It seems every year someone says, “This is the worst group of students I’ve ever seen. Do you have JC? He is terrible.” But while maybe JC was in fact on my roster and was pretty much a handful, I’ve always scoffed at the ever-worse trend.
Then there was last year. In the first weeks of school, the sixth grade teachers encouraged all seventh grade teachers to retire if at all possible at the end of the year: “I have never seen anything like this,” they said. “The students won’t be quiet, and they are so disrespectful.”
At the end of last year the principal advised the seventh grade teachers this year not to turn our backs to write on the board in front of even our best behaved classes, at our own peril.
“There’s something about this group of kids that is different,” he said. “I’ve never seen this level of–I don’t even know what it is–before.”
And then at the bank this summer I talked with a teller whose daughter was in That Class, and she said, “Oh, WR had a wonderful year last year!” That’s not something that a parent of a member of a That Class would ever say, I didn’t think, so things couldn’t be too bad, right?
Pretty much right, so far, here at one eighth of the way through the school year.
In one class there is RD, of course, so disruptive and disrespectful that I can’t even send him out of the classroom because he refuses to go (I have to page the principal to come get him), and there is DD, who is extremely smart and won’t be quiet, but there is also WR, who, now that I’ve met her, I realize would have a great year no matter where she is (whew…my class shouldn’t be too much of a let down), and CC, who always asks if she can touch my head (“No, but thanks for asking.”), and WN, who multiple times a day asks if she can sit beside CC, and lots of other studious kids who are a lot of fun.
That’s my middle-of-the-day class. In the morning I have the compulsive tardier, the compulsive back talker, the compulsive talker (“Vegetarians can, too, eat meat–it’s called the veggie burger.”), the compulsive denier (“I wasn’t talking! Gosh. Did you just give me a strike? I hate this class.”), several other compulsive talkers and back talkers, and more, but that class also has quiet OB, whose mom just died and who works really hard, and SA, who is perfect in every way–it’s true!–and HC, a very small boy who plays bass fiddle in his family band and, like only one other student before him, thanks me every day as he leaves the classroom.
My final class is home to one of the worst nightmares of last year. I often saw him going to in-school suspension (which then was next door to my classroom) muttering, slamming the door, etc. Of all the students who had to be sent from that room to the office, I think he was the most frequent flier. But so far this year I haven’t had to discipline him at all other than maybe one “Fowl” because he does speak rather aggressively to other students in the class (who I agree are very annoying). He’s in his own little world–Should I be the one to break it to him that you don’t press return after every sentence?–but works really, really hard, and I’m going to sap that for all it’s worth.
“He is having a great year,” the guidance counselor said at a parent meeting last week, and he surely is.
Also in my final class is HA, who for a few days refused to speak to me (but, according to her rules, could write a one-sentence note to me per day) and now almost daily asks me, “Guess what.” “What?” “I’m tired.” or “Guess what.” “What?” “My rabbit’s fat.” There’s also the drama queen KM, who wrote on my band’s YouTube channel, “You guys are actually good” and whose essay about not having milk for on her cocoa puffs may have been the funniest student essay I’ve ever read. And there’s RJ, the daughter of the local commonwealth attorney. She’s a rather perfect student, too, as are boys JT and MD. It’s a good end-of-the-day class.
Across the board, disruptive talking is the biggest problem. To curb disarray, this year I’m going overboard with SSR (sustained silent reading). Last year I decided to begin doing it more; this year I’m starting every class period with twenty minutes. It’s great–I’ve read five young adult novels so far this school year–and once the kids settle into reading, it establishes a sane plane on which to build the rest of the activities of the day. Students don’t complain much about it, either–it might be their best twenty minutes of the day.
My other classroom sanity push has to do with consequences. I assign strikes whenever a student misbehaves; those add up to Fowls, which result in lunchtime or in-school suspension and other bad things. In an effort to make myself look better at classroom management, I’ve tried to reduce the number of Fowls I assign by giving “privilege tickets” to students earning zero strikes over five consecutive days. Quite a few kids have straightened up in order to try perfection for a change, and those who were already perfect have eagerly redeemed their tickets for Talons (school money) or in order to listen to music during silent reading, leave class three minutes early, have me make a positive phone call home, etc.
A new option on the tickets this year is “Entry into the worthless prize of the week contest.” On Monday six kids entered to try to have their name drawn for a corked, empty, glass, 4-ounce honey jar. It was sealed pretty tight; I couldn’t easily and so didn’t remove the cork.
“It might be antique air, in there,” I said.
“Yeah right,” my compulsive back talker said. “Someone probably farted in it and when you open it up it’ll”–here she made motions of air flooding over her face–“and you’ll die.”