positives and negatives

A brief list of positives and negatives from yesterday.

POSITIVE:

• My poster mosaic project of the animal cell worked out really well for my Anatomy class.
• Due to the success of that poster mosaic, I plan to do one with my Biology class on the plant cell.
• Kids were engaged in the video I showed in Chemistry.  They had to complete a worksheet that spit out a fill in the blank question about once every minute, which required them to pay attention.  One girl commented that she really liked this because she learned better this way.  Honey, it wasn't the video that made it easy for you to learn, it was the fact that you had to PAY ATTENTION to get the answers.  I tricked you!

NEGATIVES:

• One girl refused to honor a simple request to put her hoodie into her locker.  I had to ask her three times before she finally relented, and she made some comment about "y'all teachers are crybabies over nothing."  I gave her a detention.
• In Biology, I have started the "Not Good For You" name box.  I put your name in there if you need to work on your behavior, to check oneself before one wrecks oneself.  I abbreviated it to NGFY, which I like to think means "Now Go Fuck Yourself" when I put a student's name in the box.  Of course, I won't let the children in on that little chestnut.
• 8th period went fairly well, except I had to take a cell phone from a girl.  She had it out in her lap and occasionally her hands went into her lap for a few seconds.  Either she was masturbating or text messaging, so I needed to get to the bottom of this situation because I don't allow either one in class.  Seriously, they think teachers are blind and stupid.  If they only knew how much stuff I ignored in a period, it would blow their minds.  Anyway, I tell this girl I need to speak to her after class.  It goes downhill from there.  She starts demanding her phone back, which is not a real good strategy to pursue.  I keep telling her no, and she leans over my computer, huffs and puffs, and says "GIVE - ME - MY - PHONE - BACK!!!"  I tell her no and I hand her over to administration.  
• On top of that, cell phone girl had missed the last four days of school and when she wasn't texting, she was sleeping in class.

Wednesday is my long day with two block periods in it.  I hate Wednesdays, I hate spending 90 minutes with these two groups of kids.  Both groups are immature, but the difference is that one is a 9th grade group where immaturity can be expected and the other is a 11th grade group where maturity is expected.

Get me past Wednesday and it feels like the weekend.