why must we get so off topic?

jesse: "how many african american regiments were there in the civil war?"
michael: "six and a half."
me: "half?"
michael: "yeah. midget black people."
cody: "one of these days, someone is going to shoot you."

this is what i deal with all day. and i wonder why we never get everything done. i continually get distracted by the r.j./michael/darren/cody/jesse/tyler Sextet of Fun in the front, which allows the Corner of Chaos to erupt, which means that it takes at least five minutes to get everybody to shut up again. by the time that happens, michael has said something else bizarre and the whole cycle starts all over again. it's like a mobius strip. a very frustrating mobius strip.

tomorrow i am becoming the Empress of the Lunch Detentions.

i am so sick of dealing with them. they're not bad kids, really. they just won't. shut. up. i am so tired of telling them to be quiet. so, from now on, i'm just going to start flinging detentions at random. meaning that i'll probably have the entire class sitting in my room after school on friday. but i don't care. maybe it would be easier to just say, "kristy, telecia, and josh may leave. the rest of you just sit back down. you're not going anywhere." i would just keep the whole class from lunch, or after school, but it's really not fair to the three or four kids who are sitting there quietly. i was always one of those kids, and it annoyed the hell out of me when we all got punished for the idiot minority. except in my current case, it's the idiot majority.

speaking of idiots. you know who the most frustrating students are to teach? not the really dumb ones. those i can handle. it's the really smart kids, with the potential to do well, but who don't turn in a single blooming piece of work, and therefore are failing. i've got two boys in particular, who are very smart. they're both auditory learners, so they never take notes, finish classwork, turn in homework, etc, etc, etc. yet they always participate in class, know what's going on, and do pretty well on the tests, considering they haven't studied at all. it's just because they never turn anything else in, they're failing. i want to smack them, because all it would take would be a tiny iota of effort on their part, and they could have an A.

i realize i'm not sounding very positive right now. i'm not feeling very positive right now. if it wasn't for my first period, who i really like, i would want to just quit. but i keep telling myself that it will be easier next semester, when i have a new batch of students and all my lessons will be planned ahead of time. everyone keeps telling me that it will be ok, i'll get used to it, it'll get better. it would have to. otherwise we wouldn't have as many 20-30 year teachers. they would have lost their minds years ago. (although, truth be told, i haven't yet met a high school teacher who isn't at least a little wacky.) so i keep telling myself that this time next year, i'll be having a grand old time.