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...

I've been struggling with this post for days. It still might not make much sense... It was Thursday. I was covering the Mandarin class. No, not that one . Different school. Apparently Mandarin is a thing now. At least for this school district. That morning, I woke with a sore throat that went into full blown head cold for the holiday weekend. (If you noticed that I wasn't around the blogs, that was why.) It turned out to be not a bad day. Which is a good thing when one is starting to feel miserable. However, I was warned about sixth period. They were the "interesting" group. When the teacher told me this (Ms. L was there that morning as she was chaperoning a field trip to a local temple), I took a look at the seating chart (with pictures!), and I did recognize the students she warned me about. Jake was one. I did get to chide him on pretending to be Steven. When the other students overheard this, I informed them that Jake preferred to be called Steven. And I told Ms....

I had the same classes all last week. Seventh grade world history. Advanced. (Their teacher was the chaperone for the annual Washington, D.C. trip. So, out of town and hopefully having fun, but working, too.) The "advanced" means they were the good kids. While they were not 100% on task (they had computers--their assignment was online--so some played more games than did work), they were not doing the sorts of things that generally make for good blog posts. On Thursday, their acceptance letters to be in a leadership class next year were delivered to period four. So, with my trusty seating chart, I passed these letters out to all the kiddos. There were only about ten. Passing back papers is harder for me as I don't know the kiddos. Generally, I just call out names. They raise their hands. And then we meet half way. But, as I knew I had the class all week, I had made myself seating charts. It made roll go that much quicker. And it was useful in keeping track of who was who, ...

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...

Eighth grade English. They were typing out an essay that they'd been working on for a couple days. To make it easier for me to monitor their computer usage, the teacher had turned all their desks around. (This did help me out a lot.) However, they'd never seen the class configured this way, and it threw them for a loop. Third period. "We can sit wherever we want, right?" So, for the third time that day, I explained that their assigned seats were in the same place, only flipped to look at the back wall. (It was a bit confusing, but the other classes didn't seem to think it merited sitting anywhere.) When I went to take roll, however, I discovered that a couple students chose other seats. Grrr. But once I assumed they were absent (empty chair where they should have been), they moved back pretty readily. The teacher was on campus that day, meeting with other teachers (some curriculum thing). So, I had a chance to talk to her after school. I mentioned the seat movemen...