Today i went into school thinking I was just working with the Kindergarten kids again for half a day. I ended up being a substitute for middle school Language Arts. Okay, at least it is my best subject. I was warned that half of the 8th graders were rough. I figured that they could not be that rough. I know of the reading issues and laziness type issues, but I figured that the two periods I had each group, could not be too rough since they just had work to do. Yikes, I was wrong!
I saw that above mentioned rough 8th grade class first period just for attendance before they went to their Yupik class. They were chaotic and mocked me because I had no idea how to pronounce Yupik names for a couple students, and barely would stay quiet for me to take attendance. Not a big deal. The other group of 8th graders were mostly good. They did all their work, they picked books to read when they were done, they used dictionaries if they did not understand a word. Now, maybe 4 students were loud and wanted to play around and kept needing reminding to not disrupt other students, but not awful. I had an aide come in who is there for the more troublesome students and she helped with keeping them quiet. She also helped me the next time I saw the trouble maker 8th graders because she knew who they were so I did not have to call out attendance. I got everyone to finish their test that hour at least, but then they were out of control. I have never been asked so many inappropriate questions before! Seriously, having 8th graders start asking me about if I have sex and stuff like that is not cool. I was told to write down names of good and bad students and I was hoping that no one would be bad enough to warrant writing down a name, but I ended up doing that because some of the boys were disruptive and some of the girls were directly mean to me. But, getting them to do any work is a good thing and they did finish.
The 7th graders were great the first hour I had them. I had a different aide who did not really help me, though. They got their tests done as well. I just kept getting asked hunting questions and had boys running wild a bit.
I had the difficult 8th graders one last time and I could barely get them to do their packets. Two students went to a different room to work in a quiet environment because the kids would not stay quiet. Then somehow someone from downstairs from the office came to yell at them, saying every teacher has been having issues with them and they need to start being respectful. It did not help. I was also called mean because I stopped letting kids go to the bathroom or to get water because they were not working.
I had the 7th graders the last hour and no work was done. Too many fart jokes and talking and they all wanted to go home. Maybe two pages got done. Some students refused to work at all then got mad because I denied them the bathroom pass.
It was not a bad day, but holy cow, those 8th graders are hard! I am exhausted! And they were giving other teachers that much of a hard time as well and the last classes, other teachers had trouble getting them to do anything, so it was not just me! I am just not firm enough and was not until 7th period when the 8th graders went nuts.
It is just insane that students act this way! I already know which students do not work and do not care, and who do not really read well just from my boyfriend's classes. But it was hard to help students when everyone was so loud and disruptive non-stop. I will say that they had someone catching all tardies. Like less than a minute and someone was giving them a tardy slip.
Of course I will sub again, but now i know to be way more strict with the kids. But now I totally get what the teachers are saying about kids in the village and hiw hard it is to teach them things.