“They Don’t Get It”

Although I'm sure to jinx it, I have to say that I think Spring has sprung early around here. It's still a bit chilly in the morning, but by afternoon it's sunny and in the 50's. Spring fever hit hard this week, especially with the added bonus of the upcoming 3-day weekend and the state wrestling championships. Either way, everyone had deserted the campus by2.35pm on Friday.

The group lessons for a couple of my freshmen classes are moving along. Stealing an idea from another blog (sorry, can't remember which one) about creating the groups. Pair the strongest student with the weakest and toss in a couple of middles, repeat until all students are in group. In my case, several of the groups went more along the lines of "mature student can deal with stinky student" or "mature student can work despite immature slacker." It will be interesting to see how these lessons turn out in reality. I tried to make the instructions as clear as possible, but how much actually filtered in or was understood, I'm not sure.

I have another freshman class that I'm at my wit's end with - I just haven't a clue as to what to do with them. It's a tiny class, averaging 10 students per day. You'd think this would fabulous, but it's not. There are two students who cause the most problems and stir everyone else up as well. If one of them is absent, the class isn't really that bad. If both are there, I end up yelling at them to sit down and stop talking endlessly. Tossing them out of class does no good. Talking to them does no good. Have them go with an aide to try to catch up hasn't work. Parents are unavailable and I'm beginning to wonder what will happen when the football coaches find out that next year's quarterback won't be academically elligible. To say that sports tend to trump academics is slightly an understatement.

(added) In addition, the majority of the other students in this class would really prefer to sit on their collective asses and chat. They make this abundantly clear every day. There is not one thing this class has done where whining and complaining has not ensued. Read - complaints about the text (any genre); do any assignment - complaints about boringness, too hard, not hard enough, etc.; watch a movie - "it's stupid"; Group assignments are not even attempted by students, they just sit and talk. The only writing task that is acceptable is writing notes to friends with no editing (that's a boring task and "everyone knows what they're saying"). Any assignment has to be finished during a single class time, because they invariably forget it the next day. All books must be left in the class, otherwise they will "lost" in less than 24 hours. Did I mention that one reason this class is so small is because any student who actually wanted to learn and could change, moved to a different period?

In talking with other teachers at the school, it's been suggested that I make it a packet class (everyone works individually on worksheets and writes on their own) or make it more like independant study. The first option would suck probably suck for the two/three students who actually want to do something in class and option two gives me visions of sitting with the rest of the class saying things like "you haven't done anything for three weeks - how were you planning to achieve a passing a grade for this class?" along with endless frustration. I'm dreading Romeo and Juliet even more... any suggestions would be welcome!