As a rule, on this blog, if I’m writing about school or the day’s events, it’s because I’m too lazy to write about something else. However, today is the exception to the rule.

As I’ve written before, at the school where I work we are in the middle of school trips and random science field trips. Unfortunately, because of the trip schedule, i had one class today and my students were not in the mood for class. At least they weren’t at first.

When I arrived at the classroom, a student insisted that the doors were closed. I think he meant locked because when I opened the door, there was a particularly rowdy student laying on the floor. He had, as near as I can tell, been holding the door closed. (Note: another student must have been holding the second door.)

The student, whilst sitting on the floor and blocking my path, said hello and I had to tell him to move three times. Right as I was planning a “step over with the left; accidentally kick/graze him with the right move, he scooted out of the way.

This was  a hint of the way the class was going to go.

My mistake was bringing the wrong visual aids, but after I retrieved the correct ones, I told my students to fetch their poster (they’d started the “design your dream neighborhood” project last week) and write and memorize their required ten sentences. They had 20 minutes.

I had to repeat myself a few times and by the third repetition, the students had yet to leave their chairs and were, instead, mocking me by parroting what I’d said.

At that point, rage and orneriness took over.

I picked up the bundle of dream neighborhoods and, after repeating that they should find their poster, I hurled the bundle across the room, in the general direction of the student who’d been blocking the door. I repeated they needed to find their posters and start memorizing.

At that point they moved “expeditiously” and found their posters.

At that point they began violating the “memorize it” requirement, but it was fun to see them panic…