Work Hard! Get Smart!

I had my first Unit Test the past two days. I set up the desks like a lecture hall. They were all facing my teacher desk so that I could sit in my chair and just watch them all. No desk was hidden behind another desk, I could see every single kid.

My first period class, the angels, silently took their test. They followed directions about turing in their test. They all finished their test within the allotted time. Awesome. One kid even said "Miss, I love these seats, it reminds me of college!"

Basically my whole A day (Tuesdays, my fav) went well. A stands for awesome, and A stands for angels. Awesome Angels.

Today, B day, was bad. B stands for bad, and B stands for behavior. Bad Behavior.

Wow, the cheating. I've seen cheating in my many years of being a student, but seeing it as a teacher is just annoying. I'm sitting at the front of the room, I see a kid wondering his eyes around, I stare at him until he notices, he notices that I noticed, and does a little neck roll. AS IF I REALLY BELIEVE YOU HAVE TO ROLL YOUR NECK EVERY 5 MINUTES. KEEP YOUR EYES ON YOUR OWN PAPER. ugh. Stop cheating, seriously. Little do they know that grades really don't mean anything in middle school. What means something are these silly TAKs tests (standardized test of Texas), and if they cheat on my test, they will get higher scores and then later on fail the TAKs. If they don't cheat, and get low scores, I will tutor them in the areas that they need in order to pass TAKs later. You are cheating yourself.

By my last period I just gave them that speech. Nobody cheated. Ohhh the things I learn as the day goes on.

As I was looking through some of the tests I noticed a strange thing. At the top of the test, the heading.

Name________________

Period________________

Date__________________

Work Hard!______________

Our motto is Work Hard! Get Smart!

So after Work Hard! they were supposed to write Get Smart! A simple task, especially because it's written really big on two different walls. HUGE actually.

These are some of the things I saw in their heading...

Work Hard! OK.

Work Hard! Yes

Work Hard! No

I am sitting at my desk trying to grade papers and I am distracted by the fact that a kid said Work Hard, No. He must be trying to be funny. But, who is he trying to be funny for? This is on a test, no one else should be seeing this except for the kid and me. I don't understand. Funny? Maybe. I laughed, well gawked I guess. So today, I tracked him down, and said "we need to talk." I said "what's our motto?" he said "Work Hard. Get Smart." I asked, "So why did you write Work Hard. No." At this point there is absolutely no eye contact being made. He is staring at the ground, and he knows he's in trouble. He shrugged. So, I asked, "Did you think it was funny?" He smirked. I stared. He finally looked at me, then looked away quickly again. I asked, "Was it worth being a smart aleck? He shook his head. I asked, "What are you going to write next time you see Work Hard. _______?" He said, "Get Smart." I said, "Okay."

Well, that went well. I'm pretty sure you are not supposed to confront kids like that, but it made me so mad that he actually put No. No, I do not want to work hard. The thing is, he doesn't work hard. While everyone is reading their reading packet, he's staring at his pencil. Why? I don't get it. Everyone is reading, why aren't you reading? Frustration. Pure, frustration. The thought comes to me that maybe he can't read.

I have to figure out how to get this kid to really believe that if he works hard, he will get smart. Tis the goal. If this means I have to somehow teach him how to read first, I will. I don't know how, but I will. After all, this would not be the hardest task on my lists of things to do, I also have to teach two kids who just moved to the U.S. how to speak English. Maybe on my list of things to do, this should come after me learning how to speak Spanish, maybe.

Later-

Miss Miss.

(Never in my life did I think I would actually respond to someone saying Miss, Miss)