Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the classroom.
Okay, I'm being a little dramatic. Yesterday was rather annoying though.
To start it off, I spent 6 hours grading on Saturday, and by the time that was through I had decided that I couldn't take any more that day and would get up early on Monday to write my lesson plan. By consequence, 5:00 am found me half awake, a growing sense of dread within me, with several half-baked ideas bouncing uselessly around my brain like the day old heaps of oatmeal that slide of your fork at scout camp. The oatmeal, the ideas, the sense of humanity at such an ungodly hour - things were falling apart.
I took stock of the situation and took hold of an idea, forcing it to shape itself into an edible lesson plan. Workable. A workable lesson plan (can you tell that I'm hungry right now?).
First period arrived and my students looked as if they had gotten less sleep than I had, a feat to be reckoned with. As the lesson wore on, I recognized that they were in a more particularly drowsy state than usual. Perhaps they had spent the night either reveling victory or mourning the defeat of their beloved football team (who won again? I fell asleep fourth quarter). I couldn't believe how inactive they were and how useless my lesson plan seemed.
When the morning dew cleared up and my students had wiped it out of their eyes by fourth period (my next lesson), things started looking up. The lesson plan came together and the students were engaged and learning. I love fourth period. It comes as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed; it blesses him that teaches and those who learn. Ahh, fourth period.
Fifth, lunch, sixth: about the same as usual. Fun but chatty, lots of complaining, and extra chatty and distracted. In that order.
Seventh period was something else. The students are usually edgy, distracted, anxious to leave, but today they were the most lazy bunch of chatty chimps I have ever met. In the half an hour of drafting time that I gave them to begin a rough draft ("Just get all of your ideas down, where ever you are. You need to be ready to show your argument to someone else in another 15 minutes") some of the students only got a few lines written.
A half an hour, continual reminders and offers to help, and 3 lines of text.
I don't understand it.
There will be very little mercy dropping from Mr. Jones's desk when he is grading some of these papers, I can say that.
This calls to mind a quote from the Merchant of Venice that I think you spoke in 377 last semester (or that you quoted from Holling Hoodhood): "The quality of mercy is not strained..."
ReplyDeleteDo you remember telling me that?
I'm not advocating for the students here and I do realize that some days are just like this. However, is this a one time thing that resulted from a dirty cocktail of your exhaustion and lack of relaxation over the weekend, their lack of focus, your half-baked lesson plan, their goal to do as little as possible to advance their education and the fact that it was a Monday?
Some days are like this.
If this becomes a pattern for everyone, it may spell trouble. If it's a one day thing, Tuesday will bring the return of everyone's kinder, more beautiful selves. I'm glad you made it through the day and I'll be interested to hear how Tuesday went;)