Due to the M-STEP my school has put in place a zero phone policy; no student is allowed to bring a phone to school until the end of the testing cycle (the one thing that's making me wish testing was longer) or it will be confiscated and held until that date. The state has also asked that while students are testing no one else utilize the internet. Add to this the fact that seventh and eighth grades test on different weeks, but yet have to be in the room and silent while the others test, and I had some very bored students on Thursday. They had entertained themselves for over two hours with word searches, cross words, coloring, and even make up work (you know a student is bored when they voluntarily work on their missing homework assignments), but were starting to get that crazed look in their eye and I knew their good behavior wouldn't last much longer. I suggested that they read a book, they looked at me like I truly had lost my mind. I suggested practicing their multiplication facts, they all but threw their math books at me. Finally I said that they couldn't talk, but they could pass notes if they wanted. They asked me what that was, I looked at them like they were crazy. When I realized that they were serious I explained that it was like sending a text or instant message, but you write what you want to say on paper and then hand the paper to the other person to write back. Thus began a flurry of notes being handed around and scribbling pens and pencils such as my room hasn't seen since the 90's. I just sat at my desk and smiled as I watched, remembering all of the notes I had written and passed in my school career. Later, as I picked up the stray notes from the floor, I read them (of course, I'm a teacher, it's my job to read what my students write!) and had another deja vu moment as for a second I forgot that it was not me and my friends who had written these, but my students. One is angry with her mom for taking something away (I think her phone), another is annoyed with the science teacher for giving her a bad grade (on a paper she never turned in, I know because I found it under her chair, unfinished), and a third thinks the new kid is really cute and wonders if he has a girlfriend (if she'd asked me I could have told her that he doesn't--I'm the teacher, I know all). It seems that technology may have evolved, eliminating the need to actually put pen to paper and physically pass it, but the drama of middle school life still remains much the same. We have three more testing days scheduled, I'm just hoping the novelty of note passing doesn't wear of before they're over. Hey, maybe it'll catch on and they'll continue after their phones and computers are returned, it's been a long time since I intercepted a note and read it aloud to the whole class, might be fun to do again!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI've been teaching since 2000 and love what I do! Archives
May 2018
Categories |