u/EvilDorito2

This happened to me a while ago, but the look on the kid's face was funny

Ok so, i teach afterschool. It is an optional course, free, and, bcs it's my first year, I'm fairly lenient. But i told and keep telling the kids " this is optional. You don't have to come, but if you do, you can't be wasting my time"

I have two kids that came in later than the rest. The girl is interested, the boy isn't. The boy skipped last week and the whole class heavily judges him for it

Anyway His sister came the other day like " teacher, teacher, my brother did his homework with chatgpt, and my mom said she'd vouch for him"

Me: his loss

Kid: comes to class Me " did you do your homework " Him " yes" Me " did you use chatgpt?" Him " no, my mom can vouch for me" Me " no need, go to the board and solve it"

The sheer DEER IN THE HEADLIGHTS look on this kid, and the " but i did my homework!" Was hilarious

Spoiler alert: he didn't know how to solve his homework

I have one hell of a teaching situation, both 7 yo and an 13 yo in one class. The 7 yo is the type to write fairly fast, get bored and talk during explanations, but also, bcs he's young and can barely write ( all caps), whenever i ask him to do something more complicated to keep him quiet, he doesn't know how to do it, so he talks.

I can't even ignore him and explain things bcs he's LOUD.

At a diff class where i have this type of situation, i separate the younger and older kids, bcs the younger ones take longer to copy from the blackboard, while i work on grammar and sentance structure w the older ones.

But i can't do this here. Because he's fast. And bores easily.

I yelled at him once out of sheer rage and he melted into the floor, and i don't want to do that again bcs I'm twice his size and that's shitty ( i also don't want to lose my temper in general, i never respected teachers who blew off a gasket easily)

So like.... what can i do to keep him engaged? He's actually writing when given a task, this is not a " he's a mean kid who likes to bother the class" situation, but i cannot teach the others if half the time is trying to make myself jeard over this fire truck siren of a kid