1, 2 Buckle My Shoe

What he said, my student grinned as I waited for him to give an example of an effect of people quitting their job. It was summertime and my students and I were stuck inside a classroom for 2 hours a day 5 days a week doing our best to get through the Advanced Writing curriculum. I was at my wits end to figure out how to challenge and focus 3 teenage boys, two of whom insisted on giggling or trading barbs a good part of the time. Every time I asked F a question, he would grin lazily, appear to be thinking for a moment, then reply, What's your answer? or look at his counterpart giggler B, who was always first to answer, and say, What B said. 

I always started a semester with a more lenient attitude as I got to know my students and figured out how best to teach to their learning and personality styles. This time, however, it was not the best of ideas. Once they realized I would let them chatter away, they started to take advantage of it. By the second week, my patience was thinner than a tightrope walker's lifeline. 

Then the rope snapped. 

F was turning on the a/c and somehow it struck him as funny so the two started giggling again. S was trying to give his answer and I couldn't even hear him over their laughing. Suddenly, I got very serious and my tone of voice changed. 

Guys, this is enough. I need you to focus. S is speaking and I cannot hear him. I feel like I am in kindergarten. You are giggling all the time. 

But Miss, Miss, F said, interrupting me as he tried to reason why they were giggling so much. 

I am speaking now, you do not need to speak at the time as I am speaking. You need to be quiet and you need to listen. I spoke firmly and clearly. We just have 2 hours every day. You can get up and walk around; go to the bathroom, get a drink of water. I know life is difficult outside but for just these two hours you need to be in the classroom and you need to be present and focus. Even if you don't want to be here, you have to sit in the classroom for these next 5 weeks, I'm trying to give you as much information as I can to prepare you for your academic classes. 

I looked at them and solemnly declared, I've reached my limit. 

S sat quietly in the front, an embarrassed smile playing in the corners of his mouth. He knew he wasn't to blame. F and B were shocked into silence; surprised that their easygoing teacher had suddenly switched into a strict one. 

Luckily, it was breaktime, so I informed them that they had a 10 minute break, not 13 minutes like they had dragged out the day before, I grabbed a granola bar, and I left the classroom. Usually I would stay inside as it was cooler and I would check my phone or catch up on some emails. This time, though, I headed through the parking lot to the volleyball court. There I marched about the court, munching furiously on my granola bar as I sent a long voice message to my supervisor. Just the day before, she'd been telling me my students loved my class but I was frustrated and I needed to know if it was only me.

My supervisor was quick to answer and by the end of the break I understood that it wasn't only me who had faced this challenge with F and B and that being firm was the only way to go. I headed back to the classroom where three quiet subdued boys worked studiously on finishing up their reaction-response essay for the rest of the class period. 

The next day, though, while the giggling had disappeared and the taunts had been reduced to a manageable minimum, the decided effort not to participate became even clearer. I prided myself on being the type of teacher that went the extra mile but in this case, the extra mile was being scoffed at. I showed them a 5-minute video of a flash flood in Papua to illustrate cause and effect, the next type of essay we were going to learn. When it came time to discuss, F, who was sitting in the back of the classroom, yawned and said, I wasn't really focusing. I gave up. 

At the end of class, I handed out a worksheet with small illustrations under which they had to circle "cause" or "effect" and then list 3 of them that corresponded to the photo. F started laughing. Where is Seder? he blurted out, referring to the toddler who often accompanied his father who worked in maintaining the campus lawns. B started to whine. Why can't we watch a video?

Because we watched a video at the beginning of class and now it's time to do the worksheet. After a couple of minutes, they finally settled down and started to work on writing in their answers. 

Over lunch that day, I told my husband, That's it. I'm done. I'm done trying to make the class interesting. From now on, I'm just going to teach the book. No more videos; no more worksheets; no more Jeopardy vocab games. If they feel bored or want to make fun of what I'm giving them, let them see. I will challenge them; let's see how they really do. 

They were intelligent; I knew that. The problem was that they thought they knew more than they really did, they didn't want to be in class, and they had a pretty good idea of how they would teach the class which they were constantly telling me. It was wearying. Tiring to put in effort to make the class interesting, tiring to keep bringing them back into focus, and tiring to keep asserting my place as teacher and authority both in the classroom and on the subject of writing. 

Until now, as a teacher, I'd been learning curriculum instruction, integration of spiritual with the academic, content, and organization. Now, I was learning the very valuable yet perhaps most difficult lesson of all—classroom management. I was having to shift very quickly from being the likeable teacher to the firm one and it was not a fun feeling to have. But I knew that if we were going to make it to the end of the summer session, it was essential that some form of order was established, so I accepted the challenge. It was time to learn.