Imposter!

Today ended in an extremely frustrating way, and I was angry.

Once a month, the 7th grade teachers throw a Cougar Coupon event. The coupons are given to students who behave exceptionally or show significant improvement in class, maximum two given out per class. The event requires two coupons to attend, and today's event was hosted by Yours Truly. I did an old standard, movie and popcorn. I wanted to buy Finding Nemo, because it ties in really well with the next unit on ecology, but I couldn't find it, so I bought Chicken Run instead. I also got a giant bag of chips and a giant bag of popcorn, and scheduled the movie for my 7th period prep.

7th period came, and a TON of kids showed up. It wasn't a huge surprise, because on coupon event days, some of the teachers and aides give coupons to anyone who asks. About 30 kids (more than half the 7th grade) was there, and they were not calm. I kicked out a few kids for roughhousing before the movie even started. I put out the snacks and some paper towels, and within five minutes, there was popcorn everywhere (except in the bags). I kicked out a few more troublemakers who were trying to horde food and making the biggest mess, accepted the fact that I wouldn't get to much on chips, and played the movie.

And the sound didn't work. I'm pretty good with computers (although I have very strong feelings about the too-much-but-not-enough user interface in Windows), but couldn't fix it. So I turned on the lights, and announced that everyone would help clean up the room, and then they could hang out quietly or go back to class.

The clean up went smoothly and about half the kids left. With about 10 kids left, all the good kids who should have been there in the first place, we sat and watched Blue Planet for a half hour. We had a great time and some good discussions about polar bears and whales.

Of course, I then found out that a few kids forged their Cougar Coupons. There were a couple of really bad teacher signatures, and it made me very angry (the kids who told me got very angry about it too). I took the imposter coupons to the assistant principal...who didn't care about it. She told me to talk to the school social worker, because she's in charge of the coupon system. So I guess there will be no punishments for those kids. Maintaining status quo like only Bridgeport can.

Then I ran 3 miles and everything was better. I realized that it's been a while since I've gotten really angry in front of my kids, and that is a good thing. I've been getting less personally offended by my students, and also keeping a cool temper, which is making me a better teacher. I guess I love the kids anyway.