The Ripple Effect

Monday March 28, 2012

Don't be fooled by the title; this isn't a lesson in science. This is a story of how my roommate staying home because she was very ill effected my students (strange huh). On Sunday my roommate was not feeling good and deicded to see how she was feeling on Monday to see if she would be able to make it to school or not. On Monday morning she had no voice and felt like she'd been hit by a bus. I guess you can conclude she did not go to school that day. Normally that has not been a problem since she was out sick on antiboitics once before and it was fine. Today was a little different though.

In the afternoon my students have English Games with one of the other English teacher and myself. Since my roommate was sick my co-teacher had to go teach her class by himself and I had to teach my class alone. I only found out about this twenty minutes before I was supposed to teach too. So, insanely stressed, I had to figure out something to teach. I was thinking I would do somthing with the "uck" word family since they were reading a story called The Ten Little Ducks. In the time I had, I was able to create a simple powerpoint and worksheet so I thought I'd be fine. Unfortunately, my class had other plans. Getting my kids to settle down in the afternoon is nearly impossible. I believe this is because they get no recess and any breaks they have are inside the classroom so they have no mental differentiation of where they can be rowdy and where they must be calm. Anyway, I could not get them to calm down. I tried awarding check marks to students who were paying attention, removing check marks from those who were being disruptive, putting students on the wall who were't listening, and having students who were saying "be quiet!" talk into the microphone to tell their peers to settle down. Nothing worked. I finally decided to proceed with my lesson weather they were going to listen or not. I was beyond frustrated. Nothing that I tried was successful.I tried to push through as best I could and had those who were listening talk into the microphone, only problem was the disruptive students were not listening.

I know this is a learning experience and I won't have all the answers now, but it's so frustrating when that happens day after day. It makes me feel like a faliure.