Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Class Clowns...the scary kind.

Imagine if you will, a class of 30 kids that contains Jim Carrey, Jim Belushi, Robin Williams, Jack Black, Will Ferrell, and Adam Sandler all in the same class with 24 other kids. And to make it better, let's make that class the last one of the day on a warm day when the temperature in the room is about 95 degrees...and after an entire day of kids breathing, the humidity is near 90%.

That right there is my 6th period. There are about 6 boys in there that desperately crave the spotlight AT ALL TIMES. It is like watching 6 different movies at once and it drives me crazy! Today it took us three times as long to do a simple activity as it did any other class. I feel sorry for the other 24 kids in there because I know it must be unbelievably frustrating. It is for me. But I also know from experience, that with this age of boys, the most effective constraint is peer pressure, and that part of the problem is simple immaturity. This is why I like juniors the best...they are past this ridiculously immature stage. But it will probably get better. I will just hang on like grim death. =)

I have taken some steps however...I have reorganized my classroom to see if that helps and I have made yet another seating chart, my third since school started 2 weeks ago. Awesome. We shall see how things progress.

In other teaching related news, my friend Athena found this cool website today on graphic organizers. It is logically called graphicorganizers.com and seems to have a TON of graphic organizers on it. Since that is one of the things that we are focusing on as a school this year, it seems like that would be a good place to get some ideas.

1 comment:

Just say Julie said...

I've noticed that my classes this year are more boy-heavy. But for once I have an absolutely lovely after lunch period and somewhat reasonably sized classes. But I did walk out of one team meeting in tears already :)