Law of Gravity

It was Monday of the last week of school. The eighth graders were on a celebratory field trip to Knott's Berry Farm . The teacher I was covering was one of the chaperones, and I was left with all of his seventh graders. Mr. S had one period of middle school leadership, one period of middle school theater, and two periods of English Language Development (read: English learners). As his leadership and theater classes needed a different sort of room, he traveled to a more academic classroom for the ELD classes. The room he used for his ELD classes housed health classes the rest of the day. It's the end of the semester, so the health classes are currently studying sexually transmitted diseases, something first period gleefully informed me of. (I knew this already, so I shrugged it off.) The classes' assignment was an essay about what goals they had for their summer vacation. And they were less than pleased to be writing. And sixth period... They were terrible in the usual sort ...

Some days... It was Friday, and my day up until that point had been fairly uneventful. I was asked to cover an extra period (naturally) for sixth period, and it was next door. I had a chance to talk to the teacher before she left. Ms. M apologized for the class. There were only seventeen of them, but they had way more energy than anyone should have at the end of the day, she said. They weren't out of the ordinary for a middle school class. They wouldn't settle to let me give instructions. There was the boy who thought he didn't have to sit in his assigned seat. Well, three boys. I had to stop the video four or five times because they were talking. And getting anyone to read the article (this was after the video)... They'd read when I insisted, but it took them forever to comply. After taking way too long to settle them (again) for the next reader to go, I had just had it. They could answer the questions and finish the reading on their own. They did, but they did it way ...

ELD (English language development). Third period was the eleventh graders. About twenty minutes into class, Rebecca arrived. She had an excused tardy pass from the attendance office. I told her what the assignment was. (They were writing essays.) She said she'd already finished. Then she asked to go and see her counselor. I gave her a pass. I've had Rebecca in various classes since she was in middle school. She can be a little irritating. But she's never made the blog before now. She returned from the counselor after only about ten minutes. And that's the first time Rafael noticed her. "You're late," he said. "Where have you been? Class is halfway over. You should be working on your essay. It's due tomorrow." Rebecca turned to him and flipped him off. And me? I told Rafael to mind his own business and get back to the essay he was not working on. I'm supposed to call Rebecca out for inappropriate hand gestures and all, but seriously... At ...

Seventh grade ELD (English language development, read: English language learners). The teacher was out on jury duty (first day--I don't know if she got selected for a jury as I worked elsewhere the next day). The lesson plan was a bit of a scramble. This group was to play  Scrabble . If you think about it, it's an excellent way to have them doing something in English. And due to limited boards, the students played in pairs as teams, which meant they were conferring on proper English words. Things went fairly well. I mean, they got a little loud, but that was to be expected. Then one group called me over. They were talking as I approached. "It means gender." They needed a ruling. Was it okay to play the word "sex"? Sigh. For that age... But they weren't giggling. It was an actual, reasoned debate. The team that wanted to play it rightly pointed out it had a valid definition that was classroom appropriate. Considering the tenor of the conversation, I allow...