It’s Friday
It’s Friday afternoon. The halls and classrooms are rapidly emptying as students and teachers rush to get to the waiting busses. The promise of a weekend away from classes, lessons, and school keeps their feet moving. I sit in the almost empty office. I have grades to enter into my computer but don’t really feel like looking at that grading spreadsheet anymore. Jay-Z blasts through my headphones.
I earned this little break. Fridays mean 5 classes to teach from 7:50 in the morning until 2:40 in the afternoon. Today, was an especially long Friday. One class was excellent, one was ok, and three were sent by the devil himself. Why is it so tough to get kids to cooperate with a teacher for 45 minutes? I try to think back to when I was in junior high but the memories are fuzzy. I try to remember why I sometimes didn’t pay attention. Everything was a distraction back then. From the guy next to me twirling his pen to the girl in front of me who might or might not have been attractive. Back then, almost any girl was at least somewhat attractive to me. The teacher was kind of an afterthought.
If I couldn’t find anything else to preoccupy my time with, I might listen to the teacher for a while. At least that’s how it was in some classes. I didn’t mean for it to be like that. That’s just how it was. I even tried to be a good student. But wow, things just kind of jumped out at me that didn’t have anything to do with what the teacher was talking about.
Hmm, my sense of sympathy starts to grow for the badly behaved students in my classes….then I remember one of them yelling at me in Chinese, "f_ _ _ your mom!"
All my sympathy disappears.
TGIF!
