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Fourth period: substituting for fourth-grade English. Forty eight-year-olds versus me, alone. And my novelty's worn off, and the regular teacher left me with no lessons and no idea when she'd be back.
I kept a pretty good handle on most of them for maybe twenty, thirty minutes, and had them doing work in their notebooks- but the one kid, man, the one who did not stop yelling out. Every two minutes, whether there was an answer to be had or not, to me or to someone else, raising the noise level after I told him to stop, gave him questions to do, had him stand up for two minutes- which usually works to chill a kid out. But he just started throwing things.
So I warned him twice and then pulled him off to the Games teacher. Who smacked him one. Now the fourth graders know they're not safe just because I'm the only teacher in the classroom.
It feels awful. But they quieted down enough to let each other focus, and they focused enough to get some work done. And 4A across the hall stopped peering over at my noisy freakshow.
Until the very end of class, right at the bell when A, a tall and moody kid who's been a small bundle of anger issues all month, whirled around and launched himself at V, two seats down. I caught him back and pulled him aside, and waited through about seven minutes of fidgeting and "sorry ma'am"s with one question: why?
It really did take seven minutes. Which is an age when you're nine years old and it's lunchtime.
"Ma'm, he say, your father die."
Christ, kid.
I was expecting something over water bottle and pencil box.
---
Seventh period: I was called in to substitute for 11th-grade Economics. Their current unit is the Economic History of Postwar India, a subject to which I frankly confessed very little knowledge. Instead?
An Economic History of the World, 1945-1981. Lina-Version. 30 minutes, complete with hand-drawn map of the planet.*
I love these substitute periods. They're all about asking the right questions. Hey, guys, who was left standing after World War II? Okay, why? So where's the economic power going? Whose economy wins? Why? Who's developing? Who's trading? Who's broken? Who's rebuilding?
We built a sense of what was going on in the rest of the world, around their regular lessons centered in India. And they were really interested. They wanted to know things I could actually teach them!
It turns out I'm kind of good at telling these stories.
*Except I'm realizing just now I forgot Australia. Dammit, Australia.
I kept a pretty good handle on most of them for maybe twenty, thirty minutes, and had them doing work in their notebooks- but the one kid, man, the one who did not stop yelling out. Every two minutes, whether there was an answer to be had or not, to me or to someone else, raising the noise level after I told him to stop, gave him questions to do, had him stand up for two minutes- which usually works to chill a kid out. But he just started throwing things.
So I warned him twice and then pulled him off to the Games teacher. Who smacked him one. Now the fourth graders know they're not safe just because I'm the only teacher in the classroom.
It feels awful. But they quieted down enough to let each other focus, and they focused enough to get some work done. And 4A across the hall stopped peering over at my noisy freakshow.
Until the very end of class, right at the bell when A, a tall and moody kid who's been a small bundle of anger issues all month, whirled around and launched himself at V, two seats down. I caught him back and pulled him aside, and waited through about seven minutes of fidgeting and "sorry ma'am"s with one question: why?
It really did take seven minutes. Which is an age when you're nine years old and it's lunchtime.
"Ma'm, he say, your father die."
Christ, kid.
I was expecting something over water bottle and pencil box.
---
Seventh period: I was called in to substitute for 11th-grade Economics. Their current unit is the Economic History of Postwar India, a subject to which I frankly confessed very little knowledge. Instead?
An Economic History of the World, 1945-1981. Lina-Version. 30 minutes, complete with hand-drawn map of the planet.*
I love these substitute periods. They're all about asking the right questions. Hey, guys, who was left standing after World War II? Okay, why? So where's the economic power going? Whose economy wins? Why? Who's developing? Who's trading? Who's broken? Who's rebuilding?
We built a sense of what was going on in the rest of the world, around their regular lessons centered in India. And they were really interested. They wanted to know things I could actually teach them!
It turns out I'm kind of good at telling these stories.
*Except I'm realizing just now I forgot Australia. Dammit, Australia.
