First day of Middle School
Sub teacher with mostly HS experience, finished my first day of middle school today…
At home, *decompressing.*
I don’t have the same problem in High School, to the same level, of *students talking while I’m talking.* Non- stop chatter. Non- stop, compulsive talking— I’ll make dead eye- contact with students, engage them, tell them to stop talking, and they’ll continue to talk— they’ll even say “I’m not talking, I wasn’t talking.”
Seriously?
Delusional, lying children. They say they aren’t talking when they are— do they know they’re talking? Do they have self- awareness?
I told several classes today that they lacked ‘basic life skills,’ because they do. It is a *basic* life skill, to *not talk* when *someone else* is *talking*. Especially when that someone has been granted *authority* over you, is the *person-in-charge.*
Why do I feel like in the school system (and society at large) the adults are not the ones in charge? Why does it feel like it’s rather the students— the children? Should a teacher not in fact, be the person IN- CHARGE of a classroom? It’s absolutely backwards, bonkers, upside down.
I straight- up told a student he was a liar today, as someone from the office was coming to take him out of class— I gave him 3 or 4 chances, asking if he’d need to be sent out— patient, low, slow and steady tone (I am quite good at emotional detachment, and maintain ‘zen.’) Moved him to a different seat, which he refused to go to, only finally acquiescing after I’d told him to leave, and called the office when he wouldn’t— *I was going to the other desk, I was moving.*
No, you weren’t. You were talking when I was talking, would not stop when told, would not move desks when instructed to, and would not leave the class when instructed to go to the office.
You are a liar.
I told the office he “wasn’t ready to be in class” because he wasn’t. A student who will not follow instructions has no business being a student— thats the whole game right? Teachers teach— they instruct— if a student cannot be instructed, why is that student a student at all?
The system is seriously broken. We have *got to* get our priorities straight, and get back to basics.
*END RANT*