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Wednesday, October 20, 2004

No Control...

Assignment: Tuesday 4th grade (32 students) in the south county district late morning call.

Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Ms. R’s 4th grade class. What do these three have in common? They were all bombs of large magnitude.

After Monday’s success, I was looking forward to today’s assignment.

I arrived at the school an hour after the start of class, was handed the teachers lesson plan that she phoned in that morning. Very sketchy and short on details. Not a good sign but I felt after yesterday’s success, I could handle this class.

I even got a break in that it was class picture day (0.5 hour) and Native American Indian Assembly presentation (1.0 hours) and a 40 minute lunch break. This six hour class was down to about 3 hours worth of actual class assignments.

These were the LONGEST THREE HOURS I’ve ever spent.

From the minute I walked in to the minute after I left, I had NO control whatsoever with these kids. Constant talking, throwing things, upset seats. You name it, they were doing it.

They didn’t seem to mind the “consequences”.

I took away “table points” until they were all in the negative and had at least 4 names on the board.

I let them know that I was supposed to write a report about the class progress for their teacher. I asked THEM what they think I should tell their teacher. At least some were honest enough to say they’d probably get an “F” for the day.

I take back the “I think I got this job down…” comment from yesterday.

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