I spent half of my half day with my most loathsome class. I was glad to see that three notorious troublemakers decided to stay home. I figured class would be smooth, and it was going just fine until one girl tripped over her chair and fell to the floor pretty hard. I rushed over to check on her, and she was full of drama, totally milking her moment, and I could tell she was fine. I gave her a minute and asked her to get up. As I'm helping this girl to her feet, I notice three knuckleheads laughing their heads off on the other side of the room. I deal with my injured girl, let a friend escort her to the nurse, and address these cackling morons on the other side of the room.

I pointed North, South, East, and West at my classroom rules. I asked, what is rule number one? "Respect everyone and everything in the classroom!" I lay into these kids, asking how they would feel if they were injured and everyone else was laughing at them as they writhed on the ground in pain. They didn't get it. One girl kept laughing her fool head off, so I closed her lab book and told her to get out of my room. I held her book out, waiting for her to take it, but she was too busy laughing to acknowledge my order. I threw her book at the door and said "GET OUT, NOW." Suddenly, it wasn't funny anymore. "Oh, how can you throw my stuff? Gonna disrespect me like that?" "Go," I said, adding "You're not respecting me, my classroom, or your classmates, so why should I treat you with any respect? GET OUT."

She huffed off, out the door. A boy piped up to offer her defense. I told him not to get involved. He told me I was wrong for throwing her things. I told him that I didn't care and that if he kept talking, he would join her. He kept talking. I told him to leave. He huffed and puffed his way out the door.

I put out a few more fires, none worth mentioning. I love their sense of entitlement. I explained that my classroom is not a democracy, it's an absolute monarchy with me as King, and I make the rules that they will follow. Break the rules and you're gone. This isn't up for discussion or a vote. If you make it hard for me to do my job, I make it hard for you to pass my class by kicking you out, costing you points and valuable classroom time.

They came back next period, telling me that an administrator said they should come back to class. I told them that they weren't welcome back and to get lost for another period. I've given these kids enough chances. I tried for five weeks to work with them, but they just don't get it, so it's my way or the highway. I'm not going to screw up the educations of the fifteen other kids in the room who cause no disruptions to try and save the five assholes who want to disturb my class. They lack maturity, and by age 16, I expect maturity, a modicum of decorum.

It's a long weekend. I've got Monday off and I plan to enjoy it. Four teaching days next week. I love short weeks.

I wrote up a couple kids on Friday. For some odd reason, they don't want to show me the proper respect. I asked one girl to straighten herself in her chair, to stop lounging, as if she were at home on the couch, with her legs propped up on another chair. I believe she called me both "jerk" and "asshole" before swinging her legs under the table. I let those comments slide, pretending not to hear what she said. Anyway, I have her for 90 minutes straight and she's pouting the whole time. During the break between classes, she tips over her chair and pushes all of her stuff off of her desk. I catch her roaming the room, looking for things to knock over, and I take her aside and talk to her. I tell her that knocking over my chairs and her own stuff is disrespectful to the classroom environment. She fails to see where the action of knocking her stuff off of her desk is somehow disrespectful to me. I explain that it is disrespectful to herself that she would want to comport herself in such a way. She did not understand this, replying that pushing stuff off of her desk is not like cutting herself, which would be disrespectful to her self. Clearly, she cannot distinguish between physical and mental disrespect. I use my chair as an example, saying that it is disrespectful to knock over my things and that I would not push her things off of her desk because that would be disrespectful to her. She grumbles and groans, the bell rings, and I get on with the quiz I'm giving in the next 45 minutes. I wait until the end of the class to give her the detention slip she earned for her disrespect to the classroom and she is not pleased when she receives it.

I had to write up a second girl for poking another student in the butt with a pen. One offense was not enough for this girl and she decided that talking during my quiz would be a good idea. I wrote up the slip at my desk, planning to give it to her at the end of class. She needs to go wash some ink off of her hands. She follows the proper procedure and I begin to write her a bathroom pass. I mention that I wrote her up for her transgressions and attempt to hand her the slip. She doesn't want it. She takes her bathroom pass and mumbles her way out of the room. A few minutes later, she violently rattles my door in a futile attempt to get through my locked-by-school-policy classroom door. This disrupts the entire class. I open the door and point her over toward the lockers.

"We have a problem. No, scratch that - you have a problem and I have a solution. Your behavior today has been totally unacceptable and you are not meeting my expectations. I can't have that and you can't be successful in my classroom unless you understand and meet my expectations. So, how should you be acting, what are my expectations?"

"I need to sit down, be quiet, and do my work."

"Can you do that? You haven't been able to do it yet today."

"Yes, I can."

Meanwhile, as I'm talking to this young lady in the hallway, I can hear whistling and laughter coming from inside my classroom. I poke my head in and tell them to knock it off and get back to work. I hear one more whistle and I walk in and announce, "One more whistle and you all get zeroes on the quiz. I'll rip up every single one of your papers and you all will fail. Make the right choice."

That actually worked. I was able to spend a few minutes talking to this girl about her behavior and I think we came to an understanding. She even gave me her father's up-to-date phone number, which I thought was an excellent move on her part. I tried calling it after school, but he didn't answer. At least the number is in service; the number provided by the school gives me "The Cricket number you have dialed is no longer in service."

Our happy ending was short-lived. She pulled out a deck of cards after she was done with her quiz and began quietly shuffling them in her lap, thinking I wouldn't notice. I don't miss much. I confiscated her cards. I gave them back to her at the end of the day, showing her the part in the student handbook where it warns against gambling, and told her she only got them back because she gave me her father's new number. Hopefully, it will be a trust-building compromise. I need her to cooperate because she is a major source of disruption in the classroom, the bellwether that signals the other kids to start misbehaving.

I thought I'd keep this entry short as I've been writing long posts as of late, alas, no luck. Feels good to get it all out and put it down. Reflecting on these first few weeks of school in this journal has helped me to see improvement in my most reviled bunch, the troublesome 8th period. Baby steps to be sure, but I think we're making inroads to success.