Crabby Pants Cookie

Raowr! It's really quite shocking that students would rather text with their friends or chit chat or stare of into space lately than learn super cool math (redundant, obviously). I'm shocked, I tell you. I do have some kids showing snippets of interest and other kids showing tons of interest, and I'm most likely at the end of my patience with this particular class because of year-long behavior of a handful of students.

Cases in point:

One student flitters in and out on attendance, and has missed some classes lately and all of a sudden (1 week before the end of his school year ... seniors take finals early) wants to make up a grade from 6 months ago, and can you please show me what I missed and can you please make copies of it for me and thank you so much.

One student after constantly coming in all year and starting every other class with, "oh miss, I was going to skip today, but I decided to come," has been absent the last 3 classes (one was valid, the other 2 shady). I gave her a zero for the quiz she missed on her shady day. Her current average is now a 25%. She suddenly shows up and has an interest in class and wants to please know what she can do to make up the grade. I question her about the validity of her absence. Oh, I went home sick. Cough cough. Oh, I'll get my mom to write a note. Oh please reteach me EVERYTHING I missed oh and thank you very much.

Two other girls start "maam-ing" me when they know they're getting on my nerves from disruptive behavior. "Yes, maam. No maam."

Deep breaths. They're just kids. They're still pushing buttons and learning how to act. It's spring. Repeat.

On positive notes: various students come up to talk to me after class about what we did and wanted to talk through further thoughts on the matter. Many students mentioned they'll be sad I'm not teaching at this school next year. Handfuls of students stop by periodically and chat about life and such. A student who got pregnant with twins her senior year 3-4 years ago and still managed to graduate now has cute little girls and comes to visit periodically and is going to school to become a nurse. A student I had last year who was so edgy and ADHD and rudely violent in the hallways last year has turned out to be one of my favorite students this year. She's pleasant (still edgy) and interesting and humorous.

A cool fact a student shared with me in calculus today while we talked about breaking the sound barrier: The 1st man-made object to break the sound barrier was ........ the whip. Cool.