I had a sub today because my school offered a math endorsement class. I got to school at about 6:45 because I was a slacker and didn't prepare anything last night. My sub arrived at 7:15. What? School starts at 8:25. Weirdo! So I just explained everything to him but also gave him explicit, written instructions on how my class runs. After speaking with him for that 10 minutes, I knew my class was going to eat him alive or leave him looking like this guy:
But I went to my class anyway.
We got through about an hour and a half of the class when my principal was called down to the office to take care of a problem. Little did I know the problem was my class.
I need to give some background knowledge for my class. For birthdays I give students a candy bar, a pencil, and a card from the class. I spent my own money on all of these things and each student will get their present when it's their birthday. All they need to do is wait. Fair enough.
So back to today. I gave the sub a movie to put in that I thought was pretty cool. It was about Mars and space travel. My students didn't think it was and my sub had no control over them at all so they were crazy. At some point during the movie a large group of them decided they were going to find the candy bars and take them. They proceeded to look through each filing cabinet drawer until they found them (where the heck was the sub? Kids in filing cabinets behind teacher desks screams, "NOT ALLOWED!" to me but what do I know?). They then passed them out to the kids who wanted one. Many kids put them back but a group of 9 decided to just eat them.
I don't care about the candy. It's not like it was that expensive. What I care about is that they would have the audacity to go through my things and steal from me. They didn't even really steal from me, technically they stole from themselves and their classmates.
What I really care about is that I can't trust them. I can't leave my things alone in the room without thinking, "Is someone going through my things? Are they going to steal bigger things?" It's a trust issue and now they've broken it. And they broke my heart. I thought we had a good rapport going. We've only known each other for 6 weeks but I care about these kids so much already and to have a large group of them disrespect me, the classroom, their classmates, and the sub really upset me.
My principal told me about it during our first break (about 10:45) and I got really emotional. I cried and was just so upset. I couldn't concentrate in the class (seriously, ask me what we did. I don't know.) and I was on the verge of tears.
I came back to my room after school and read the letters my principal made them write to me. Most were really apologetic and most students fessed up but I know that at least 2 said they were perfect even though I have notes from the sub and other students saying they weren't. I think that upsets me even more. Admit your misbehavior, we'll work through it and get over it. But knowing these 2 stole then lied about it makes me so angry. UGH.
So I sat at school for 3 hours crying and trying to figure out what I'm going to do tomorrow. I still don't know. Hopefully I'll get some divine inspiration tonight but I think I'll look something like this:
No comments:
Post a Comment