The tenth graders at the school where I work are funny people. They are in their first year of high school and as they approach their first final exam in my class, they get, well, kind of funny.

For lots of complicated reasons the classes I teach don’t have mid-term exams. This creates a couple problems for me. First, because they haven’t had a major exam in my class but have had them in others, the students tend to not take my final exam seriously. This is a bad problem for them to have because they need a higher percentage in their English classes in order to get automatic recommendation for university than they do in all their other classes. However, because there’s been no big exams, they don’t act as if the coming exam is important.

Second, because they’ve usually just finished a major final project, they often act as if there’s nothing left to do in class. My job, then, is to remind them that they are wrong.

That was an issue this week with a couple of my classes that, for various complicated reasons, have had lots of extra class time. In such cases I usually offer a deal: if they study my class on the next to last class, I will look the other way at what they are studying on the last class. They should study my class, but I won’t look too closely at what they are doing.

However, if they play or waste time, I take that as meaning they want to study my class on the last day and I prepare a review lesson. It’s at this point that they start trying to test me. I had students laugh at me as if I were joking when I told them I’d give them work on the last day. I had students mock what I was saying by repeating it and laughing. When I pointed out that two guys who were supposed to be studying together had their textbooks open to different units (with one book open to a unit we didn’t study) they just ignored me.

This is partly because many of my students didn’t go to junior high at the school where I work so they don’t know much about me. Those that did are used to my English classes not having much meaning but they should also know that I never bluff (well, almost never).

At the end of the classes, I told them that because too many of them hadn’t studied, i planned to bring something for them to study. Most ignored me.

Then, today, I handed out a work sheet that involved writing a couple hundred words.

Suddenly I had their attention.

One student reminded me that I’d said there’d be free study. I reminded him that I’d said that not enough people had studied and that I’d bring an assignment. However, when he finished the assignment, I wouldn’t look at what he was studying.

They were all annoyed but they were quiet as they finished the assignment. After they finished I checked their answers with them which also kept them from having any free study time.

If this goes like normal, this will be the last time I have this problem with these students.