Law of Gravity

I'm not great at detecting lies, but sometimes the kiddos are obvious. Today's #ThrowbackThursday post is from February 22, 2008 , but I remember it well.  Today I covered a 7th grade world history class. I needed a silent room. I was not getting it. So, I warned them: "I will take down the names of those who continue to talk." This only works when I cover some teachers. This was one of them. They fought me on it for a moment. I stared down the few whose names were going to be on my list. Then one of the girls (the talkers were all girls in this group) told me to write down her name. "I'm Amanda," she said. She offered up her name way too easily. I was suspicious. I checked the seating chart. Sure enough, Amanda sat in that seat. But she did not look like an Amanda. She did not feel like an Amanda. I was sure I was being lied to. Twenty minutes later (I had gotten my silence, so I didn't need to make my list) two other students were exchanging words...

Middle schoolers, in general, are terrible liars. (There are some masters of deception, but mostly they just can't manage it.) Seventh grade math. Second period. I was taking roll via a seating chart. But because seating charts (especially in middle school classes where teachers are constantly moving kiddos) aren't always 100% accurate, I was calling out the names of those I was marking absent. "Jake is not here..." "He's here. He's sitting over there," a student let me know. But when I looked over at Jake, he claimed he was Steven. He was sitting in Steven's seat. "So, it's okay for me to mark Jake absent," I said. Usually that's enough to make the student give up the game. Not Jake. Nope, he was willing to be absent to be Steven. (Turns out that Steven was suspended, so he was marked absent anyway. And no, I didn't mark Jake absent. It seemed silly to do when I knew he was there.) Needless to say, Jake was a difficult stud...