Day 32

During my third period class Wednesday the internship supervisor from Notre Dame dropped by. She talked to me in the hall for twenty minutes about behavioral management. She asked if the current class was "the bad" class.

I said "We don't have any "bad" classes. Our 8am class is quite difficult to manage, however." I took her over to the Social Studies room, where our 8am students were currently housed. "THIS is the difficult class."

There was a water bottle fight in the classroom. Chanika had her shirt off and was covering her bra with a hoody jacket clutched to her chest. She was completely wet and laughing. Ten students were involved, dumping three-litre bottles of water on each other. A B-1 bomber paper airplane made from chart paper floated from the room. Montrise and three other students followed it, trying to down it with sunflower seeds, making anti-aircraft battery noises. Someone hit it with a water bottle and it collapsed like a pteradactyl into a tar pit. Miss R. was sucking her asthma inhaler, heaving and hoarse from attempts to shout down the chaos. Mr. M was seated, his prayerful hands clapsed to his chest, like Christ in Gethsemene. An AP in the hall tried to reign in the growing anarchy with a whistle and threats to summon the police. Students from the science and math classes spilled out of their rooms and began throwing airplanes, seeds, gum, beads from plastic bracelets, horseshoes, Molotov cocktails. Muffin was doing triple axels in the spilled water while reciting Eliot's Prufrock.

The internship supervisor was mortified. She hid behind me. "I think I have some articles about classroom management. I'll email them to you," she said, and hightailed it to the nearest exit stairwell. Of course she chose the one frequented by the fellatrices and their clients.

Lukie and I have all the classroom management articles we need. That group simply defies any known strategies or techniques. That's what makes them so damnably entertaining.