After their detention period I spent about 40 minutes calling their houses and talking to their parents or guardians. All of this post-2:35 stuff is completely uncompensated time, but I don't care. I need to find a way to establish order in that class. The only time they paid attention to me was when I read the following part from "The Owl and the Pussycat" aloud:
'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'
Very briefly I was the center of attention in class, long enough for everyone to get a good laugh. I must admit I hammed it up a bit, really hammering each recurrence of "pussy." I was trying to teach poetic sound devices, after all.
Of course after the poem everyone went back to throwing things, drawing enormous phalli on each others' folders, wrestling on the floor, stealing each others' pens, 'blooping' each other on Nextels or paging each others' phones, talking, cussing, singing, listening to mp3 players, taking photos with digital cameras, etc.
And then last period went relatively smoothly.
All I know is I'm drinking more again because of that class. That's gonna flare up the gout if I'm not careful. Well, that's not all I know actually. I also know that part of this misbehavior flare-up is due to my lack of preparation; I wasn't properly prepared to teach this material today, I wasn't adequately set with examples of what I was going to teach, and the students can sense these things. They jump all over any sign of weakness or laziness in a teacher, and rightly so.
Lukie and I talked beforehand about how lame these two lessons on "sound devices" were. They were required by the Balto. City pacing guide, however. We're ditching tomorrow's lesson and moving on to Longfellow. Oh, God.
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