8th Grade Boys are the Turds of Middle School.

I was all riled up and ready to write this blog post yesterday, but I decided to give myself a little bit of time to calm down so that I make sense (I've noticed that when I'm too emotional, my writing tends to become a bit confusing...).

As a substitute teacher, I've always been the laid back sub who lets things roll off of her back easily, and doesn't let students get to her.  Until yesterday, I've never had a group of students who took advantage of me and purposefully try to drive me to my wits end just because I am a sub.  Until yesterday, I had NEVER even considered sending a student down to the office (still haven't sent them down...yet...), and I had NEVER yelled at a group of kids.

Yesterday's sub job was just a half day assignment teaching Spanish, so I got to sleep in and didn't have to arrive at the school until 11:30am.  When I got there, it was lunch time, so I just lounged around, looked over the lesson plan for the day and read my book.  First class of the afternoon was a study hall that only had about 8 kids in it.  That went just fine.  A few of the kids told me that they would be in the classes I would be teaching for the rest of the day, so I was excited to see familiar faces throughout the day.  After I got done with study hall, I had a 30 minute prep, so again, I relaxed and read my book.  Then I was off to 6th hour 8th grade Spanish. 

Even though I haven't spoke Spanish since 6th grade, the lesson plan didn't require me to have to know any of the language, so I was good in that respect.  When I walked into the classroom, they were kind of rowdy, and the teacher who taught in the room the hour before me informed me that this class was a little crazy, so he would just spend his prep time in the room with me (to be honest, I was a bit annoyed- I felt like he thought that I couldn't do my job properly).  After a few minutes, I realized that this class was not going to calm down, and apart from a few girls who were actually trying to get their stuff done, the rest of the class continued to talk loudly and I had to spend the majority of the rest of the class period trying to get the students to quiet down.  Yeah.  That didn't really work.  At the end of the class, I turned to the teacher who was in the room and he told me that the class acts like that E.V.E.R.Y.D.A.Y.  They have no respect, and don't get anything done.  It was exhausting, to say the least and can't believe that their regular teacher has to deal with this on a daily basis.  But I had one more class to go to, and this one should be easy as pie compared to the last class.

I was wrong.  This last class (also 8th grade Spanish), weren't bouncing off the walls when I walked in and they worked well on their first activity, and were pretty quiet during the listening activities they had to do.  But in the last 15 minutes of class, some of the boys in the back started to throw things at each other.  I asked them nicely to stop.  They didn't stop.  They even made a boy who had some sort of emotional disorder very upset, because he was convinced that they were throwing things at him.  At that point, I was very stern and talked to them about maturity and how they're the oldest in the school and are going to high school in the fall and they are expected to have a certain level of maturity.  Their response?  "This is our last year for immaturity!"  They seemed to have stopped throwing things, so I moved the class on to their last activity for the day.  Then I noticed that they were full-on, chucking pencil shards at each other across the classroom.  At that point, there were only 3 minutes left of class and I was pissed.  I had tried to be nice, and I had tried to let them not ruin the rest of the class, but no.  I had to spend the last 3 minutes YELLING at them!  I told them that I am normally the laid back sub who wants the class to have fun while I'm there, and that I never yell at students, so today is huge for me.  I told them that they werethisclose to all being sent down to the office, which, again, is saying something about them because I have NEVER sent a kid to the office before.  As the boys were picking up the pencil shards, I heard one of them say, "Lets save these for the next sub!"  I told him that torturing the subs is not something they should be aiming to do every time they have a sub.  Then another boy came up to apologize, but in his apology he said that "When they have subs (especially the nice ones) they just like to see if they can get them to their wits end," as if this is what they HAVE to do when they have subs!  I've never been so shaken up about a sub job and normally I get home wishing I could be there every day, but for the first time since I've been teaching, all I wanted to do was go home and be done with the class.  I left a lengthy sub note, including my phone number/email in case she has questions, or wants to talk over the situation with me, and left feeling happier than I have ever felt to be leaving a school for the day.

I've been able to reflect on the day and have figured out what I would have done differently the second time around, but now I just need to get back in the saddle next week.