A Lump Update

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may remember the story of "Lump," a student that was put in my class for the last month of school two years ago. Lump had made his other teacher feel physically threatened, so he got put into my class. He then proceeded to bang his desk on the ground, whistle during class, sleep, and sometimes spontaneously leave the classroom.

It was a pretty rough month, but somehow we both made it through.

A couple of weeks ago, I heard that Lump, who is now in the 5th grade, not only passed his math TAKS, but achieved a Commended score.

I of course can't take credit for that; he's had some terrific teachers since 3rd grade. Still, it's pretty awesome to hear about a turn-around like that.

I finally saw Lump in the hallway the other day, and I stopped him to congratulate him, pump his hand, and tell him how proud I was.

Chalk that up as a success!

Maybe I'm on to something here

I have what might possibly be amazing breakthrough news in the case of my student Lump. I THINK I said and did something the other day that actually meant something to him and made him want to change his behavior.

Flashback to Thursday. Lump had been absent for a few days in the week, and he returned to school on Thursday. He was up to his usual tricks of doing absolutely nothing productive, and doing lots of stuff that was disruptive. While the other kids were doing their morning work, Lump decided to make farting noises. When I tried to talk to him, he argued loudly with me. Sad to say, I stooped to his level for a bit and argued back. I finally sent a kid down to get the assistant principal, and when she came down, Lump gave me an insincere apology and said he would come back into the room and do his work.

However, this proved to be not so true, as he started scribbling all over his desk. When I took the pencil away, he started banging on his desk like a drum again. I put him in my newly upholstered timeout corner, and he ripped one of the papers off the wall. Then when my back was turned, he stepped out of the classroom and started playing in the hallway.

I had to stop what I was doing and look up his mother's phone number. When I got her on the phone, I told her what was happening, and she spoke to him. I received another insincere apology from him, but at least he came back into the room and was much less disruptive for the rest of the morning.

Here's where I place the turning point, though. At recess that day, I was throwing the football around with some of my students, as I often do. Lump approached me and asked, "Hey Mister Teacher, can I play?"

Firmly, but not unkindly, I replied, "I'm sorry, but you already played in my classroom today. You can't play in there AND out here."

Friday morning arrived, and when my kids filed into the classroom, Lump told me, "I'm going to do my work today." I of course tried to back that statement with major encouragement, not really expecting it to happen.

The first thing we did was go over the homework from Thursday night, which was 10 two-digit by two-digit multiplication problems. I placed a homework sheet in front of Lump, since he had not brought his own. While the other students went up to my overhead and worked the problems, I stuck around near Lump and tried to encourage him to listen to what those kids were saying and do what they were doing. Lump wasn't extremely active in the following along with what the other kids were doing, but he did make an attempt on the first problem, and after that, he was at least not causing any problems.

Next, I gave a quiz to the class. Five problems of the same variety that we had just done in the homework. Lump had some difficulty with the first problem, but he WAS writing it down and trying to figure it out. I spent some time with him and showed him the techniques that the rest of the class had been practicing for two weeks (that he had either been ignoring or had missed due to having to leave the classroom). He really started to get into it, and at one point he even uttered the words that all teachers long to hear -- "I get it now!"

After walking him through the first problem, he raised his hand and showed me his work for number two and number three after completing each one. He had gotten both right, and each time I heaped as much praise as I could muster onto him and encouraged him to continue. He did the last two on his own. At the end of the morning, I had a 100 quiz from a student who had been averaging a 0 for lack of effort.

At recess, Lump approached me and said, "Can I play with you today, since I didn't play in your class?"

My reply? "Go long!!"

At the end of recess, Lump told me that he was going to do his work for the rest of the year. That of course remains to be seen. It might just be that yesterday was a really high point on his bipolar roller coaster. But for now, I'm excited with the prospect that I might just have hit upon a motivator -- football -- for this kid.

Now I just need to find a similar motivator for the other two little boys that decided to be major juvenile delinquents yesterday...

Not my finest day

This morning, I got to exercise the algebra muscle in my brain and figure out a puzzle without using a paper. Mr. Hard Drive, our IT guy, drove by while I was out in front of the school doing my morning duty and presented me with a math problem.

"A guy on a bike is following a path that goes up and back down a hill. He rides for five hours. Going up the hill, his speed is 8 mph; coming back down the hill, his speed is 12 mph. How many miles did he ride?"

I won't post the answer here, so as to ruin the joy of discovery. And I do mean joy, as solving that problem was the high point of my day.

Lump was back from suspension and up to his usual modus operandi today. You can pretty much set your clock by when he's going to raise his hand and tell you he has a potty emergency -- 8:00. Also, have I mentioned how much of a hypochondriac he is? My knee hurts, the knuckle of my fourth toe is aching, my outer elbow appears swollen. Two weeks ago, he called me over and just pointed at one of his eyes. When I asked what he was trying to show me, he said, "This eye is big." If I had been a little more quickwitted (and slightly less mature), I should have recoiled in horror, slapped my hands over my mouth as I released a gasp of terror, and let out a bloodcurdling scream.

Today, I took my morning class outside to the field so that we could do the experiment for our science project which involved rolling a basketball on grass and on wood chips. Lump kept disrupting the project, so I finally told him to go stand in a spot about 10 feet away. Instead, he started walking towards the building with no intention of stopping. I shouted at him that if he was going to go inside he better be sure to go by the principal's office. Later, when he decided to grace us with his presence again, he claimed to have stopped by the principal's office, but I highly doubt that he did. It was quite obvious that he HAD stopped by the clinic, though, to tell the nurse all about the mysterious ridge that had shown up on the inside of his thumb. I'm sure he made her day.

When we came back inside from doing our project, I discovered that one of the kids from my other class had been acting like a fool and running up and down the halls. When I asked him what was going on, he decided that he didn't need to answer me. It really irritates me that so many kids, at least at my school, think that that's an acceptable choice, and that they don't really need to respond when an adult asks them a question. I had to spend about 10 minutes dealing with him, including getting one of the bilingual teachers to call his Spanish-speaking mother.

That was 10 minutes I really didn't have to waste, as the science projects are due tomorrow, and we were under the gun. Couple that with two of my team members being out, field trip permission slips needing to be sent home, and the short-notice advance warning from yesterday about all of the fourth and fifth grade teachers coming into my room tomorrow during class for a learning walk. Yeah, I'm feeling a little stressed.

So I made a little bit of a misstep this afternoon, and I did something that I normally don't do. I didn't break any laws, commit any crime, or violate anyone's civil rights, but I said something that I've tried to excise from my at-school vocabulary.

One of my kids kept playing around while I was trying to give instructions to the class. He was across the room from me, but I looked him directly in the eye and told him to go stand in the corner. Then I resumed talking to the class, but this kid started trying to talk over me, pleading his case. I told him to stop talking and go to the corner. In all, I had to tell him three times before he finally went to the corner, and then he still kept telling me how this other kid had done such and such. So I had finally had enough, and I shouted, "SHUT UP!!!"

Like I said, I almost never say that at school, and I didn't feel too proud about saying it today. But on the bright side, the rest of my kids were perfectly quiet after that. For about 10 minutes.

3:00 could not come fast enough today. Hopefully tomorrow will be a much brighter day. Because after today, I feel like one of my thumbs is bigger than the other, and that one of my nostrils has turned green. Lump and I can visit the clinic together.

In a much lighter note, Richie over at Bellringers has put together a really awesome Carnival of Education for this week. I really can't tell if she's mocking my t-shirts or promoting them, but either way, they get a lot of mention. Check it out, and see if you're smarter than a blogger.

Testing is over!!

Unlike Tuesday and Wednesday, today I did not have to administer a state standardized test!! The only people taking a test today were the fifth graders, who were taking the science TAKS. Third and fourth grade or allowed to resume their normal schedule, complete with outside recess and afternoon specials.

Yesterday was the reading test for fourth grade, so I was up in Ed U Cater's room monitoring the test, and he was down in my room teaching my students. After that experience, I have no doubt that he is anxiously anticipating next year, when he will have these kids ALL year long.

Throughout the course of this entire school year, my kids have frequently interrupted my teaching with statements that begin with, "Miss Credit told us," or "Miss Credit always said," or "Miss Credit used to..." Then they go on to inform me as to exactly what she told them or said or used to do. Quite often, what they're telling me they learned from their old teacher is EXACTLY what I'm telling them were doing at the time. I usually see Miss Credit on Fridays, and I tell her that her students from last year obviously retained a lot of what she taught them. I tell her this because it's a nice stroke of the teacher's ego to know that a) the students remember you, and b) the students remember what you said.

However, I sometimes find it very irritating.

Today, after experiencing the mystical phenomena that is Ed U Cater, several of the kids started in with statements of, "Mr. Cater said..." and so on. UUGGGGGGHHHHH!!!

I took a moment, looked each one of my students deep in the eye, and made this heartfelt entreaty: "All year long, you guys have been telling me what Miss Credit used to say, and now you're telling me what Mr. Cater says... I'm asking each and everyone of you right now, PLEASE, next year when you are in Mr. Cater's class, be sure to stop him frequently and tell him what Mister Teacher always does and says. Thank you."

So next year should be very interesting for ol' Ed.

In one other note related to this week's testing... During my 20 minute break yesterday, I saw Lump in the teacher's lounge with a teacher's assistant. Since he did not pass the reading test during the first administration, he was among the small group of third graders who had to take the retest yesterday. (Just to refresh everyone's memory, third graders get three attempts to pass this test, and if they don't pass it, they don't go to fourth grade.)

According to the teacher's assistant, Lump did not even attempt to read any of the passages or questions. He just started filling in bubbles randomly.

Lump is annoying, I do not enjoy having him in class at all, and he is headed down a horrible road in life. However, a small perverse side of me secretly hopes that he passed this reading test. Because if he did, then maybe we can hold this up as irrefutable proof that these standardized tests are ridiculously useless. If someone can obtain a passing score by randomly bubbling, maybe the state legislature will finally see fit to throw it out.