Because... - JoeBustillos.com

deskzzzs For some strange reason Wednesdays have been more than I can handle lately and I’ve been particularly stressed after the daylight savings change (’cause I’m staying up too late) and as I approach my next yearbook deadline. So today was another case of getting tired of explaining the same thing to my students for the millionth time in a row because they weren’t listening to me the previous 999,999 times while simultaneously trying to monitor students who interpret my giving help individual students as an invitation to re-enact the chariot scene in “Ben Hur” bashing each other in the head and running about the room. So my seventh period class, the next to last of the day, is a particular challenge because they are one of my largest groups but also need a great deal of individual attention, which isn’t really a workable situation. So there I was trying to quickly bring a couple students up to speed (because they’d failed to follow along as I gave the original instructions) and I turned to see a couple of my instructionally-challenge boys with no work on their computer screens bouncing around the room and annoying the girls around them. I called the “brighter” of the two to come over and bring a pencil and paper. He complained that he didn’t have anything to write with or write on. I told him to deal with it and to get over to where I was standing.

Everyone assumed that I was going to have him write “Standards” (the typical Bart Simpson’s punishment to write “I will stay on task” a hundred-thousand times). For the most part that’s a ridiculous waste of time and I felt that this kid’s problem was that he’s actually too smart and I’d rather have him deal with his choices in a more real fashion. So I told him to write me a paragraph to convince me why I shouldn’t kick him out of my classroom. He went away grumbling about having no paper and then reappeared at the end of the class period waving a 40-page composition book in my face, which bugged me because it was a new book and he could have used a piece of scrap paper for his epistle. I shooed him and his co-conspirators out of the class and didn’t think about his letter until after I’d survived and sent away the next classroom full of students and found his abandoned composition book laying face-down on the floor. When I finally read what he wrote I had to laugh out loud:

cartwheel “U should keep me in class cause i am a smart kid. I got chosen 4 this selection [class] cause I’m really good at it. I could do it, it [is] just that I can’t stay still. Nd I’m sorry 4 playing around. Nd u shouldn’t kick me out cause u love me.”