Although no one had a case of the Speech Day Influenza, it was not a smooth day of speeches.

My first period class (JHS 2/ US 8th grade) appeared ready to challenge my claim that I’d bring them in for lunch if they didn’t do their speech and/or have their item for their show-and-tell speech. One student seemed stuck in “look at me!” mode and kept trying to do his speech again and again. In fact, he may have set a record for speech performances. At one point, he refused to leave the podium, so I told the other student to go ahead and start. Then, after that failed, he let the student finish and then went up and started doing his speech.

However, I have 1) two daughters and 2) a wife who likes to argue with our oldest so extra noise is something that doesn’t phase me that much. After a bit of theater of the absurd where I was talking with one student whilst a second student was determined to do his speech again and again, the speech student finally settled down.

Final result: lots of zeros and a few lunch “dates” where students get to perform their speeches rather than eat their lunches.

My second period class had a similar result, although since there was no attention seeker, it was a lot quieter.

For third and sixth period I changed gears to high school second year (US 11th grade). They were supposed to present their original supervillains today, but I ended up getting only a few speeches. This will complicated all our lives starting in a couple weeks when they start their final projects and discover they have less time.

My attention-seeker in my last class likes to change desks and use his smartphone for “research” (translation: time wasting). Today he stubbornly refused to return to his assigned desk so I gave him a zero for the day. He said okay, which means 1) he didn’t hear me 2) doesn’t understand there will be consequences because I do such things for sport.

We’ll see what happens when it’s his turn on Wednesday. He sometimes surprises me, but I wouldn’t bet on it.