"We're waiting..." aka Awkward Stares and Power Struggles

This weekend is crazy, and I don't know how I blogged this. Time continues to go by faster than it should as I'm currently in the process of making a TAKs packet for my kids so that hopefully they all can pass with the added help. Who knows if what I'm doing will help, but I'd sure like to think so. 7 school days left until TAKs - 4 until I leave for True/False.

I had a long week this week, especially since I picked up a bacterial infection on Tuesday and was out on Wednesday. I sent 30 kids to the nurses office on Monday and Tuesday, half of them having to go home because of fevers. When I came back on Thursday, I was doped up on so many medications that I had to ask my kids to bear with me and realize that I'm not 100%, but I would do my best and hope that they would to. This worked out WONDERFULLY, except in one of my classes where I blew up at a student. I blame the medicine, myself, and actually, I blame the student quite a bit. I should have written him up and kicked him out of class, but instead I addressed the problem in the middle of the class.

You see, I had just started class and told the students I was sorry for having been absent the day before, when this kid interrupts me with "YEAH! You SHOULD BE SORRY!" which I let slide, continuing with my short introduction of how I'm still sick and working through the cold, asking the students to be considerate. I took attendance, then started the lesson by putting notes on the board. I give the class a certain amount of time to copy the notes, and go around the class making sure everyone is on task. This certain student was not, so I reminded him to copy the notes, which he started doing, but at a very leisurely pace. When it was time to go to the next slide, everyone else in the class was done except for him, and he screams "WAIT! I didn't FINISH" so I told him I'd give him an extra 30 seconds, which I did. He was still not done, so I told him he would need to look at a friend's notes or stay after class to finish. He complained about that too, but finished writing his notes. He pulled the same stunt on the next slide, so I didn't give him the extra 30 seconds to finish writing (I have slow writers in the class too, and they had all finished).

I was midway through the lesson on Tone and Mood and had directed my students to a vocab list of good Tone/Mood words. I told the class, like all my others, to spend 30 seconds and circle any words they don't know, as it was higher level vocabulary for the most part. After circling these words, I was taking 6 words from the class to use as vocabulary words that they would write down in their notebooks and use during the class. When the class was told to volunteer words, some students were raising hands and calling out words like "Nostalgic" and "Reminiscent" that I wrote on the board, but this one student felt the urge to scream out the words "ANGRY!" and "SAD!"

At first, I ignored the child's outbursts, as he neglected yet again to follow classroom procedure in order to be "funny" though no one else laughed. He screamed out "ANGRY" again, to which I said "Do you really not know what angry is?" (He had a big smile on his face at this time). "It means that you're mad. I know you know this though [student]. I want you to focus on words that you don't know, because we're doing this as a class to help you." I asked the class for more words, and he screamed out "SAD!" with a huge smile on his face.

I stopped the class and just nailed this kid because I had addressed his behavior more than once and he thought it was a joke. "[student] I am NOT going to call on you or listen to you without your hand raised. You are wasting our time in class and disrespecting me and your fellow students." (At this point a classmate said "Quit being a jerk [student]," which I let slide, because this seemed like a good time for negative peer comments.) I continued with my tirade for about a minute, and finished with "When you're ready to act like you can learn, I'll get this class started again. We're waiting... and we'll wait until after the bell if we have to." I sat for the next 30 seconds, (which seemed like an eternity), staring directly at this kid while his peers made chide remarks about him needing to "stop being a jerk" and "do your work. You're making us all suffer." He realized that he was not going to win his little power-struggle, and with a blank stare of "did Mr. Johnson just tell me off?" picked up his pencil, and started writing down the definitions we were discussing as a class. I immediately continued the lesson, but was forced to keep kids afterwards to finish their assignment, and told the class I would not write passes to their following class. I apologized to the on-task students at the door for their classmate's behavior, but they reciprocated the apology. It was a great thing to know that I wasn't the only person annoyed by the student's raucous outbursts.

I still felt dirty about yelling at the kid, but it was effective, and it was my last resort for a day where I was already on a short rope. Nevertheless, he came in the next day with a smile and didn't act up. Crazy teenagers.