listen to me whine

Maybe I should have my students fill out new class evaluations. I thought we were all getting along so well, and enjoying Chemistry so much, but for some reason, within the past four days, TWO of my students have gone to the principal and told him they want to transfer out of my class because I hate them and apparently pick on them and am mean to them. Whatever. I gave them detentions. That's not that mean.

Luckily, Mr. Principal man suggested to Girl 1 that maybe if she didn't sit in the back of the class and talk to her friends and write on the lab tables, our relationship might improve. And luckily she took his advice and is now a delight in class, and no longer thinks that I hate her.

Not so luckily, Mr. Principal man told Boy 1's mother and grandmother that I would LOVE to have a conference with them to discuss the problem. And not so luckily Boy 1's mother has the same attitude problem as her son. Huh. Imagine that. So after school today, I was delighted by 45 minutes of interrogation by Boy's mother and grandmother, asking why I'm so mean to him and why I told him I don't care about him and why I yell at him and why I'm failing him. (Accompanied by rather frightening glares.) Never mind the fact that he either argues with me or flat-out ignores me every time I say ANYTHING to him, and never listens to a word I say and therefore doesn't even know what a proton is six weeks into Chemistry class. Clearly I am the problem. If I treated him with a little more respect, he would probably treat me with a little more respect. And clearly the assignment I gave, the assignment that I spent twenty minutes of class explaining, and that every other student seemed to understand perfectly well, was way too confusing and he therefore cannot be held responsible for failing. But as a consolation prize, Boy's grandma told me just how HOT Boy thinks I am. So I guess that makes it all okay?

And then I gave another Girl 2 a detention (for swearing) and she had an absolute conniption in class, I wanted to cry. Watching a student knocking ladders over and screaming and stomping around the room was just about all I could handle. Yikes. So I whined to the school counselor, cause he's a nice guy and knows Girl 1, Girl 2, and Boy 1 very well, and therefore understands my frustration. And he gave me a free t-shirt. Now my day is much better.

So in summary, it's been a long week. But on a better note, one of my students brought me donuts this morning, just because he's so nice. And Andrew is now bringing me an apple every friday, simply because teachers are supposed to like apples. And I was invited to be his best friend. And my physics students, the ones that every single teacher has warned me are so lazy and not so smart and not so polite, just turned in a set of beautiful lab reports. And they already understand Newton's laws way better than last year's students. And not a single one of them has complained about me to anyone. Can I just tell you how much I heart freshmen? I do. A lot.