I hope you get suspended

Now, I don't normally think that way towards students. Detention, yeah, but suspension's kinda harsh. It means the student isn't in their seats for at least a whole day. It means they're not learning. As a teacher, I want kids to learn. But sometimes, the offense is just too severe for a slap on the wrist and the kid needs to learn that their behavior is horribly out of line.

Like Sonya*. She was part of my drama class today. I was uber excited to sub for a drama class, since that class held my heart (and my after school time) when I was in high school. Well, these kids were something else. I don't know what happened between me saying, "Practice your monologues," and the words reaching their ears, but I guess it ended up sounding like, "Play around, text, don't do anything that you're supposed to be doing."

In this playing around, Sonya got the bright idea that she should tell another student that she doesn't belong in this country because she (the other student) is black. As a black man myself, and, ya know, a decent human being, I let her know that this was not an appropriate way to talk to anyone. At any time. Ever. To which she responded, "She was rude to me, I'm going to be rude back."

I let her know, "No matter how rude she was to you, you do not talk to people like that. You can leave right now and go talk to the principal."

"I don't have to go anywhere."

"Fine, I'll call the office, then."

"You do that."

So, security had to come to my classroom today. It always amazes me how little thought goes into people's attitudes when they get like this. Sonya couldn't possibly have thought, "Y know, I'm gonna say something nasty, talk back to the teacher like I have the right to do whatever the crap I want, then have security come and whisk me away to the office instead of going on my own accord. This will certainly end well for me." It's amazing to me how much can be prevented if people actually thought through their actions rather than letting the spark that their tongues ignite grow into a mighty, terrible forest fire.

I'm nit sure if Sonya got suspended, but I sure hope that she did so she can learn that her terrible actions come with a terrible consequence.

Class (thankfully) dismissed!

*Names have been changed to protect the identities of the students

Kids say the racistest things!

There's a song in the wildly popular/inappropriate musical Avenue Q called "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist." Hang around children (or really anyone) and you'll see that that's true.

These are actual moments from my classrooms.

Non-Mexican student: "People always think I'm Mexican because of my last name."
Clueless White student: "What race are you?"
Non-Mexican student: "I'm Puerto Rican."
Clueless White student: "Isn't that the same thing?"
Me: *smh* (shake my head)
~~~~~~~~
White student: "Mr. Jefferson, are there white people in Africa?"
Me: "Yes."
Black student: "There are white people everywhere
White student: "That's racist."
Black student: "That's not racist. It'd be racist if I said 'I don't like that there are white people everywhere.'"
Me: *nmh* (nod my head)
~~~~~~~~
White student: "They don't have a language in Africa. They just click and stuff. *starts clicking*
Me: *vsmhawmh* (violently shake my head and wave my hands) "You should never say that again. You'll sound stupid." (I didn't say that last part, but I wanted to)
~~~~~~~~
Curious student: "So... where are you from?"
Me: "Phoenix."
Curious student: "I mean, what country?"
Me: "America."
Curious student: "Where are your parents from?"
Me: "Arizona and California."
Curious student: *frustrated*
Me: *hhhiv* (hold head high in victory)
~~~~~~~~

Those were all from the same junior high. This next one's from my Sunday school class, free of charge.

Chinese girl: "Are you from Ethiopia."

This is a lot less offensive when you take into account that she is a) 6-years-old and 2) adopted into a family that also adopted a boy from Ethiopia. She just must have figured that since her brother is black and is from Ethiopia, this other black person must be from Ethiopia.

Class dismissed!

Bullies & Instigators

I always thought that I'd be the ultra-strict teacher who just wouldn't put up with any of the crap the kids give, but I've learned that a teacher has to be flexible. There are certain rules that we just kinda have to overlook, unfortunately. If, for example, I gave out a detention every time I heard a cuss word, we'd run out of paper. Unless it gets really bad, I mostly just correct students (you mean "shoot," right?) or tell them to watch their mouths.

Today, I told a kid to watch his mouth. This kid is kinda funny to me. I subbed for his math teacher, and he was a handful. He said that he had ADD and used that as an excuse. But in this class (American History), he's always working hard with the student next to him. It's night and day difference. It might be the subject. It might be the teacher (I haven't heard anything good from these kids about their math teacher). It might just be that he has history 1st hour and he gets crazy as the day progresses. Who knows? It doesn't really matter to me.

But I heard him swear in class, and I told him to watch his mouth. He was looking angrily at another kid. Usually, "Watch your mouth" gets them back on track, but not this time. This kid was pissed. From what I gathered, Payton* (the kid who did the cussing-out) did something to provoke Hans (the kid being cussed-out). Hans called Payton retarded. Payton apparently does not like being called retarded. At all. 

So I had to take off my teacher hat for a second and put on my cop/negotiator hat. They both wanted to keep going at it while I was trying to talk them down. Hans kept turning around and saying, "Don't dish it out if you can't take it." I told him he needed to hush his mouth and turn around. Meanwhile, I'm trying to calm Payton down. This kind of thing was not in the substitute handbook (was there a substitute handbook?), so I have to use my gut. I don't like taking sides, but it was obvious that Hans was just provoking Payton to piss him off, which pisses me off. I hate it when kids (people in general, really) find a nerve and intentionally strike it. That's weak. That's cowardly. That's just plain wrong. If I see this happen again tomorrow, Hans is gone. That type of nonsense doesn't belong in any classroom, and I won't allow it in any that I'm in.

Well, I have to play teacher/cop/negotiator/counselor/father/babysitter/whatever for one more day. I'm honestly gonna miss (some of) them. I kinda hope I get to teach some of them when I start teaching full-time. That would be really awesome. But until then,

Class dismissed!

*All names have been changed to protect the identities of the students

It's not poisonous... anymore

A girl in my class today mentioned something stupid about liking cats.

Now, I would never run a cat over or put out Meow Mix laced with arsenic or dip a cat in honey and throw it at a bear... but I hate cats. It might stem from the fact that I'm deathly allergic to them and thus every single cat ever born is out to get me. It might stem from the fact that cats are evil. The jury's still out.

Anyway, this girl asked me if I liked cats, to which I responded, no, that's ridiculous, they're gross, do your social studies. She asked another student who said that he hates cats and that he has an aquarium. One with a blue frog.

Aside from my knowledge that cats are of Satan, I don't know much about animals. But I think I could possibly might have heard that blue frogs are poisonous. This student said that this particular type isn't poisonous.

Frog boy: "They stop being poisonous once you take them out of their natural environment."
Me: *confused look on face*
Cat girl: "That's like saying that once you take a dog out of the kennel, it's not going to bite you anymore."

Class dismissed!

It's no wonder

I had junior high math for the second day in a row. But this was at a different school and I had a student teacher, which means I hardly had to do anything. They were also taking a practice test for the NCLB test next week. This one was 25 questions. Not terribly easy, but you could definitely get the answers if you do the work (which most of the students didn't).

One of said students entered all his answers in, and the student teacher checked the answers. She told him he got 7 right. Out of 25. That's a 28%. She told him to look over a couple of the problems.

While he's looking, I hear him say, "How did I miss 16 questions?"

[facepalm]

It was all of a sudden clear to me how he only got 7 correct.

Class Dismissed!

I don't get paid enough to care

The 7th graders today were prepping for their No Child Left Behind tests, which are happening next week. I let them know that though I would not be there to test them and though this was just a practice for the test, this was serious and I wanted complete silence and wanted it to look like they were actually taking this stupid, ridiculous, wholly unnecessary test. So they quiet down and most get to work answering the 12 questions. I know I'm a math guy, and I kinda know a lot stuff, but it was still really easy. The first question was "What does r represent?" If any student didn't know that it was radius, I would want to kick them in the neck (I've never done this, for the record).

One girl in my 7th (of 8) hour (it's not as bad as it sounds; 3rd hour I had lunch duty and 5th and 6th hour were prep, so it was just my fourth class of the day) I guess found the test too stressful or something and walked out. She just got up and walked out of the classroom. I asked the student next to her where she was going, and she said, "Well, it's kind of hard to explain. She just does that sometimes and Ms. Normal Teacher usually just calls security." I was thinking, "Ain't nobody got time fo' dat!" and went outside to get her. I called to her, "Over Emotional Girl!"

She was crying in the arms of a friend, who I don't know, don't care to know, and why wasn't she in class? Friend mustered up the most attitude that she could and asked, "Can't you see she's crying?"

Read the title of this post.

I don't know if it was test anxiety or boyfriend problems or the realization that Harry Styles just doesn't know or care who she is. And frankly, I don't care. You don't get up in the middle of class--in the middle of a test--and leave.

Now, I might sound a bit harsh. But this girl, while she was in class, wasn't working, and when you get that enough, your sympathy level runs really low. I don't have the time, energy, or money to care for kids who don't care for their own grades. Especially when it's kids that I don't even know but for 50 minutes out of one day. It's not a good investment of my time.

So I tell Friend, "She's still can't just walk out of class." When Friend rolled her eyes, I could have called she-bears out of the woods to maul both of them, but I'm not that kind of a substitute. Some classmates grabbed Over Emotional Girl's stuff and took it to her, since this happened at the very end of class and the bell rang before she came back in. And that class was (praise the Lord!) over. I left a note for the teacher, like I do for every class. I wish I could be there to see the punishment that Over Emotional Girl got for this, but alas, that doesn't come with the job. I can only assume that Ms. Normal Teacher handled it well.

Until next time.

Class Dismissed!

Google It!

The kids were working on a group powerpoint project. Each member had to do 7-10 slides about their section. This one group of 4 was particularly argumentative about their design, which took up more time than  it should have, leaving little time to actually discuss content. They were going to the lab the next day, but knew they weren't yet prepared. The de facto leader of the groups tells the others, "Okay, we'll need to keep in contact to get this done. We need to exchange gmail accounts."

"I don't even know what that is," responded one of the group members. "I'll Google it."


I know it's not good to laugh at students, but he understood when I explained that he wanted to google a google product.

Class Dismissed!