Familiarizing myself with a new age group is going to be a process. I'm accustomed to middle school aged students. In my head I have pictured high school students as young adults, which they certainly are, but what struck me on this day is just how immature they still are. When I was observing Mr. Bilbrey's World History class, I noticed a corpulent young man in the back of the class, slouched in his chair, only half listening to the lecture, holding a pen that had been gnawed into oblivion. Mr. Bilbrey showed a slide entitled Demographic Indicators of Life Expectancy. One indication of how long a person could be expected to live is the teacher / student ratio in their home country. Mr. Bilbrey supported this, by talking about his friend who teaches in Lawrence. He said a typical classroom size for her is upwards of 30 and even as high as 42. "There are 24 students in this classroom right now, and even that is borderline too many," explained Mr. Bilbrey. At that moment the aforementioned student perked up, made a motion toward the door as if he were about to leave and said, "So get outta here!" I also had a good chuckle at Mr. Hughes' Science humor when a student asked, "Do you have any hand sanitizer?" He said, "No, but I have nitric acid."
When fourth block finally came around it was my turn to shine, and I felt ready to go. The students are practicing monochromatic still life paintings. The introduction went smoothly and almost every student worked diligently. The least productive student proved to be a bit of a thorn for the entire block. He had a tiny tuft of hair tied up with a rubber band on top of his head, and I made some man bun jokes. My warnings about not being inclined to write bathroom passes apparently did not register with him. He did not ask to go to the bathroom, but did request to go to the clinic for asprin because he had a headache. I said maybe your man bun is pulled too tight. In an attempt to stall him until even he could see that it would be pointless to miss class time with it being so close to the end of the day, I had him show me his progress, I am being generous to say that it was meager. I gave him an extended one-on-one tutorial, and as I proceeded down the isle to assist another student, conveniently forgetting his original request I could hear one girl who sits at his table say to another girl, "He's a really good teacher."
The student with the headache persisted and all but shut down. This is typical behavior for middle school, but that was one short year ago for him. Now I could have said no outright, knowing that he might complain to his mom, or I could relent and risk having my authority called into question on day one. I elected to take him aside, write him a pass, and explain to him that this would not be an everyday thing and that he must hurry back. It did not appear to have a detrimental effect, and he indeed hurried right back. I figure a well placed email to his parents might help him to see that art is not a knock off course.
At the end of the day as I was recapping with Mr. Renwick we were pulled in to the corner office. Mr. Renwick is one of four staff members who have worked at Herron all ten years, including Head of School Mrs. McNeal. They are all purchasing rings along with the seniors to commemorate this occasion. The spirit in the room was jovial and it occurred to me that I was the least tenured staff member sitting a room with the four who have the most, so I said, "Hey where's my ring?" We laughed and Mrs. McNeil said, "I think you'll fit in well around here."
No comments:
Post a Comment