite a lot to still complete on his assignment. And that he should maybe do that rather than scrolling on his phone. 

Did he see my point? Not really. But freshmen sometimes need to learn things the hard way. He's on sub behavior, not realizing that things are going to be graded in a timely manner. It'll be fun when he finds out just how quickly he can get behind when he chooses to scroll his phone in class rather than getting his work done.

A Bad Choice

Wednesday was way calmer on my nerves than Tuesday had been. I had had a day to get acclimated to the class I'd be covering for the next three weeks. And I got the extra desks I'd need. (See yesterday's post.)

The school is on a block schedule, so on Wednesday I had a whole new group of classes. All were semester courses, so the kiddos would be new to the room. I got to assign seats.

I like to randomize seat selection when assigning seats. That way I'm not picking on any student (or appearing to). 

I learned in teacher school to not let the kiddos pick their own seats. When you do that, the kiddos will group in ways that make classroom control harder. Difficult students will find each other and feed off each other to make things more difficult. The good kiddos will sit in the front. And friends will sit next to friends, which makes them less likely to pay attention to the teacher when instruction is being given. 

So, to randomize, I had index cards with numbers on them that I shuffled. As the students gave me their names at the door, I'd pick the next card, give them their number, and write that number on my roster. (The desks were numbered.)

Fourth period. Ninth grade geography. 

I had assigned seats. Gotten the kiddos logged into Google Classroom. And then I had an intro video about South America for them to watch while they took notes. 

As they watched the video, I translated their roster into an actual seating chart. 

I compared my seating chart to where the kiddos were sitting. There was a discrepancy. I had a boy sitting in an unassigned seat while I had a seat with a name attached that was empty. 

Carson was sitting in the last seat of a row where I had assigned him a seat at the front. Ah ha. I found him scrolling on his phone.

I went over to discuss. He swore I had not given him the number 6, that I had given him seat 9. It's kinda hard to mistake a 9 for a 6 in speech and in my writing (on a clipboard, so I didn't flip it over). He was lying. 

But, I decided to let it be. 

Why? Because I wasn't in the mood for an argument. Not on the first day.

And, the teacher's station was at the back of the room. Rather than the front.

I have way better access to him if he's in the back. 

It'll be fun to hover over his shoulder. Frequently. 

He should have taken the seat I actually assigned. 

The Student Who Was Not There

Monday, third period. I was in the learning center. 

The learning center is a room for special ed kiddos to come and take tests. Some special ed students need an alternate location for that. It's also a room with fewer distractions, and some students can use the room on days when they need that. 

So, basically, I wasn't expecting to have any students. (Some days the room is empty. Some days there'll be several students in there.)

The phone rang. Mr. R asked if the student he had sent to the room had arrived to take a test. The student had not. 

So, I was surprised when this student arrived a few minutes later. 

He explained that he had been in the learning center earlier. He had finished his test. 

I was confused. Had he taken the test the previous period? Because, he had not been in the room during third period. 

When I got to the room during the passing period, it was locked. The room was empty. I had been alone for a while. There had been no other student there, so this boy claiming he had been there... 

I mean, I can think up instances of him being in the room and me not seeing him. Perhaps he found a learning center in an alternate dimension. Maybe he figured out a way to turn invisible. But, actual real world scenarios? Nope. He was not there. 

The boy asked if I could call Mr. R and tell him he'd arrived, so I did. But as he had not been in the room when he was supposed to have been, he was still in trouble. Mr. R asked me to send him to a different room to see a counselor, so I sent him on his way. 

(He returned a short time later, saying that the counselor said he couldn't stay. I let him and wrote it all down for the teacher I was covering. If he was lying, he's in worse trouble now. If not, well, Mr. R is kind of a jerk, so there was no point in making him angrier.) 

I was just so flummoxed by how certain this kiddo was that he'd been in the learning center that period. I tried to find out where the kiddo had actually been. But what I wasn't considering was the obvious: he was lying. 

Because, really, that's what this was. A lie. Where had he been? He wasn't telling. And he was going to keep repeating the lie that he had completed his test in the learning center. (Kind of have to admire him for picking a story and sticking to it.)

The Book Project

Wednesday. Ninth grade English. The assignment: begin working on their book projects.

Ms. B hadn't given me much information about what their specific assignment was. As usual, I was told "pass out papers, they know what to do". But freshmen...

What I was able to glean was that they had been reading a book (of their choice) for a few weeks. As a final project for the semester, they were doing something with those books. 

Right off the bat, several students "needed" to go to the library to get a book. (The first girl to ask informed me she just got back after having been suspended.) Um, they were supposed to have been reading this book for a while. And, Ms. B had gone over what the assignment was going to be in the prior class, so they totally could have gone to the library between that class (on Monday--block schedule) and then.

But, again, freshmen. They do not plan ahead, especially for in class stuff.

They were basically doing prelim stuff. They were listing title of book, author, publisher, and copyright date.

I got so many questions as to how to find copyright date. Sigh.

Then they were to find the author's website and get information from that.

A few discovered Goodreads. They asked if they could use that for info. It had some of the info they needed, and it wasn't Wikipedia. (They are warned not to use Wikipedia for research.) 

I'm not sure what the whole project will entail, but it's way more interesting than the book reports we had to write when I was in school. I think I saw something about Google slides. And presenting to the class. 

Yeah, I don't know if I would want to do an oral report in class. So, maybe I did have it better. 

(Oh, the whining over the books. They got to choose their books! But freshmen will whine about everything.)

The Gram

Valentine's Day. Fourth period world geography. 

On Valentine's Day, the school choirs do a fundraiser where various groups of students deliver singing Valentine grams. They audition for this. The groups are three to seven students, and each group has a part of a song they perform. Then the recipient gets a card with a message and a balloon or a flower (depending on how much the giver spent). 

I've been subbing a lot of years. That means I've seen a lot of Valentine's Days. I know the drill.

A group showed up looking for Charlie. He was identified. The group surrounded him and began the song.

The boy in front of the gram recipient, Gary, got up and got out his phone. He recorded the performance. 

The group finished, said "Happy Valentine's Day," and departed. 

Charlie looked at the gram.

Gary had sent it. 

Apparently, they had had a conversation. Gary said he was going to send Charlie a gram. Charlie didn't believe him. So, Gary had to prove that he was going to do it.

I didn't get the impression that there's anything going on with Charlie and Gary. Charlie was more embarassed than anything. And I think that was the point. Charlie wasn't expecting a gram. And while it wasn't mean-spirited, Gary sending the gram was kind of a prank.

(There are openly gay students on campus. A boy sending another boy a Valentine's gram would not have caused a stir.) 

Moment over, the boys went back to working on their assignment. (The day's topic was weathering and erosion.) 

Remember Me?

The Tuesday of finals week (the week before winter break), I caught an art class. I had covered Ms. G's class back in September (one of the first I covered after finishing the long-term freshman English class), so I had a pretty fair idea of what I was in for.

Third period. Their final consisted of them completing a slide show on Google Slides on the seven elements of art. 

The class was largely freshmen. While most of them got right to work on what they needed to do, I had some of the usual issues.

I approached the back far table to remind the three boys they should be working on their final.

"You hated our fifth period, didn't you?"

Jensen had been in that fifth period freshman English class that I started the school year in. But in that moment, that's not where my mind was. Monday I had just finished up the long term special ed social studies class, and I hadn't even been back on this campus since the beginning of November. 

I vaguely recalled the English class. But it would have taken me a minute to cast my mind back to that time. I didn't want to take that minute. I replied.

"I have covered so many classes since then. I don't remember."

Because holding onto the emotions from classes isn't worth the effort. I keep things fresh in my memory for a week until I post the interesting bits here, but then many of the events get lost when I get busy doing something else the next day. It's fun to go searching through my past posts sometimes. I'll read something and barely recall the incident (until I read it, and then sometimes I recall it vividly). 

As I watched the class, I did cast my mind back to September. Jensen was consistently late, sometimes as much as a half hour. And as he played around rather than doing his final, I noted that he hadn't grown up any in the past three months.

Apparently it was a point of pride with Jensen that his class was awful? 

Ah, freshmen. They are such different creatures.

Useful Information

Friday. Freshman English, honors. 

It was day two of a two day assignment. (The school is on a block schedule, so I had two different sets of classes for each day.) They were reading The House on Mango Street.

It was the same lesson plan as the previous day, but things went much more smoothly with the honors kiddos than they did with the general ed kiddos. We were to read the first five chapters, and then they had questions.

They were supposed to have brought their books with them. (They had checked out copies from the library earlier in the week.) Most had. But a few had not.

But, they knew how to find copies of the book online.

One boy was explaining how to do it to his tablemates. Curious, I stopped and had him explain it to me. He did.

It's a simple Google search. Type in the name of the book you're looking for. Then add "doctype.pdf" to the end of it. And copies of the book will pop up. 

Try it. It works. (Although, the book has to exist as a doctype.pdf online for it to work, so I assume mostly books that are read in schools will be there.)

When I pay attention, I can learn all sorts of interesting things from them. Some of those things are more useful than others.

Short Time

On Monday, I knew I was on short time in the long term English 9 assignment. But just how short? 

I had been kept in the loop of the hiring process for the new teacher. I knew when the interviews were. I knew when they were offering the job. I knew when the job had been accepted. And as soon as I got his contact info, I reached out to Mr. V, the new teacher, to let him know what he'd be walking into.

He said the district said he could start as soon as Tuesday.

Monday during third period was when I got the official notification.

We had a two-day transition. I taught the classes while Mr. V figured out what he'd be doing going forward. (The topic of the day was "Fish Cheeks" by Amy Tan.) 

I've left the classes in good hands. And now I'm back to day-to-day subbing. 

Drop Everything

I don't think the ninth graders really understand the concept of other people's time.

It was vocabulary test day. (They have a vocabulary warm-up every day. At the end of the unit, they take a test on those words where they place the words in sentences.) After, I was giving them time to make sure they were caught up with all the work (and checking to make sure I hadn't made any errors in their gradebooks--the grading has been a mess for reasons beyond my control). 

After we finished the test, a student asked if he could go "visit" one of his teachers. I pointed out that she had a class and she wouldn't have time to "visit". He did not see my point.

Seventh period. Class had just started. I was going over the announcements for the day when there was a knock on the (unlocked) door. 

A student from earlier in the day was there. He needed "help" with something. Um... I have a class. I don't have time to stop to help one student while 30 others are waiting for me to teach class.

(If he had come to me at lunch, after school, or before school, that would have been different. Then I could take whatever time he needed.)

I shooed the boy away and went back to my remarks to the current class. (They seemed to think me rude. I guess they didn't want to get their test started.) 

I just... Do they not realize that I can't stop everything for one student when I've got a class? Apparently so, as another boy did that just the previous week.

(The school has hired a new teacher for the class. As soon as his paperwork has cleared, he'll take over the class. Likely, by the time you read this, I'll be out of here and on to other subbing assignments.)

A Theory

Bianca is in both my first and second periods. On block schedule, that means I start the day with her every school day.

Bianca is in ELD, which means she's not a fluent English speaker. She speaks it well enough to get by, but she's not quite there academically.

Bianca has also been out of class. A lot. 

She asks to use the restroom, and then she's gone a while. She returns to say she was in the health office. She was throwing up.

She's frequently been late. She's been absent. And she's not doing much work. 

She complains of being tired all the time.

On Thursday morning, she approached me before class. She said she might need to leave class quickly if she felt like she needed to throw up. 

And suddenly I had a realization.

I asked Bianca if she needed to go to the health office first. She said she was okay. Later that period she gave me the heads up that she needed to go. A while later, another student alerted me that Bianca had gone to the health office. (Bianca texted her.) 

Bianca's mother has been in contact asking about Bianca's work. Now that I have a theory, I kind of want to give Bianca's mother a heads up without saying it outright. But other things have taken up my time and energy, so I haven't had that follow up yet. 

Bianca is a freshman--fourteen years old. I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong.

Interruptions That Miss the Point

Last Friday was a long, long day. 

The long-term English 9 assignment has been going fairly well, all things considered. The lesson of the day was "How to Send a Teacher an Email", and it was taking up the whole long period. (The kiddos got antsy which was understandable.)

Sixth period was my last class of the day. And the lesson was going well. I was in the middle of discussing a slide on screen when the classroom door opened.

I recognized the student. I couldn't tell you his name or his period number, but I knew he had been in class earlier in the day. 

Completely oblivious to the full class sitting in their seats, watching, this boy strode across the room to inform me, "I finished the MLA assignment and submitted it in Google Classroom". 

Um, great? 

(The assignment had been due the previous class period, so it was late. Or it had been assigned the previous week. There were two MLA formatting assignments, and I was unclear on which one he was referring to. As I wasn't going to chase it down, especially at that moment, I didn't ask.) 

Message delivered, he strode back out the room, and I continued the lesson.

Freshmen... 

I guess I'm going to have to reiterate that if they want to tell me they've submitted an assignment late they need to email me. I thought I made that clear in the email lesson. (I kind of hit this concept hard: when a student tells me they submitted an assignment, I won't remember, but when I'm going through my emails, I can chase it down and take care of it.) 

Adjustments

Thursday. Fifth period. The topic for the day was "how to write a teacher an email". 

I was a bit worried that the lesson would go short. I had a slide show (provided by Ms. B who is next door to my room and teaches the same subject--she's been such a huge help with this long-term gig) that I had slightly modified. I had thoughts on how to stretch things to fit the hour and a half I had with the class.

It turned out that none of that was needed.

The students were to be taking notes. For the most part, they were. But every time I'd pause (to let them write things down), they'd talk to their neighbors, so I had to stop and try to get their attention again. 

Keeping a class of 14-year-olds focused is hard. Especially when they're more interested in conversing with their friends.

Fifth period is one of the co-taught classes. These are classes that have a large number of special ed kiddos, so a second teacher is there to help them. 

After the umpteenth time I tried to get the class's attention, Ms. Y lost it. 

Ms. Y gave the class an angry talking-to. She informed them that what they were doing was not acceptable, and it was time for them to stop acting like middle schoolers and pay attention.

Cowed, they calmed enough so I could finish the lecture. Barely. We finished maybe a minute or two before the class period was over.

This is why assigned seats are a thing. As I inherited the class from another sub, I didn't feel the need to change the seats. And Mr. P had let them pick their own seats at the beginning of school. But they had now lost the privilege. 

Ms. Y and I discussed, and we came up with who definitely needed to be separated from whom. And creating a new seating chart got added to my already over full plate.

But, if it calms the class down so they can actually learn something, totally worth it.

By the time you read this, I should know if the new seats helped or not.

The Vandal

It was my second week in the long-term English assignment, and I was still woefully behind. 

The teacher for the class decided to retire two days before the beginning of the school year. The district installed a long-term sub in the position until they hire a new teacher to take over. The long-term sub, Mr. P, got his very own full-time job, so I took over the position on the eighth day of school. As of the writing of this post, the school has interviewed several applicants, and they will likely offer the job to one of them. Until that teacher starts, the class is mine with all the lesson planning, grading, and classroom control issues that go along with teaching.

It was third period, my prep period, and I was hurriedly trying to get something done as I've just barely been holding on. I'm not sure exactly what I was doing at the time, but I happened to look over at one of the desks, and I noticed the Chromebook.

All classrooms now have a class set of Chromebook computers for student use. I've found it's easier to pass them out in the morning and put them away after the last class of the day. 

Alas, this Chromebook had a new design upon it. This design had not been there when I passed out all the computers before school. 

A student had scratched this into the cover sometime during class.

Deep sigh.

I knew exactly who sat in that seat. The Vandal (as I will now call him here) is a student who isn't very tuned in to school. He had his head down on his desk more than he was paying attention.

(These are things I need to keep on top of, but at the moment I'm just trying to get through the lessons each day. As soon as I catch up, I'll be able to focus on other things.)

Who do I report such a thing to? What do I do with this information?

Luckily, I have people I can ask. I sent a message to the IT guy, so hopefully they can replace this computer or something. And the co-teacher (who wasn't in that class, but I told her about it later) said the student needed to get a referral for this.

I wrote the referral. The above picture was attached. And a day or so later, the Vandal was called out of class and sent to an office. He came back a short time later. I assume he's now aware that his artwork was not appreciated.

Full-time teaching is hard. This is why I'm a sub. 

I now keep a closer eye on the Vandal. He hasn't defaced any other computers lately.

Tweet, Tweet

It was the last Monday of the school year. (This is our last week, but Monday was a holiday.) And I was co-teaching a biology class. (Well, only for two periods. For the other three, I was the only teacher of a special ed science class.) 

When I saw the lesson, I knew I had to write about it, if only for Bookworm at Ramblin' with AM. 

They were doing a pre-lab. The lab was the next day, and they needed to be ready.

They were going to do an ornithological survey of the campus. That means birds. They were going to be looking for birds.

Mr. B gave a lot of preliminary instructions. The first of which was that the students needed to wear good walking shoes the next day as they'd be covering the whole campus for an hour.

Mr. B had given them a list of birds that he knew to be on campus. (He told me before class that one of them had a nest on campus the previous year, but they had not returned. He planned to show them where that was when they were out.) 

For each bird, they were to look up it's habitat, what it eats, where it generally lives, what it looks like, and what it's call sounds like. He directed them to the Audubon Society's guide to birds. 

For "what it's call sounds like", the students were to listen to the calls on the website, and then describe it in their own words.

The room filled with bird call sounds. Mr. B rather enjoyed that. (Of course, it also meant the students were on task.) Students questioned how to describe the sounds. 

"It kind of sounds like those dogs you find at the swap meet," one girl said. 

"You get dogs at the swap meet?" Mr. B asked.

"You know, those toys that you pull..."

Then we both knew what she was talking about, and I thought it an apt description. 

The students had various descriptions. And because they were freshmen, they had to run them by us to make sure they were okay. There was the one that sounded like a bird rapping. There were a lot of "squeaky toy" descriptions. One boy said the call sounded like a jackhammer. We approved all of these, as that's what the calls sounded like to them. 

It was late in the period. A student played a bird call...

Mr. B: "Who's still on Cooper's Hawk?"

That was the first bird on the list. They should have been way past it by then.

Yeah, Mr. B knew all the bird calls. He's done this a few times before. I was kind of sad that Ms. A returned the next day as I would have enjoyed tagging along on this lab. Oh well.

Corporate Espionage

With Ms. A's return from maternity leave, I am now back to day-to-day subbing.

Tuesday. Biology. The end of the semester is less than a month away, so the biology classes were assigned their end of the year project. 

In groups of up to three, they were to "create" an eco-friendly product/company. They will present this product to the class à la Shark Tank for their final.

They were given videos to watch. They were given a template to use as a "business plan". They were to come up with a company name and slogan. 

(One girl didn't know what a slogan was. I asked her to name a fast food restaurant. She chose In-N-Out. I said, "That's what a hamburger's all about," and she understood.) 

But, freshmen. And freshmen do what freshmen do.

Sixth period. Two groups of boys were seated almost next to each other. And they were suspicious of one another.

See, some of the kiddos were asking various groups what product they'd come up with. They were looking for ideas. (I threw a few out there to help.) But boy group one thought boy group two was stealing their idea.

Some assignments the kiddos can copy. I've got to be careful during tests for that reason. But a project like this? Even if the two groups came up with the same product, their presentations would be completely different. They'd have to be. 

Still, boy group one was sure boy group two was after their idea. And then boy group two claimed that boy group one was going to steal their idea. 

(One of the boys in group one compared it to McDonalds and Burger King. I pointed out that those are totally different companies. He seemed to think that Burger King copied McDonalds, and I had to try to explain that that's not how that works. Sigh.)

What was this big idea that each claimed the other was stealing? Um, well, I didn't hear it. I'm pretty sure they didn't actually come up with any idea at all.

They've got two and a half weeks to come up with something. Let's hope they don't get so wrapped up in worrying about having their idea stolen that they don't come up with any idea at all.

Protest Fail

Last week was spring break. As is my custom, I saved my subbing posts from the week before the break to post the week we're back in school. 

Wednesday. 11:59 AM.

The bell rang to begin fourth period freshman geography. But several students were hovering in the doorway. 

It was the third day of a four day assignment, and while I had many tardies, this was unusual. What was going on?

A student showed me a post from social media. (Instagram? I didn't get a close look.) It was a graphic for a student walkout at noon.

(I hadn't heard anything about this before that moment, but I later heard about it on the evening news. Here's a website explaining the plan. And here's an article talking about how it went down elsewhere.)

Ah. That made sense. They were going to walk out. Okay, then.

But... A couple of them were unsure what to do. And I had one student wanting to be marked present even though he was planning to walk out. 

Ah, freshmen...

I had no problem with them protesting. But I wasn't marking students present who weren't in class. 

(It was the timing that sucked. If class started five minutes earlier, I would have had time to take roll. Five minutes later and they wouldn't have come to class.)

It was like they wanted permission to leave. I couldn't give that. I wasn't going to object, but I wasn't going to encourage it, either. (It was a protest. The whole point was them going against what they were supposed to be doing.) 

A bunch of them left. Well, not a bunch. Less than one-fourth of the class. 

And... 

I mean, it wasn't like they were truly missing anything. They were having a "workshop day" where they were completing assignments for the unit they were working on. They knew this. They had asked me the day before, and I had confirmed that was the assignment. 

Five minutes later, three students returned. Then another two a bit later. Then a bit after that, another two.

Apparently, this "protest" wasn't much of a protest. It was a bunch of students aimlessly walking around campus. The freshmen got bored and came back to class. 

Deep sigh. What a great opportunity wasted. 

(Someone should have taken the lead. They've done this sort of thing before at the school.)

Today's A to Z Challenge post brought to you by the letter

Sniping at Each Other

Digital art. Sixth period. 

It had been a weird art day. The classes were mostly silent. (Art classes are generally very talkative.) So, sixth period gave me a bit of culture shock when they weren't. 

Of course, the class was filled with mostly freshmen...

Two boys were sniping at each other from across the room. One insulted the other boy's hair. The other questioned the first boy's sports prowess. And on it went. 

Then:

Boy 1: "Stay in your corner, big man." (By his tone of voice, he meant "big" as "fat".)

Boy 2: "Stay at McDonalds, big man." 

This exchange got everyone's attention. It was repeated twice by others as some had missed the nuances. (Picture me shaking my head.) Someone chimed in to say that boy 2 was being racist. 

Boy 2: "Not gonna lie, that was kinda racist."

Another boy entirely: "You both are the same race!"

Ah, the joys of freshmen...

Avoiding the Final

For the last two days of the semester, I was covering a special ed co-teacher. She was going out of town for the holidays. Way out of town. Africa. So, not even on the same continent. 

For the first two finals of the day, I sat in the back of the room and watched them work. But for the third final, Mr. S had something for me to do. 

One accommodation that special ed students get for tests is to take the test in a different room. It helps some of them concentrate better. When there is a co-teacher, that teacher will take the students to that other room and remain. (And if there's a co-teacher, about 1/3rd of the class is designated special ed.)

Mr. S knew one of his students would want to test in the separate room. And, he decided that it would be better for all concerned if Lou was removed during the final as well. 

As I am well-acquainted with Lou, I saw the wisdom in that decision.

We went to the learning center. It's the room the special ed students can go to to get extra help on assignments. But, it was finals day, so anticipating a large number of students, the teachers in charge of the learning center that period sent us to the overflow room. (This was just a different classroom where the teacher didn't have class that period.) 

Once in the overflow room, I parked myself next to Lou. And... Well, he logged in. (The test was online.) He looked at the test. But he didn't touch it. Sigh.

I prodded. It was time to start. He didn't have that much time to work. He should get started.

(The other student with me worked well on her own on the other side of the room. I kept an eye on her, but she was fine.) 

Lou needed to "step out". (Technically it was a restroom break.) Hoping he'd come back ready to work, I allowed it.

But then he was gone for a long time. I kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting. 

Finally, he returned. He had a story about a member of the security staff "hassling" him. She told him to get back to class. I don't know why he didn't tell her that he was in the overflow learning center room. Instead, he tried to lose her, hid from her, and once he lost the tail, he returned.

At that point, there was maybe fifteen minutes left of class. I hoped rather than expected it would be enough time for Lou to finish. 

It turned out it was. But that's only because Lou quickly marked random answers on the test rather than actually doing it.

Five minutes later, Lou wanted to return to class. But that was a hard no. I asked Mr. S before we left, and he thought it would be better if Lou wasn't in class to disturb the other students.

Considering how Lou behaved during testing time, that was a wise choice.

(Lou was beyond caring. He said that he had an F in the class and that the final wasn't going to make a difference.)

That's Not the Math Assignment

The class was called "math support and enrichment". Officially it's an extra period of math for students who are struggling so they can get some extra help.

In practice it's a class of the worst behaved students who really don't want to be there. 

The following week was finals. They had the period to do some studying. Did they? Of course not.

"Could you sign something for me?"

I couldn't imagine what the boy needed me to sign. He handed me the page.

After a quick scan, I got the gist. It was the assignment from his health class. He was to interview an adult in his life, and the signature was the proof that the interview had taken place. 

The boy was going to fill out what he needed to fill out, but he needed an adult to sign off. It was due that same day. 

It was one of those "a lack of planning on your part doesn't constitute an emergency on my part" type of situations. 

I pointed out that he was supposed to interview someone. He asked if he could interview me.

No. Absolutely not. 

I already had my hands full with the class. One girl was yelling at just about everyone in class. They were picking on her. Then a group of boys was doing something on social media. And that was along with the other misbehaviors that I was just trying to keep a lid on.

But that's not the main reason I wasn't going to consent to an interview.

It's the end of the semester. The health classes are in their last unit. The sex ed unit. 

There's no way that goes any way but sideways.

(It was quite the treat to listen as the boy and another girl in the class went over material for the class. They mispronounced chlamydia and syphilis.)