One Month Done

It has been four weeks, and my two regular language arts classes are still wonderful. Each class has its class clown and a few girls who chat too much, but they actually do what I tell them to do. All of them. There are a few who occasionally need some coaxing, but they don't argue with me or just refuse to do it, the way my students last year would.

My reading intervention class is a bit more work. Well, a lot more work. There are four students in that class who are a total handful. I think that two of them are not trying to cause trouble, they just are incapable of sitting still for more than two minutes. And they apparently have no filter between their brains and their mouths. One of them looses his pencil every five minutes, which gets really tiring in a ninety minute class.

The other two seem to be looking for attention. They walk over to other students to start talking, or they just shout out irrelevant things. One announces that "This is boring" every time we start a new activity. I think that is code for "I don't get it." But instead of raising his hand and asking for help, he shouts or wanders around the room. Yesterday he started throwing bits of eraser all over the place.

The real work comes in when the latter two catch the attention of the former two, who can't help but respond by laughing and pointing, shouting or throwing something back. I have found myself saying "Jerry, Jose, Francisco, Alejandro*, SIT DOWN" too may times.

Of course the rest of the class is not too happy about being put in the "stupid" class, so they will gladly sit and watch the antics instead of doing their work. One thing I have found that seems to work, though I have no idea why, is putting a time limit on the activity. If I say, "You have four minutes to complete page 12 in your Practice Book" all but the four will get it done. I'm still working on figuring out those other four and finding something that will get them engaged in the activities. Until then I just keep reminding myself that once the bell rings, the rest of my day will be a cake walk compared to this.

*Not the real students' names.