The First Mistake

I think I made my first regrettable mistake today.

Nothing ever goes perfectly, but most of the time the mistakes made by teachers are simply things like not knowing exactly how to answer a question right after it is asked, or drawing a blank in front of a group of high schoolers. Things that kids don't even notice most of the time. Today I had a situation that I wish I could have done over.

I have a boy in my 3rd block class. He's very bright and very energetic - the type that can't stop moving. I usually don't have any problems with the kids that can't stop moving. My class is generally a movement oriented class anyway, especially since I am a kinetic learner myself. But today was rough.

I had several activities planned for today. It was fraction day. We started with a demonstration with apples and fractional parts, moved to a few minutes of direct instruction on addition and subtraction with fractions, break that up with a racing game with practice problems, a few more minutes of direct instruction on multiplication and division, and end the day with the guitar and learning the Fraction Song. Pretty fun day. Most kids love fraction day. Lots of moving around. They always love games and bringing in the guitar and singing the fraction song is usually a hit.

This boy is usually great in my class, but for some reason he started off the day poorly. He's really very bright and quick and also very energetic. The first five minutes of class is always devoted to the warm up. The students do their warm up that is on the board already when they come into class. My energetic student usually realizes that this is one of the only times in class that I want him to be calm, and for the first week and a half of school, I haven't had any problems with him.

But today, he just could not do what he was supposed to. He didn't want to do his warm up. When I asked him to turn around for the apple demonstration, he wouldn't do it and simply drummed on his desk. While I was teaching the class a new trick to add and subtract fractions without finding common denominators he was glaring at me and rapping to himself while I'm teaching the class. I asked him to stop and gave him a verbal warning. Then this young man decided that he already knew how to do what we were doing in class (even though he missed questions on fractions on the Diagnostic I gave him last week) and tuned out. But I let it go and figured he would tune back in as soon as we started the game. Pick your battles, right?

We started playing the game which was a get up out of your seat kind of game, but this boy decided he just didn't want to play. I gave rewards to each team when they won a round, but this boy would throw away his rewards and told me not to give them to him. So at one point, I had the class work on a problem while I took the boy out in the hall to talk to him.

"What's going on today? You having a rough day?" I asked him.

"No."

"What can I do to help you participate in class today?"

"Nothing."

"Would you like to come back in and play the game with the class?"

"No. This is stupid stuff."

"I know it may seem easy to you, but there are other students who still have trouble with this kind of stuff."

"I don't care. It's stupid stuff."

"All right. Well, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you two choices. You can either come back in and change your attitude or you can head down to the office. No one is making you stay here. This school is special and you choose to be here. So it's your choice whether to stay or go."

"Well, I was going to come back and treat you (i.e. he was going to behave badly and give me a hard time), but now I'm going to be the bigger man and go to the office."

And with that, he went to the office.

I don't really know what I should have done differently. I tried to be patient in class and I tried to discuss things with him calmly in the hall, but he just didn't want to be there today.

It's difficult to have very bright kids in a class with kids who are really behind. I'm used to that, and I try to vary the activities so that no one is bored. We play games, we sing songs, and all the time we do math, but today this boy just didn't want anything to do with it.

I tried not to let this one event get the best of me though. I wish I could have handled the situation differently, but the rest of the day was great! Kids loved the game we played and had fun singing the Fraction Song. But it's still a bummer when things like that happen.

Tomorrow however, he and I both start all over. New day; clean slate.