Monday After Grad Exams

Well, it's the first day back after last week's graduation exams.  I approached this day with dread.  Usually, after graduation exams, students don't think they have to do anything else the rest of the year.  It is up to the teacher to make sure the students understand that they are expected to complete work and pay attention until the final bell rings on the last day.  Of course, after the past week of exams, I couldn't even remember what we had studied two weeks ago.  I made it to school at 7:10 ready to catch up, only to find out that I have cafeteria duty from 7:15 until 7:45.  Great.  No food fights, so not too bad.  However, I didn't get to my classroom until school had started, so no time to prepare.  Luckily, the kids were so sleepy, no one noticed that I'm just reading out of the book.

 My classes were pretty good today, in a drowsy sort of way, but I discovered that I had to watch the 7th grade class during my planning (last class of the day).  The 7th graders are monsters. Everyday, I read about all the 7th graders in ISS or ASD in my email.  They have a bad reputation.  I was hoping to spend my planning period coming up with some endothermic experiments that my chemistry kids could do tomorrow, but must babysit instead.  I know that in order to keep them in line, I'll have to have some work for them to do.  Just one problem:  I don't know what class they are in.  I ask the teacher who is sending them to me and he says "health".  Good.  I can do a health class.  I go online and print up the seven levels of health and figure I can discuss that with them for fifty minutes.  For the most part, it worked.

 I had to make one student go into the hall and stand because she couldn't stop laughing out loud every couple of minutes.

 Another had to turn over her sunglasses to me because she couldn't keep them on her head instead of her eyes.  And yet another was using a cell phone, very stealthily, she thought.  I tried twice to give her an opportunity to put it away.  Finally, I just went over to her and told her to put it away.  Then I used her as the perfect example of someone with a relaxed value system (spiritual health) and explained that she most likely didn't feel it was important to follow the rules at school, possibly because at home, her family doesn't put too much emphasis into the importance of rules.  It worked brilliantly.  She became flustered and started denying that she was like that.  I simply smiled while all eyes were on her and walked around as if I hadn't heard her.

 The bell rang right after that so the kids took off. Teacher, one;  7th graders, zero.  I rock!