Fourth Period

I already know which class is going to be a problem.

--I have two classes of freshman reading. One started with ten kids, the other started with twenty-five. As of Friday, I now I have one class of nine and another of twenty-eight. I have twenty-six desks.

Generally, I ignore logic and reasoning, and I seem to get along fine without it. But in this case, I find myself reviewing my decades-old math skills, and wondering why, in the name of all that is holy, my big classes get bigger and my small classes get smaller. It seems that a person whose JOB it is to assign classes to incoming students could ARRANGE A KID'S SCHEDULE so that he goes into the smaller class.

--Speaking of my larger class, it is during fourth period. That's the last class of the day. IT'S SO MUCH FUN.

No it's not. It stinks.

With a greater number of people, it's pretty much understood that you get a greater number of attitude problems. I have several in this class (not counting my own). I have already dealt with one person in the hall for being disrespectful. Once we got out there, I saw she was wearing a tiny nose ring, so I sent her to the office for a dress code violation. Evidently, she gave the assistant principal attitude too, because I just took her in for the nose ring, and she got written up for mouthing off.

Friday I got the 28th kid, and he is a DELIGHT.

No he's not. He stinks.

He did a big bucket of nothing all period and then gave me some lip as he was leaving. And the girl who went to the office? "That kid is SO COOL," she sighed.

--But then I talked to her mother at our Open House. She's already grounded until, like, college, but her mom told me to feel free to call anytime, and she will see to it that an attitude adjustment takes place. I'm totally doing it.

--In fact, I am going to start making calls during class, I think. I don't have a phone in my room, but I do have my cell phone. (Students aren't allowed to bring out their cells during class, but I AM NOT A STUDENT). I'm gonna whip that thing out so fast ... and what REALLY makes it awesome is that I sent home a parent contact sheet AS A HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT so I have all their parents' numbers: work, home, cell.

--Obviously with a larger class, there is also a greater amount of noise. And by noise, I definitely mean unnecessary talking. So I printed out a copy of my Awesome Write-Off, and showed it to those kids.

(In my education classes, they told us we should never, under any circumstances, give write-offs, because it might make the kids hate to write. Well, they already hate to write, so I say EFF THAT.)

It's about a page long, typed, and pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. I held it up in front of my angels and they gave an audible gasp. "How many times do we have to write that?" they asked.

"It depends on how bad you are," I replied. Then I borrowed a little bit from Dirty Harry: "So you need to ask yourselves, before you start shooting your mouths off, IS IT WORTH IT?? Do your words have so much importance that you are willing to undergo THIS [waving paper around]?"

And for the rest of the period there was no unnecessary talking.