Weekend Class

There is no feeling of pent-up frustration quite like sitting in class on a Saturday morning.

This week I had a terrible and great moment in parent relations. The terrible moment was when a parent, whom I had called the previous evening, had stopped by to see her son in class. I spoke to her while my kids worked, about here son's behavior. Her son acts young. He's not especially smart or not, but he is immature. He needs constant personal attention, probably because his custodial parent works 4pm to 11pm every day. He will interrupt me in the middle of the lesson to ask for something specific to himself. He also invites bullying. As much as I hate to say that, because nobody deserves to be bullied, he does. He takes every opportunity to ruffle the feathers of his peers, even though he is one of the smallest boys in the class (in 7th grade, the sizes of the boys vary considerably). I've watched him plays basketball, and he throws himself under the other players, so it looks like they knocked him over. When he works in school, he can do well, but if he is having a bad day or if someone refuses to give him something he wants, he refuses to do work. He will sit there and scowl for a entire period. As I tried do describe his classroom behavior to his overworked mother, I saw her eyes welling up with tears. She walked out of there crying, and I couldn't do anything to fix it. I hope her son saw it, and I think he did, because he showed up the next day hoping to earn a Cougar Coupon and make his more proud.

That next day, another student earned a good phone call. One of my oft-suspended boys returned from his last suspension with a much better attitude. He certainly isn't perfect, but he sat in class yesterday and took notes and did the work. A the end of the double period, he proudly showed me the work he had done "with" one of my better-behaved students. I knew he had copied, but it's better than nothing. Even so, I wanted to probe. I pointed to a correct answer and asked why he chose "passive transport". He didn't even look at the paper before answering "I don't know". I asked him again, and then a third time, and he finally looked at the paper. "They're spreading out." "And is that easy or hard?" His eyes lit up. "It's easy, that's why it is passive!" And then I made one of the best phone calls I've had to make all year.