Welcome to the Jungle

Imagine cooking a big pot full of noodles. You boil the water, add the noodles, and wait until they're done. However, often times the pot boils over with all of the frothy bubbles. Thanks to Pinterest, I'm sure we all know that if you put a wooden spoon over the top of the pot, the bubbles will rise as high as they possibly can, on the brink of falling, but they won't actually spill.

That's how my class is. My teacher is the wooden spoon to their over-talkative, under-motivated, lack-of-respect boiling over. When my teacher is in the room, she can keep them contained. I'd hardly say they're well-behaved but rather she just keeps the chaos from erupting. Remove her from the room and that's when it all bubbles over.

Today, Friday, my teacher had an IEP meeting during our first block. The IEP meeting included the parents, the student, people from downtow, and they wanted a teacher of record. Because all 4 of this student's teachers had a first block, the teacher with an intern was the one summoned for the meeting. This means that for the last hour of class I was left to handle the students. We decided that it would be best to give them a quiz because 1) they needed it 2) I wouldn't be left to teach the students without the guidance of my teacher and 3) less time that I would have to try and control the class and have them focus their attention on math. When my teacher left, we decided to do quiz review and then I'd give them the quiz and anyone who finished early would be able to work on their homework.

As soon as my teacher left, all Hades broke loose. The kids started badgering me as to where the teacher went, they started freaking out that she was reporting their bad behaviors to the principals, and decided that sitting in class was no longer necessary. I gave them problems to do and about a third of the class actually tried. The other two-thirds decided that conversing about last night's tweets and the most recent drama was of greater importance. I tried my best to maintain order, but to no avail.

The students paying attention made comments such as "I've seen this problem about 20 times already. I know how to do it" and "I already know how to do this. That's why I don't do my homework, because I feel like I don't need to practice what I know how to do" and, my favorite, "Can we just take the quiz now? No one cares." The first comment was from a student who truly does know how to do all of the work and is one of the only few who has a shot at passing this quiz. I appreciate his hard work but he usually aids in others being off tasks when HE is done with the work, regardless of the others being done or not. After the second comment, I made the kid work the problem on the board for me and he found that he didn't quite know these as well as he thought he did. The thrid was from another student who also tries really hard and understands most of the material.

I told the class I wasn't going to talk over them and if they didn't listen then we would start the quiz. They talked so we started the quiz. Somehow, the students thought that, even after all of that, since the "real" teacher wasn't in the room they wouldn't have a quiz. Wrong.

Just looking through the quizzes is sickening in and of itself. Questions we attempted to go over were consistently missed. Problems we didn't go over because they wouldn't listen, there was no hope for them. I really care about these kids but all of our classes have told us we need to hold true to our word. My teacher has always said if they don't listen up we'll start the quiz and usually they listen. Since they didn't today, I didn't see any other option.

I told my teacher what happened and she's beginning to think that partial credit may not be a graciously given on this quiz as usual. She even made the comment that it may be an "all or nothing" type deal. Honestly, most will probably fail.

I know as interns we are constantly facing the battle of being seen as a "real" teacher (or maybe that's just me). It doesn't help that I look like one of the students nor that my teacher wasn't there to oversee everything. What I'm most upset about is how disrespectful the students were to me. I know respect takes time to earn but I would have thought that after a month of being in the room, doing mini lessons, and various other things that the students would have at least attempted to be polite. I didn't expect them to be angels but it's unexcusable for me to receive eye rolls after I tell them to be quiet because quizzes are still out.

And that's my classroom. They're constantly on the brink of exploding and we have to devote as much time to classroom management as we do math. It's wild and crazy and sometimes I think we've got a class full of monkies.